The Year of Magical Eating

For dinner, Stanley Tucci’s youngest daughter, Emilia, six, only eats pasta and cheese, a bit of butter. Occasionally, she will accept pesto. As you can imagine, this pains him. Tucci is a man of deep-fried courgette, the giant timpano, barolo and squid-ink risotto. He is a man for whom food is love and the act of cooking a profound and indulgent pleasure. We are sitting on velvet sofas in a bar near his home in south London, drinking wine and beer, and talking about the pain, the shame, the frustration of feeding a child. “And the struggle. And the sadness,” he sighs. “But, that is what she wants. And she’ll grow out of it.”