Timpano Recipe on Food52 (2024)

FAQs

What was the Italian dish in the movie The Big Night? ›

It took me all day to make timpano, the special Calabrian pasta dish that serves as the (epicurean and narrative) centerpiece to Big Night, the 1996 movie co-directed by Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott.

A timpano is an Italian dish of pasta, tomato sauce, roasted vegetables (and sometimes meat), hard-boiled eggs, and cheese shaped into a dome, covered with dough and baked. It was made famous in America in the Stanley Tucci movie Big Night, and is a dramatic centerpiece dish for any meal.

Originating in Lazio, there are many variations on the filling of this timballo, but what differentiates it from the others is the pasta shell is replaced with ham slices. There is also the crustless Timballo di Anelletti made by packing Anelli pasta directly into the pan.

Most dinners consist of a salad, the primo (pasta or soup dish) and the secondo (meat or fish dish). The Italians also enjoy cooked vegetables like artichokes, eggplants, mushrooms, spinach and zucchini, which they either buy at the market or grow in their gardens.

It's a pasta pie shaped like a drum with a crust, and "one of the most important things in the world," according to passionate chef Primo, as he first introduces timpano in the film Big Night.

Italy

Timballo / Origin

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said of the film, "'Big Night' is one of the great food movies, and yet it is so much more. It is about food not as a subject but as a language--the language by which one can speak to gods, can create, can seduce, can aspire to perfection."

The Italian, Spanish and Portuguese words for eardrum. The singular of Timpani.

The earliest pasta shape was a simple sheet, which was treated more like bread dough. It probably didn't have the toothsome quality – known as “al dente” – associated with Italian pasta today, and would have been similar to unleavened matzo bread with sauce on it.

With conflicting accounts of its origin, Ziti is a Southern Italian pasta from either Campania or Sicliy. In Southern Italy, the term “zita” refers to a young bride, as this pasta shape is usually served up at weddings.

What is the star pasta shape called? ›

Barilla is one popular brand that sells tiny star-shaped pasta, traditionally called "stelline," under the name pastina. Though nearly any shape will do, generally, pasta smaller than about 1/4 inch qualifies as pastina.

They... Italian police officers summoned to a lonely elderly couple's home cooked them a plate of spaghetti to cheer them up. The four officers knocked on the door of Michele, 94, and his wife Jole, 89, after neighbours reported hearing them crying.

Tripe (trippa in Italian) is a classic dish in regional Italian cuisine made from the edible lining of the stomachs of ruminants, primarily cows. In Lombardy, tripe may also be the first part of the small intestine of a veal calf or a steer. It is a simple dish, but it requires many hours of cooking time.

Another dish widely savored on Festa della Repubblica is bucatini con le sarde. The pride of stunning Sicily, this pasta dish is traditionally prepared with a finely chopped mixture of local sardine and anchovies.

In episode four of Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, the American actor travels to the county's north, including the financial and business capital Milan, where he learns how to make cotoletta milanese, risotto milanese, pizzocheri and polenta.