Marcella
Before there were Mario and Lidia and Rocco, there was Marcella. And before there was Marcella, “Italian” cooking was spaghetti and meatballs smothered in tomato sauce.
In 1973, Marcella published The Classic Italian Cookbook and introduced authentic regional Italian cuisines to Americans. “I wanted to tell the story — the way we eat, the way we shop,” she said to me recently, as we sat down at the Sonesta Hotel in Coconut Grove, Florida, where Marcella was to be honored with a Grande Dame Award for lifetime achievement from Les Dames d’Escoffier International.
How Marcella came to be the Grande Dame of Italian cooking is quite a story.
Marcella is a scientist by education, with doctorate degrees in natural sciences and biology from the University of Ferrara in Ferrara, Italy. She married Victor Hazan 52 years ago and came to live in New York City. “I had never cooked in my life,” Marcella recalled. “I learned to cook because Victor likes to eat. I had to learn. ” And learn she did. Marcella turned herself into a talented Italian home cook.
But what Marcella really loved was Chinese food. So she took a cooking class from Madame Chu, a famous Chinese cooking teacher in New York City. When others in the class expressed interest in what Marcella cooked at home, she soon found herself teaching them to cook Italian. “Victor said, ‘You like to teach and you like to cook; why not teach cooking?’ ” Marcella explained.
The New York Times was compiling a list of cooking classes available in the city and Victor proposed that they submit information about her fledgling class for the compedium. They missed the deadline, but someone from The New York Times phoned Marcella afterwards. Still new to English, Marcella had trouble understanding who it was and what he wanted. So she invited him to come for lunch. The caller turned out to be Craig Claiborne, the illustrious food editor of the paper. “He wrote a beautiful interview,” Marcella recalled. The article included her first written recipes.
Not long after, she received another cryptic phone call. “Again I could not understand, but I said, ‘come for dinner,’” she said. This time it was a book publisher who had lived in Italy, read about Marcella in The Times and recognized the food he loved. He asked her to write a cookbook.
“At first I said no. I didn’t know anything about writing a book,” she explained. When she finally relented, the publisher asked how much time she would need to complete it. “I said two months,” Marcella recalled with a smile. He gave her ten months. Marcella wrote the book in Italian; Victor translated. “I was cooking all the time,” she said. “I only had to measure.”
An Enduring — and Endearing — Success
An extraordinary teacher, Marcella taught throughout the U.S., as well as in schools she and Victor founded in Venice, Bologna and New York City. Over the years she wrote five more cookbooks. The most recent, “Marcella Says…,” was published in 2004.
Marcella is beloved around the world. She has given lectures in Australia and South Africa, appeared on television programs in Great Britain and Canada and has been interviewed by magazine and newspaper reporters throughout the globe.
Marcella has been at the forefront of change in American cooking. Thanks to this Italian culinary pioneer and others who followed, Italian cooking is a popular, everyday cuisine in the U.S. No longer does Marcella have to go to specialty Italian groceries for fennel or artichokes or pancetta as she did as a bride in America. They’ve all become mainstream supermarket ingredients.
But what does Marcella think of cooking today? “Chefs want to be innovative,” she said. “But sometimes, they get so caught up in the presentation — the color, the shape — that they forget the most important point. The food is to eat. It has to taste good. They forget the taste. ”
INSIGHT: The right person at the right time in the right place can start a culinary revolution.
November 10th, 2005 14:56
I was so delighted to see the article on Marcella Hazan. As a home cook who took her teachings to heart, and later as a food columnist who often has occasion to comment on Italian cooking, her books have been inspirational and invaluable. It’s as though she is in the kitchen with you, anticipating your every question, explaining the “why” and “how” - assuring great results. Bravo!