Shalhoub, the much-admired character actor, may never have had a finer cinematic moment than in the 1996 film Big Night, at whose center is the fantastic concoction called the timpano, “a monumental, labor-intensive, deeply ceremonial stuffed pasta.” He doesn’t offer the recipe, which belongs to costar/director/writer Stanley Tucci. One of nine siblings clamoring for food in his Green Bay, Wisconsin, childhood, though, Shalhoub was plenty well-fed by his mother, for whom “food was devotion,” and he’s deeply generous with recipes from her kitchen—recipes that alone are worth the price of admission. With that cookbook, ranging from perfect pancakes to the green-bean-forward Lebanese dish Loubieh bi Zeit (“I wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes your new go-to—a quiet Mediterranean diet workhorse you return to again and again”), come other narratives. One, charmingly, is his account of annual family reunions in Door County, Wisconsin, where each person takes turns doing the grunt work of prep and washing but also stars as a chef for a meal, “orchestrating a meal for a crowd that ranges in age from toddlers to octogenarians—an army with appetites that expand mysteriously in the presence of communal tables.” (His title comes from the family’s shared, playful farewell after a week of “deeply serious and absolutely cutthroat cribbage players” and way too much food.) Along the way, Shalhoub offers sometimes arch observations on the art and craft of acting—be warned that one should never cough during one of his stage performances—as well as some pet peeves (don’t put short things on a refrigerator’s tall shelves, don’t condone creamed spinach). Minor kvetching aside, though, his fine book overflows with love of family, food, and art.