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Average customer rating:

A book put to good use.
Authentic Italian Cookbook, highly recommend
Best Italian cookbook, possibly best cookbook ever.
Marcella Cucina, by Marcella Hazan
Great Interpretation of Italian Cuisine. Highly Recommended

Marcella Cucina
Marcella Hazan
Manufacturer: Morrow Cookbooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0060171030

Amazon.com

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.

Book Description

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.

Customer Reviews:

A book put to good use........2007-01-19

This book was given as a gift to an Italian friend who had the following comments: The recipes seem to be more authentic Italian style with excellent flavors. The ingredients have been easy to find and the shopping for them fun. The narration provided is very helpful and the recipes easy to follow. The high quality pictures add to the enjoyment of trying new dishes.

Authentic Italian Cookbook, highly recommend.......2006-04-25

This book brings back memories of my wonderful experiences in Italy. The food that one can prepare from this book rivals the food you get in Italy. As Americans we seem to think that Italian American food is Italian food, which of course it is not. But since it is what we grew up eating, it is what we expect. This cookbook is the authentic article. If you love authentic Italian food, or you want to, this is a great book to add to your library.

This book even gives you are recipe for homemade hand rolled pasta. Don't be discouraged if your pasta does not get thin enough when you roll it. I tried to make pasta once without the pasta rollers, big mistake on my part. I think you need to be born in Italy to get this right. But the recipe in the book does work fine with a pasta roller (either manual or KitchenAid attachment).

I can't recommend any specific recipes over another because they have all been good. However, if you are looking for an excuse to bake something the Zaletti (Venetian Raisin and Polenta Cookies) are a nice little afternoon snack with a cup of coffee or tea.

The photographs of Venice and the food are amazing in this book. The pictures of the Rialto vegetable market made me long to be back in Venice. The book itself is well constructed of heavy paper and a stiff cover. My one minor complaint would be that I would like to see more pictures of Italy and the recipes included in the book.

If you are interested in authentic Italian cooking this book is a winner. I highly recommend this book to any serious student of Italian food.

Best Italian cookbook, possibly best cookbook ever........2005-09-30

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 never throw them stems away since.

Marcella Cucina, by Marcella Hazan.......2005-08-02

This was a present for friends, I already owned a copy and think it is one of the best Italian Cookbooks ever and always so easy to use, also brings back wonderful memories of Venice and it's markets.

Great Interpretation of Italian Cuisine. Highly Recommended.......2004-10-16

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.

Average customer rating:

Marcella Cucina
Marcella Hazan
Manufacturer: Macmillan General Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

Average customer rating:

Marcella Cucina
Marcella, and Harris, Alison (Photographer) Hazan
Manufacturer: Morrow Cookbooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OEHOFG

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