ccSCOOP WELCOMES MARCELLA HAZAN
William Parker
ccSCOOP News
There are countless superlatives that have been written by both food writers and home cooks alike about Marcella Hazan, most of them true, all of them deserved. But here are some facts:
1. She introduced real Italian cooking to Americans.
2. She gave us risotto alla Milanese.
3. She taught us to use a tablespoon of good-quality butter in pesto.
4. Anytime you work with a recipe of hers you can be sure the results will be exactly what she promised it would be, providing you're listening to what she's saying.
5. Her understanding of food and its components is as sophisticated as it is simple and direct.
6. Follow her recipes, do exactly as she says, and you'll find yourself learning technique.
7. She writes beautifully and movingly about food, which translates into writing beautifully and movingly about life itself.
8. She became a teacher after taking classes in Chinese cooking in the 1960s from the legendary Madame Chu. She has no other formal training.
9. She emphasises local ingredients (which we have here in abundance).
10. She taught Americans about pesto.
11. She is very Italian: where food is concerned, her sense of right and wrong is implacable.
12. She understands most of us work with less-than-perfect stoves, so she knows when and how to tell us low, medium, high.
13. She moves you in the direction where you understand timing. See technique above.
14. She gives you Italy, and she gives you the power to give yourself Italy.
15. She taught us that if you combine regular white mushrooms with shiitake mushrooms you'll get the taste and aroma of porcini mushrooms. See feelings and senses above.
16. She made Americans aware of real balsamic vinegar and then told us the truth by saying the stuff they call balsamic vinegar at the supermarket isn't balsamic vinegar at all. Use the real thing or good wine vinegar.
17. She compels you to bring YOUR senses to life and to trust them when you cook.
18. She has survived and triumphed over every food fad from tall desserts to nasturtiums to foam.
19. We truly need look no further than the heart of the cook, to quote Marcella Says..., her last (she says) cookbook, published in 2004.
20. She understands subtext. See mushrooms above.
Subtext: Horowitz said it's not in the notes, it's what lies behind the notes. Kim Stanley (my other great teacher) understood and deeply felt the needs of a character apart from what Tennesee Williams had written. Marcella Hazan can tell if a dish needs salt by aroma.
There is no one like her, and it's a terrific honor to have Mrs. Hazan as our Premier contributor to ccSCOOP's Food & Wine section. I called her at home in Longboat Key, Florida, where she lives in retirement with her husband, Victor, her collaborator and translator. I explained to her the recent creation of ccSCOOP, specifically our Food & Wine section, and the essence of our creative intent: to showcase inspired use of all our great local ingredients by Columbia County home chefs and professionals alike.
So what becomes a legend most? Living on the west coast of Florida, for one thing. She enjoys the sunsets but has spoken of her longing for the markets of Venice, where at the Rialto she could have her pick of those aforementioned Porcini mushrooms. I told her of how wonderful it is to buy locally here in Columbia County where agriculture and its byproducts is poised to make a stunning comeback and how I look forward to making her classic Eggplant Parmigiano with our spellbinding summer tomatoes and eggplants (San Marzano tomato plants should be on sale somewhere this season, and if they are I'd like to know where). She wrote her last book from the standpoint of having no options besides a Publix supermarket, but as she wrote so eloquently, "If I have learned anything from having had to buy most of my food in a supermarket, it is that, when it comes to putting food on the table, the ingredients, however ordinary or wonderful they may be, are no worse or better than the intentions of the cook. It is those that really matter." So there we are.
And let's face it, no matter where we are, it all comes down to finding great Chinese food, something she and I both think about a lot because there isn't such a thing in either of our respective locales and because we love it. She bemoans her lack of Chinese restaurants on the Gold Coast ("three of them, each worse than the other"), and I told her, door to door, it's 2 hours 25 minutes from Columbia County down the Taconic Parkway to Noodletown on the Bowery and promised her their legendary soft shell crabs when they're back in season and she's back in New York (her father was "il cuoco dei pesci, the fish cook in her family while growing up in Cesenatico, a fishing village on the Adriatic).
Her last book, Marcella Says... was published in 2004, swearing it would be her last but never say mai to her (her memoirs will be published in the fall and any memoir written by the once and future Regina della cucina assoluta has to have a few recipes).
Grazie! Brava! Marcella Hazan. Here's the best spaghettini alla vongole you'll ever have.
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