Marcella Hazan's essential Italian memories

The celebrated Italian cookbook author Marcella Hazan may mince onions, but she certainly does not mince words.

"American supermarkets," she nearly spat during a recent visit to Philadelphia, "are like a big cemetery." As for the chicken produced by this country, well, she's "never seen anything so dead." The pasta is either mushy or underdone. Our basil "tastes like mint." And please, do not get her started on this silly fad called "organic."

After years of cooking from her recipes, I had come to think of this small, snowy-haired octogenarian as simply "Marcella." I imagined her as an exacting but warmhearted peasant, bent over a pot (earthenware, preferably) of her glorious Bolognese, patiently coaxing it through its four-hour journey from raw ground beef to an ambrosial cream for pasta (tagliatelle, preferably).

But after spending an evening watching her talk up her new memoir, Amarcord: Marcella Remembers, to fans at the America-Italy Society and Free Library, I made a mental note never to address her by anything other than Mrs. Hazan. I doubt I'll ever think in the same way about the witty but prickly woman with the double doctorate in natural sciences. Her well-honed tongue rapidly sliced and diced through questions both silly and earnest, in a voice scoured rough by a lifelong fondness for tobacco and whiskey.

The same litany of saucy pronouncements and long-held grievances garnish Hazan's memoir. Hazan is a person who, when she suffers a slight, clearly remembers it forever. As does her Italian-born, American-raised husband of 53 years, Victor Hazan, the collaborator who might just as well have had his name alongside hers on Amarcord's jacket.

This helps explain the title, which means "I remember" in Marcella's native Emilia-Romagna dialect. Together they skewer former editors, food-industry associates, and thick-fingered students, as they selectively recall Marcella's rise to fame.

There are several beat-up cookbooks on my kitchen shelf, but nothing bears the scars of use as much as the tomato- and olive-oil-soaked pages of Hazan's The Classic Italian Cookbook, the first of her six. It appeared in 1973, in that primitive time when Americans considered veal parmigiana and garlic bread the glory of the Italian table, and instantly turned her into the Julia Child of Italian cuisine.

Hazan exposed those dishes for the pretenders they were (and remain in some places). She taught America to respect real Italian food, with its emphasis on intense, earthy, minimally adorned flavors. She can conjure up stunning dishes using nothing more than a marinade of olive oil, lemon and sea salt. While I've since gotten friendly with the gals at The River Cafe Cook Book, and their more modern take on Italian cuisine, it's Marcella I always come back to for guidance.

I am not alone in my devotion, judging by the adoring crowds at last week's events. Alan Razak, a Philadelphia developer who discovered Italian cooking as a high school exchange student, cites Hazan's commitment to authenticity as her greatest achievement. "She's better than anyone at translating Italian recipes for American cooks," he explained.

I knew Hazan was demanding from the stern tone of her cooking instructions. And you can't argue with her low opinion of American supermarkets or chicken. But until I read her memoir, I hadn't recognized the zealot under the covers, or understood that her promotion of a pure, unchanging idea of Italian cuisine amounted to an almost religious crusade.

Or, that like many crusaders, she discovered her cause late.

Some of her memoir's most evocative passages are set during her pre-cooking period, which coincided with World War II. Forced to take refuge in the countryside, her citified family fell back on their deeply embedded food-making skills to survive. They raised pigs, bartered home-produced salt for honey, and learned to substitute chili for the unavailable peppercorns when they cured meat.

Cotechino, a creamy sausage made from the rind of a pig's snout, became Hazan's favorite. But all food was precious. If the air raid siren blew during dinner, the family raced to the shelter with plates in outstretched hands, lest the meager meal should be spoiled by falling plaster. But the actual cooking was mainly something Hazan's mother and nonna did, while she pursued her doctorates.

She was 45 and living a reluctant expatriate life in Manhattan when her kitchen skills were discovered in 1970 by the New York Times' influential food editor, Craig Claiborne. His name meant nothing to her, but she invited him to lunch anyway when he called. After his feature story about her fledgling cooking school appeared, she became a sensation and belatedly discovered her life's calling.

Hazan's telling of the encounter with Claiborne pretty much captures her ambivalence about American life. She had moved to New York after Victor's Italian-Jewish parents demanded he take over the family's furrier business. Not understanding a word of English, Marcella abandoned her science career and embraced the role of a traditional Italian housewife, to the point of preparing a hot lunch daily for her husband.

Before coming to America, she recalled, "I had cooked not one meal in my life." Victor, who had been a dapper aspiring writer, was the one obsessed with food.

Determined to please, she researched traditional Italian cooking as assiduously as she had zoology at school. This was the 1950s, when olive oil and basil were exotic substances that had to be hunted down. When Victor expressed an interest in Chinese cuisine, she signed up for cooking classes.

