Marcella Cucina [Hardcover]

Marcella Hazan (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 8, 1997

Since the publication of her first book, " The Classic Italian Cookbook ," more than 20 years ago, Marcella Hazan has been hailed as the queen of Italian cooking in America. Marcella, whose name conjures up a splendid world of food for the devoted millions who love her books and attend her cooking classes, is back again with her finest book yet, " Marcella Cucina ." Filled with the passion and personality of its author, it is a book not only of fine food and its careful preparation but of personal reminiscences and penetrating commentary about the sensual pleasure of food and its place in our lives.

In vivid introductory essays and seductive headnotes, the narrative of an extraordinary culinary life unfolds. With each memory of a trip, a meal or a flavor, we are treated to the perspective of a great cook and teacher -- one who believes that the finest Italian cooking is found in the home. In " Marcella Cucina ," she focuses on regional cooking, turning her sharp eye to every area of Italy and offering a rich array of flavors and textures from cities and villages alike. Best of all, Marcella cooks at your side with easy-to-follow instructions and lavish full-color photographs that teach you her techniques -- from preparing homemade pasta to cleaning artichokes -- and allow you flawlessly to re-create her magic in your own kitchen.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Marcella Hazan's Marcella Cucina is a jewel: the recipes glow with the diverse flavors of Italian regional dishes, the instructions are precise, and the full-color photographs are a fine complement to Hazan's writing, which is both clear and alluring. Along with recipes, tested to perfection, Hazan shares warm, personal stories along with snapshots of Italian life and her usual caring advice. The diversity of dishes in Marcella Cucina runs from Zucchini and Thyme Pasta Sauce to Fish in Crazy Water, Assunta's Beans, Stewed Beef Cubes with Pickles, Capers and Red Wine, and Yogurt and Sambuca Cake.

From Library Journal

A new cookbook from the mother of all Italian cooks.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks; 1 edition (September 8, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060171030
• ISBN-13: 978-0060171032
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 1.2 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #222,458 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marcella Hazan, the acknowledged godmother of Italian cooking in America, is the author of The Classic Italian Cookbook, More Classic Italian Cooking, Marcella's Italian kitchen, and Essentials of Italian Cooking .She lives in Venice, Italy, and Longboat Key, Florida.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 61 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars one of my all-time favorites October 31, 1999

By An Islander

Format:Hardcover

I adore this cookbook. The photographs are beautiful, the story behind each recipe is fascinating, the explanations are clear and the results are superb. I am awed by Marcella Hazan's ability to take simple ingredients and create fantastic results with sheer technique and attention to details, such as slicing vs. chopping garlic, sauteing certain ingredients for a long time and adding others for a short time, using butter here and olive oil there and even just plain vegetable oil at other times. There are two summer pasta sauces with nearly identical ingredients, and, as Marcella points out, completely different results. I have made almost all of the sauces and none have been less than delicious. I have discovered the joy of pancetta thanks to this book. I have learned how to make risotto, very good and not all that difficult. Now I am venturing into the meats - the beef stew with capers, cornichons and pancetta was amazing. I have learned alot about good cooking from this book, and not just of Italian food. Marcella's cooking is alive and accessible and completely masterful at the same time.

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Interpretation of Italian Cuisine. Highly Recommended October 16, 2004

By B. Marold HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

Reading `Marcella Cucina', the fourth book by culinary educator Marcella Hazan doubles my dispair at not reading her sooner, especially after just having read and reviewed her latest book, `Marcella Says'. This is not to say that the dozens of other books I have read on Italian cuisine are not good, it is just that Ms. Hazan is so obviously among the cream of the crop, I would have been a better judge of those other books if I had digested Ms. Hazan before sitting down at the table with Batalli, Bastianich, Bugialli, and a legion of Italian regional specialist writers plus all the writers covering the Mediterranean as a whole.

This book has just a slightly less concentrated level of wisdom than the latest work, but you definitely deserve to own and read both if you are fond of Italian cooking. There is some overlap, but this volume is definitely superior to `Marcella Says' in several regards, especially in the very well illustrated instructions on making fresh pasta by hand.

As the title suggests, `Marcella Cucina' is about the cooking which Ms. Hazan does in the privacy of her own kitchen. That is not to say that all the recipes are Hazan inventions constructed from whole cloth. My sense is that about half of the recipes are from native Italian cooks and professional chefs and about half are inventions of Ms. Hazan. But, even the inventions are so true to the spirit of the Italian table that you can hardly tell the difference. Ms. Hazan professes to be a great believer in the principle of `terroir', or things that grow together, go together. She has little use for fusion cooking. On the other hand, while she is a native of Emilia-Romagna and a resident of Venice when this book was written, Ms.... Hazan takes her inspirations from all over the Italian peninsula, from Genoa and Venice in the north to Sicily in the south to Sardinia in the west.

