Big Night Timpano Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What was the dish they made in Big Night? ›

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.

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.

Known more commonly as “timballo,” the name “timpano” comes from the Calabria region of southern Italy from where Stanley Tucci's family hails. Timpano is a dish that requires quite a bit of time to prepare.

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 dish is described as layers of meats, cheese, marinara sauce and pasta encased in a buttery crust. Gwen prefers to make the dish using pizza dough instead of pasta, but says that may make some Italians angry. Watch of clip of their first attempt at making the dish together from a few years ago.

The film ends with Secondo, Christian and Primo eating three scrambled eggs the morning after the big night.

Tucci co-wrote the screenplay for Big Night with his cousin Joseph Tropiano and co-directed with fellow actor Campbell Scott (Jurassic World: Dominion). He also stars in the pic, which debuted at Sundance. Tucci and Tropiano picked up the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay for their work on the pic.

Big Night (1996) - Liev Schreiber as Leo - IMDb.

Timpano may refer to: The Italian, Spanish and Portuguese words for eardrum. The singular of Timpani. Timballo, an Italian baked pasta dish.

Why is it called timpano? ›

The name “Timpano” comes from the Italian word for “drum.” This ambitious creation is famously featured as the main dish of the climactic meal in the classic film Big Night.

In the interim, Tavistock Restaurant Collection, the Orlando-based chain restaurant group that owns Timpano, hired a new executive chef and the space underwent a complete gut renovation and interior overhaul.

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.

Timballo is the Italian word for “drum”, which happens to be the root word for the large half-round orchestral drum called a timpani.

In cooking, timbale (French: [tɛ̃bal]) derived from the French word for "kettledrum", also known as timballo, can refer to either a kind of pan used for baking, or the food that is cooked inside such a pan.

New Jersey, 1950s. Two brothers run an Italian restaurant. Business is not going well as a rival Italian restaurant is out-competing them.

(Il Timpano = the Drum)

The timpano is said to date back to the 19th century, and is said to be the favorite dish of writer Giuseppe di Tomasi di Lampedusa, who consumed his timpano made with the "unborn eggs from the ovary of a chicken." And while the dish is commonly thought to come from southern Italy's Calabria region (via The Chicago ...

Middle: Primo enters which creates the dramatic question in the scene — how will the brothers react to each other after last night's disaster. So much to say — but how to say it? Ending: The brothers eat side-by-side and acknowledge acceptance for each other through the gestures of their hands.