It was during a class that her fellow students peppered Hazan with questions about what she cooked at home. Their question struck her as bizarre. "Why, normal food, of course," she replied.

It's the ultimate provincial answer and explains everything about Hazan and her food prejudices. For her, the simple, artisanal dishes of her Emilia-Romagna childhood constitute normal food. Everything else, French cuisine included, she considered aberrant.

The good part about this attitude is that it compelled Hazan to become a preservationist for Italy's great food traditions at a time when natural food production and home cooking were under assault by modern life, even in Italy.

She will never concede an inch to anything that sounds newfangled. Say the words slow food or organic and Hazan's face will seize up as if she had just bitten into a bitter artichoke.

Although it would seem that these trends are parallel with her own, Victor explains: "To Marcella and me, there is only one thing to judge food by. It's not whether it's organic, or because you bought from someone who lives at the far end of some mountain, it's how the dish tastes."

Not surprisingly, she is dismissive of fusion, another important trend of the last two decades. "Why you want to mix one food with another nation?" she asked when I raised the subject during an interview. "You lose that tradition and culture of that part of the world. You don't know what you're eating. It is not a good thing."

I couldn't help noticing that Hazan's devotion to developing her skills as a housewife and cook occurred at the height of America's feminist movement, when women were battling their way out of the daily kitchen grind. Perhaps re-creating the foods and traditions of her childhood provided a refuge in a strange American land that she did not like.

Today, we're more likely to eat at our desk than to sit down with our families for the kind of home-cooked lunch the Hazans enjoyed. It's hard to imagine such elaborate meals taking place either here or in Italy. And that makes Marcella's, er, Mrs. Hazan's books as much a chronicle of loss as a celebration of a great cuisine.

Makes 6 servings

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3 tablespoons vegetable oil

3 tablespoons butter, plus 1 tablespoon for tossing the pasta

1/2 cup chopped onion

2/3 cup chopped celery

2/3 cup chopped carrot

3/4 pound ground beef chuck  (not too lean)

Table salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1 cup whole milk

Whole nutmeg

1 cup dry white wine

1 1/2 cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice

1 1/4-1 1/2 pounds pasta

Freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese at the table

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1. Put the oil, butter and chopped onion in the pot, and turn the heat on to medium. Cook and stir the onion until it has become translucent, then add the chopped celery and carrot. Cook for about two minutes, stirring the vegetables to coat them well.

2. Add the ground beef, a large pinch of salt, and a few grindings of pepper. Crumble the meat with a fork, stir well, and cook until the beef has lost its raw, red color.

3. Add the milk and let it simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has bubbled away completely. Add a tiny grating, about 1/8 teaspoon, of nutmeg, and stir.

4. Add the wine, let it simmer until it has evaporated, then add the tomatoes and stir thoroughly to coat all ingredients well. When the tomatoes begin to bubble, turn the heat down so that the sauce cooks at the laziest of simmers, with just an intermittent bubble breaking through to the surface. Cook, uncovered, for three hours or more, stirring from time to time. While the sauce is cooking, you are likely to find that it begins to dry out and the fat separates from the meat. To keep it from sticking, continue the cooking, adding 1/2 cup of water whenever necessary. At the end, however, no water at all must be left and the fat must separate from the sauce. Taste and correct for salt.

5. Toss with cooked drained pasta, adding the tablespoon of butter, and serve with freshly grated parmesan on the side.

Notes: Use a pot that retains heat. Earthenware is preferred, but enameled cast-iron pans or a pot whose heavy bottom is composed of layers of steel alloys are fully satisfactory. If you cannot watch the sauce for 3 to 4 hours at a time, turn off the heat whenever you need to leave and resume cooking later on; as long as you complete the sauce within the same day. Once done, you can refrigerate the sauce in a tightly sealed container for three days or freeze it.

Per serving: 748 calories, 25 grams protein, 79 grams carbohydrates, 7 grams sugar, 33 grams fat, 71 milligrams cholesterol, 292 milligrams sodium, 4 grams dietary fiber.

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Makes 4 to 6 servings

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2 pounds medium shrimp, unshelled weight

3 1/2 tablespoons each extra virgin olive oil and vegetable oil

2/3 cup fine, dry, unflavored bread crumbs

1/2 teaspoon garlic chopped very fine

2 teaspoons parsley chopped very fine

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Skewers

Optional: charcoal grill

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1. Shell the shrimp and remove their dark veins. Wash in cold water and pat thoroughly dry with cloth kitchen towel.