I always thought it ironic that my great culinary hero Mario Batali would constantly mention how so much of the Italian cuisine was based on poverty, and how, therefore, so much of the Italian cuisine was vegetarian, with meat being used more as a condiment than as a major source of protein. Yet, every `Molto Mario' show seemed to feature a dish involving a large hunk of pork or chicken or beef or lamb or veal, even if it was a `poor man's cut' such as the pig's jowl or the lamb's shoulder. Ms. Hazan does not commit that anomaly. Her subjects, in order of greatest to least number of recipes are:

Pasta, including a 13 page essay with pictures on how to make fresh egg pasta using a manual pasta machine, a dowel rolling pin, and the Maccheroni alla Chitarra of Abruzzi. Like all great writers on Italian cuisine, Ms. Hazan does not look down on dry pasta. Fresh and dry pasta are two different products enhanced by two different types of sauces. She does look down on fresh supermarket pastas artificially kept soft with additives. She recommends fresh homemade pasta left to dry to soft supermarket fare doped with artificial ingredients. I love the Anglo-Italiaphile recipes from Jamie Oliver and the River Café, as they are typically both delicious and simple, but Ms. Hazan is the real deal. She gives us 27 different pasta sauces based on tomato, dairy, and olive oil from Liguria, Sardinia, Venice, Naples, and the hunter's cabin in the Apennines. After reading this chapter, I find it hard to even look at a commercially bottled pasta sauce without a guilty conscience. This very long chapter ends with eight very special recipes for stuffed pastas such as raviolis, tortellonis, and pies.

Vegetables, the European Mediterranean coast's gift to the world's cuisine. While the Slavs make the most of the simple green head cabbage, the Italians glorify all manner of cruciform veggies. Add to this their love of beans, artichokes, celery, radicchio, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, and wild mushrooms, and you wonder that they ever missed meat. As tomatoes are a minor player in this chapter, you can get a good sense of what the Italian table was like before the discovery of the New World. The introductory chapter on shopping at the Venetian Rialto market makes me instantly jealous of those who live in Venice.

Appetizers, with a special emphasis on frittatas and stuffed vegetables. Aside from the first recipe for the Friuli frico, there are few familiar recipes here. Many, to my knowledge, are seen in this book for the first time. A highlight of this chapter is a delightful recipe for `Sardinian Sheet Music Bread', a semolina flatbread related to pita.

Meat, including veal, beef, lamb, and pork, with a selection of involtini (rolled meat) breaded scaloppini's, stews, braises, roasts, and boils.

Fish, with a remarkable absence of recipes for salt cod. The featured proteins are scallops, swordfish, squid, bluefish, and salmon. Yum!

Soups, especially the simple ministre style of peasant soup, with most recipes featuring one type of bean and one type of green. All soups use the simple meat brodo rather than the French stock. None of these soups are thickened by puree and Ms. Hazan is explicitly opposed to thickening by roux.

Salads, including some new and some old. I forgive Ms. Hazan for including a recipe for two different versions of the Caprese salad because she included two new potato salad recipes.

Desserts. All the usual fruit, cream, nut, custard, and gelato suspects.

Poultry and Rabbit make me wish rabbit was more commonly available in my local megamart.

Risotto and Polenta. Enough said.

If one were to learn nothing else from this book, it would be to concentrate on letting ingredients speak for themselves with a bit of help from salt rather than loading them up with garlic and other condiments.

My judgment so far is that you cannot own too many books by Marcella Hazan. Read more ›

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A great mistake..... December 3, 1997

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

I received this book in error because I didn't send back the card to my book club (sorry Amazon) in time. Well, I couldn't be happier. Being an Italian (and an italian cook), I am always looking for new and exciting recipes. Generally, I buy a cookbook, find recipes and modify them for improvement. Mrs. Hazan's recipes are wonderful. No modification necessary. The recipes are simple with few ingredients that are key for incredible flavor. Her writing is both intelligent and eloquent, a rarity for cookbooks. I have many italian cookbooks and they pale in comparison.
Last night I prepared her pasta with cherry tomatoes, scallions and chili peppers. It was sooo good. Who would think that 24 scallions can be so subtle and delicious. Molto bene.
I am about to order her other books. Mangiare!!

.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Good Book January 17, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

This book is simply the best Italian cookbook ever made; it contains good, affordable recipes and directions that are the most complete that I have ever used.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars very good April 28, 2000

By Eric J. Wu

Format:Hardcover

Covers: Marcella's thoughts on ingredients and buying them, appetizers, soups, pasta (making and sauce) risotto and polenta, fish, poultry and rabbit, meat, vegetables, salads and desserts.

I liked the book, I find the recipes easy to follow and pretty tasty. I especially liked the beginning info on olive oil, and parmesan cheese. The book is not a northern italian or southern italian cookbook, it's sort of a mix of all over Italy, which is something to keep in mind. The pictures are very nice, and the quality of the book binding is very sound.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars great for gardener/cooks June 14, 2004

By river otter

Format:Hardcover

I love this book. One of the things that makes food in Italy so delicious is they use and combine whatever ingredients happen to be in season. Marcella follows this tradition. I love to pick recipes out of this book and find that everything it calls for is available in my garden, and I can pick fresh and cook.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Italian cookbook, possibly best cookbook ever. September 29, 2005

By Paul Morrison

Format:Hardcover

The only cookbook that I remember the name of the author. Once you make bluefish and potatoes or pork chops with capers and anchovies you will remember her name too. (Actually I think the pork chop was supposed to be veal but we substituted. Her recipes are easily manipulated.)

Her husband liked broccoli stems so she found a way to make them. Cut up like matchsticks I have never thrown those stems away since.