MARCELLA   HAZAN Trained as a biologist, receiving her doctorate from the University of Ferrara, Marcella Hazan began to teach Italian cooking in her New York apartment in 1969. The 1973 publication of The Classic Italian Cookbook brought her immediate national acclaim and opened the way to Italian cooking popularity and its pervasive influence on American eating. She has since published More Classic Italian Cooking (1978), Marcella's Italian Kitchen (1986), Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (1992) and Marcella Cucina (1996). She currently gives master classes in Italian cooking at her home in Venice with her husband Victor. She is currently at work on an authoritative book about Italian regional and home cooking.

For those who wonder about her Non Italian Surname, Hazan is Jewish for Cantor, but I have not been able to determine whether that is her maiden name or that of her husband Victor.

The Chicago Sun Times
By Molly Gordy AP
July 14, 2004

Let us journey through time. The year is 1954, an era when women were encouraged to marry young and become stay-at-home moms. In contrast, Marcella Hazan is single at 30, a biochemist with two doctorates who lives and works on Italy's sun-kissed Adriatic Coast. She is slender of frame, dark of hair, sharp of tongue and warm of heart.

Flash forward to 1974, an era when women postpone childbearing in favor of law and medical school, or rise up the corporate ladder. Marcella Hazan has exchanged her white lab coat for an apron so she can spend more time being a mom. She is grayer at the temples but still blunt in speech and generous in spirit as she gives private cooking lessons out of her dingy New York apartment.

We arrive at 2004, an era when most octogenarians are retired and either widowed or divorced.

Not Marcella Hazan. Although white of hair and slow of step, she is as earthy, vibrant and feisty as ever.

In April she celebrated her 80th birthday in Baltimore by accepting a lifetime achievement award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals during its annual conference.

And in October, she will celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary with the publication of her sixth cookbook. It is appropriately titled Marcella Says.

Hazan and her husband, Victor, divide their time between a 16th century palazzo in Venice and a beach house in Florida near their son and his family.

Twice a year they travel to New York, where Marcella gives a three-day course on home cooking at the French Culinary Institute, her only teaching in the United States. Only amateurs are admitted, and only a dozen students are accepted in each class.

Such is the life of the woman who is the acknowledged queen of Italian cuisine in America, a culinary mentor as popular as the balsamic vinegar she regrets introducing to U.S. tables in 1971.

''This, I think, was my greatest mistake,'' said Hazan, who also popularized the use of pesto, with happier results.

''Real balsamic vinegar, the kind I showed Craig Claiborne to put in his New York Times column, is aged for years in oaken barrels, very expensive and so strong you use only a few drops as a garnish,'' she said.

''Now it is so popular that Americans buy a cheap version made with caramel at the supermarket and pour it over their salads by the gallon.

''She sighed. ''An entire generation is growing up without knowing the delights of a good red wine vinegar.''

The American penchant for ingredient abuse, including the excessive use of garlic, is as strong today as when Hazan first started teaching cooking in 1969.

That, and her observation that students today ask the same questions as 35 years ago, is what prompted her to write Marcella Says.

''This book is different from the others. It comes directly out of the teacher-student relationship,'' she said. ''Always the students ask me: 'How long do you cook it, Marcella? How do I fry without making it greasy, Marcella? How do I choose which shape of pasta, Marcella? How do I keep my tomatoes from turning watery in the sauce?

'''So many questions, all the time, I thought: 'Why not answer all in one place?' So the first part of the book has no recipes, only teaching and learning. It's called Master Class.''

The book's second half features 120 recipes with the inventive spin on Italian classics that readers may recall from Hazan's best-selling cookbook Marcella Cucina (HarperCollins, $35).

In this case, however, the ingredients are limited to what she could find at her local supermarket in Florida. She jokes that there are so many recipes featuring savoy cabbage that her editor asked if Publix was offering it on sale.

This section also includes what may be the book's most important feature: For the first time, Hazan intersperses with her cooking instructions boldfaced versions of the little grandmotherly tips for which her classes are famous.

A recipe for fricasseed chicken with almonds, for example, is interrupted by "Marcella Says: I don't buy peeled almonds because I never know how long they have been on the shelf and blanched almonds turn rancid more quickly than unpeeled ones.''

In a similar vein, she interrupts the ingredients list for frozen nougat and chocolate dessert with ''Marcella Says: You must not pulverize the chocolate, otherwise the dessert will become dark. To avoid this problem, I use semisweet miniature chocolate chips that I use whole.''

The publication of the book is awaited in food circles with the zeal that art dealers reserve for Rembrandts.

Hazan, you see, announced with great fanfare in 1998 that she had retired from writing cookbooks so she could spend more time with family and friends.

''It takes me five years to make one cookbook, because I test every recipe over and over again,'' she explained. ''Also, my English is not good, so I write in Italian, and my husband must translate everything.''

She changed her mind because of her difficulty in finding Italian ingredients for her previously published recipes at the supermarket near her winter home in Florida.

''There is nothing in this book you can't make with local ingredients in their proper season,'' Hazan promised. ''But that's where true recipes come from, throughout time,'' said the woman who counts Julia Child among her former students. ''You cook the meal from what you have.

''The following recipes, from the manuscript ''Marcella Says,'' exemplify Hazan's approach to Italian cuisine. Both the main dish and the dessert feature an ingredient native to Italy -- almonds -- that is accessible and affordable (as opposed to their more expensive cousin, pignoli, or pine nuts.)Both require a certain amount of time to prepare, but no special expertise. And both can be prepared in advance, and kept for several days.

Fricasseed chicken with almonds
Frozen nougat and chocolate dessert
(See Article for Recipes)

The queen of Italian cuisine
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