2. Put the shrimp in a roomy bowl. Add as much of the olive and vegetable oil, in equal parts, and of the bread crumbs as you need to coat the shrimp evenly but lightly all over. You may not require all of the oil indicated in the ingredients list, but if you have a large number of very small shrimp, you may need even more. When you increase the quantity, use olive and vegetable oil in equal parts.

3. Add the chopped garlic, parsley, salt and pepper, and toss thoroughly to coat the shrimp well. Allow them to steep in their coating a minimum of 20 to 30 minutes, or up to two hours, at room temperature.

4. Preheat the broiler at least 15 minutes before you are ready to cook, or light the charcoal in time for it to form white ash before cooking.

5. Skewer the shrimp tightly, curling one end of each shrimp inward so that the skewer goes through at three points, preventing the shrimp from slipping as you turn the skewer on the grill.

6. Cook the shrimp briefly, close to the heat source. Depending on their size and the intensity of the fire, cook about two minutes on one side and 11/2 on the other, just until they form a thin, golden crust. Serve piping hot.

Per serving (based on 6): 349 calories, 32 grams protein, 10 grams carbohydrates, 1 gram sugar, 19 grams fat, 230 milligrams cholesterol, 312 milligrams sodium, trace dietary fiber.

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Makes 6 servings

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1 pound fresh spinach or Swiss chard

1/2 pound cime di rapa, also called rapini or broccoletti di rapa

1-pound head savoy cabbage

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon chopped garlic

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1. Snap off the thicker, older stems from the spinach leaves, or detach the broadest, more mature stalks from the Swiss chard, and soak the greens in a basin filled with cold water. Scoop up the spinach or chard, empty out the water together with any soil, refill the basin with fresh cold water, and put the greens back in to soak. Repeat the operation several times until you find no more soil settling to the bottom of the basin.

2. In a separate basin, soak the cime di rapa in exactly the same manner.

3. Pull off and discard the darkest outer leaves of the savoy cabbage. Cut off the butt end of the stem, and cut the head into four parts.

4. Bring 3 to 4 quarts water to a boil, add one tablespoon of salt, and put in the cime di rapa. Put a lid on the pot, setting it ajar, and cook until tender, about 8 to 12 minutes, depending on the green's freshness and youth. Drain and set aside. Refill the pot with fresh water, and if using Swiss chard, cook it in the same manner. After draining the chard, refill the pot and cook the cabbage using the same procedure, except that you must omit the salt. Cook the cabbage until the thickest part of the head is easily pierced by a fork, about 15 to 20 minutes

5. If using spinach, cook it in a covered pan with 1/2 tablespoon salt and just the moisture that clings to its leaves from the soak. Cook until tender, about 10 minutes or more, depending on the spinach. Drain and set aside.

6. Gently but firmly squeeze all the moisture you can out of all the greens. Chop them together to a rather coarse consistency (you can cook and prepare the greens up to this point several hours in advance of the time you are going to serve them. Do not keep overnight and do not refrigerate).

7. Put the oil and garlic in a large saute pan, and turn on the heat to medium. Cook and stir the garlic until it becomes colored a very pale gold, then put in all the chopped greens. Add salt and pepper and turn them over completely 3 to 4 times to coat them well. Cook for 10 to 15 minutes, turning the greens frequently. Taste and correct for salt. Serve promptly.

Per serving: 122 calories, 5 grams protein, 8 grams carbohydrates, 3 grams sugar, 10 grams fat, no cholesterol, 124 milligrams sodium, 10 grams dietary fiber.

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Makes 4 servings

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6 sweet juice oranges

Zest of one lemon

5 tablespoons granulated sugar

Juice of 1/2 a lemon

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1. Using a sharp paring knife, peel four of the oranges, stripping away all the white spongy pith and as much as possible of the thin skin beneath it.

2. Cut the peeled oranges into slices less than 1/2-inch thick. Pick out all the seeds. Put the slices into a deep platter or a shallow serving bowl, and sprinkle with the grated lemon peel. Add the sugar. Squeeze the remaining two oranges and add their juice to the platter or bowl. Add the lemon juice, then toss rather gently several times, being careful not to break up the orange slices as you turn them over.

3. Cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least four hours, or overnight. Serve chilled, turning the orange slices over two or three times after taking them out of the refrigerator.

Note: Marcella says: "I find the oranges quite perfect as they are, but if you want to vary them or give them a more celebratory and emphatic accent, you could toss them, shortly before serving, with two tablespoons of one of the following liqueurs: Cointreau, white Curacao, or best of all Maraschino" (a fine Italian liqueur made from the Dalmatian marasca cherry).

Per serving: 95 calories, 2 grams protein, 24 grams carbohydrates, 19 grams sugar, trace fat, no cholesterol, trace sodium, 5 grams dietary fiber.

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