Marcella Hazan

Marcella Hazan (born April 15, 1924 as Marcella Polini in Cesenatico , Emilia-Romagna , † September 29, 2013 in Longboat Key , Florida ) was an Italian-American cookbook author . Her books, with which she popularized traditional Italian cuisine in the USA, are considered standard works.

Life

Marcella Polini grew up in Cesenatico on the Adriatic coast of Emilia-Romagna . She completed her studies in biology with a doctorate from the University of Ferrara . In the early 1950s she met Italian-born Victor Hazan, who grew up in Manhattan , and married him in her hometown in 1955. In 1956 the couple emigrated to New York , where Marcella, according to his own account , suffered a culture shock . She spoke little English, had never seen a supermarket before, and missed the fresh food markets. Italian food was considered something exotic in the US at the time. The couple moved into a small apartment in Forest Hills , Queens . Marcella Hazan, who could not cook until she married, taught herself how to cook from a recipe book by the Roman restaurateur Ada Boni . In 1969 she attended a Chinese cooking class in New York. When it was canceled, the other participants suggested that she teach her how to cook Italian. She started giving cooking classes in her kitchen. Later she taught master classes for chefs, for example at the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan (today: The International Culinary Center ). First in Bologna , then in a 16th century palazzo in Venice , she and her husband opened culinary schools. The couple lived alternately in Italy and the USA.

It was only when she was in her early 50s that she wrote her first cookbook, the 1973 title The Classic Italian Cook Book. The Art of Italian Cooking and the Italian Art of Eating was published. She has been compared to Julia Child , who introduced French cuisine to millions of people through her cookbooks and television shows . Five more books followed, which also became classics of the cookbook genre. She wrote all of them in Italian; Viktor Hazan, who in turn wrote an authoritative guide on Italian wine, translated them into English. Her fifth cookbook Marcella cucina , which was published in German translation in 1999 under the title New recipes from classic Italian cuisine , recommended Wolfram Siebeck in its Zeit column: “You only have to read the three pages that the author dedicates to tomatoes to know that she talks Tacheles and doesn't fool her readers. Her factual and clear manner characterizes all of her recipes, which can be cooked in a delightful way. [...] There is more common sense involved than cookbooks in general convey. "

Marcella Hazan preserved and renewed recipes that reflected regional cuisines in Italy. The Roman dish Spaghetti aglio e olio - "thin spaghetti with garlic, olive oil, parsley, chilli pepper and nothing else" - embodied for her "the culinary simple and at the same time complex nature of Italian cuisine". In her last book, Marcella Says , published in 2004 , she explained what she meant by this:

“Simple doesn't mean easy. I can describe simple cooking thus: Cooking that is stripped all the way down to those procedures and those ingredients indispensable in enunciating the sincere flavor intentions of a dish. [...] I don't cook 'concepts'. I use my head, but I cook from the heart, I cook for flavor. "

“Simple doesn't mean easy. I can describe simple cooking like this: Cooking that is reduced to the essential processes and ingredients that are essential to express the actual taste intentions of a dish. [...] I don't cook 'concepts'. I use my head, but I cook from the heart, I cook for the taste. "

- Marcella Hazan

In the late 1990s, Marcella and Victor Hazan retired to a house in Longboat Key, Florida, where Marcella died in September 2013. The New York Times wrote that for many Americans she had been the “high priestess” of Italian cuisine for more than two decades. Julia Child called her "my mentor in all things Italian".

Her son Giuliano Hazan published a book with family recipes in 2012 as a tribute to his parents, to which his mother wrote the foreword.

Awards

Marcella Hazan has received several industry awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the James Beard Foundation in 2000 for her life's work , which also included her first cookbook, The Classic Italian Cook Book, in the Cookbook Hall of Fame .

Publications

• The Classic Italian Cookbook , 1973
• More Classic Italian Cooking , 1978
• Marcella 'Italian Kitchen , 1986
• Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking , 1992
• Marcella Cucina , 1997
• Marcella Says… Italian Cooking Wisdom from the Legendary Teacher's Master Classes, with 120 of Her Irresistible New Recipes , 2004
• Amarcord Unabridged. Marcella Remembers (CD, speaker: Concetta Tomei), 2008

Web links

• Literature by and about Marcella Hazan in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Marcella Hazan, 1924-2013. Changed the Way Americans Cook Italian Food , The New York Times September 30, 2013
2. ↑ Marcella Hazan, famed Italian cookbook author, dies at 89 , CBS News, September 29, 2013
3. ^ Marcella Hazan: Italian Cooking with a Master
4. ^ Victor Hazan: Italian Wine , Knopf 1982, ISBN 978-0-394-50266-3
5. ^ Marcella Hazan: New recipes from classic Italian cuisine , Heyne Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-453-14163-6
6. ↑ Wolfram Siebeck: Cook me! , The time 51/2002
7. ^ Marcella Hazan, influential Italian chef and cookbook author, dies at 89 at Fla. home , The Washington Post, September 29, 2013
8. ↑ Marcella Hazan . The New York Times, September 30, 2013
9. ↑ Marcella Hazan dies at 89; Italian cookbook author, teacher , obituary in: The Los Angeles Times
10. ^ Giuliano Hazan: Hazan Family Favorites. Beloved Italian Recipes from the Hazan Family , Stewart, Tabori and Chang 2012, ISBN 978-1-58479-904-7
11. ↑ Awards for Marcella Hazan on the James Beard Foundation website ( Memento of the original from December 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.