Listen up, Yanks. You're still not getting it. Some 24 years after noted cooking teacher and cookbook author Marcella Hazan sat down to explain the essentials of Italian cooking, you are still over-saucing the pasta and over-using ingredients meant be flavor notes. And, by the way, you are now under-cooking the spaghetti.
Americans have learned a lot about Italian cuisine in the past two dozen years, Hazan said recently after a luncheon at the Willard Hotel in Washington, where she was battling both a cold and a grueling 16-city tour promoting her new book.
However, she added, "In some ways it's known better, in some ways it's known badly."
Before Hazan began championing it, "Italian" cuisine was a big plate of spaghetti buried under a mound of tomato sauce. Now, thanks to the woman most people call "the Julia Child of Italian cooking," "Italian" means pesto, risotto, calamari, polenta, and penne rigate barely seasoned with sauce.
But, she said, "[Americans] become much too enthusiastic about one ingredient. They misuse balsamic vinegar -- they put it in salad dressing! And sun-dried tomatoes -- they put them in everything. And pasta in salad! I put a pasta salad in my second book as a joke. I tried to take it out, but it was too late."
Undaunted, Hazan is trying one more time with the new book, "Marcella Cucina" (HarperCollins, 1997, $35). The title means "Marcella cooks" in Italian, and it is unlike her previous four books in being far less formal.
"It's home cooking, and that's why it should appeal to home cooks," Hazan said. "It's not very elaborate or complicated.
"This is my most personal book ever," Hazan said, opening the cover where the linings are photographs of her notebooks. "This is my manuscript -- written in Italian -- these are the notes I take in my kitchen -- with Victor's corrections." Victor is her husband, longtime collaborator and translator. She pages through the book. "This is the doorbell to our apartment in Venice. This is our courtyard. These are my spoons.
"Every photo was taken either in the market where we shop or at home," she said.
Venice and the Rialto market will be familiar to Hazan fans and to the many students who trooped through that front door to the cooking classes she and Victor taught there for many years. She also taught in Bologna and in the United States. Her students over the years have included performers Joel Grey and Danny Kaye, and even cooking masters such as James Beard and Julia Child came to her to learn authentic Italian cooking.
"This book is meant to be about flavor," she said. "The others were too, but this one more than the others." Done properly, she said, Italian food is very satisfying, and not time-consuming to prepare. "You can eat it every day of your life and not get tired of it."
Which doesn't mean Hazan is about to abandon technique. She worries that in a dish from the book (spinach tonnarelli with yellow peppers and tomato dice) served at the lunch, the pasta has not been cooked enough. "It's supposed to be creamy," she said.
Perhaps people will get it this time, because it will be the last chance. This is her last book, Hazan said. "I'll be 74 in April. I don't have five years left to devote to a book. It's enough."
And that's nearly it for the cooking school as well. In November 1998, the Hazans will close the cooking school and move from Venice, Italy, to Longboat Key, on Florida's Gulf Coast.
She will miss Venice, she said, but "we had Venice. We had 16 years." There are easier things than living in a 500-year-old building and toting groceries through a city founded just after the fall of the Roman Empire, where cars are not allowed, she said. "In Venice everything you buy you have to carry home -- over bridges, up and down steps." She and Victor are getting too old for that, she said. "One time you have an ache in the knee, the next time it's the back."
Nor does she care for the state of health care there. "People say, where do you go when you don't feel well?" Answer: "To the airport."
Their apartment in Florida, where they have spent the past several winters, is smaller, Hazan said, and it has the extra appeal of being just four miles from their only child, Giuliano, who lives in Sarasota with his wife.
Giuliano Hazan is also a teacher and cookbook writer; his book on pasta was translated into 16 languages, his proud mother said. "He helped me a lot when I was cooking. He has this love for food," shared with his wife, who is American.
"It's very rewarding," she said, of her son's career. "I never pushed him to go into this field. For me, it's like my work didn't finish, and I'm very happy about that."
Here are two recipes from "Marcella Cucina." For the first recipe, Hazan suggests a 1-pound package of dry pasta with hollows, such as small shells, or a short, tubular shape, such as penne or macaroni, cooked according to package directions.
Pasta sauce with peas, ham and cream
Makes 6 small or 4 large servings
2 pounds fresh young peas in their pods, or 1 cup thawed frozen peas
4 tablespoons ( 1/2 stick) butter
1/4 cup cold water
salt
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 pounds boiled, unsmoked ham, cut into strips less than 1/4 -inch wide
1/2 cup heavy cream
freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
If using fresh peas, shell them, soak them in a basin of cold water for a few minutes, then drain. (If using frozen peas, see below.)
Put two tablespoons of butter in a medium saucepan, add the peas and 1/4 cup of water, and turn the heat to medium high. When the water boils, adjust heat to cook at a steady but gentle simmer. After 10 minutes, add salt. Cook until the peas are tender, 15 minutes or longer, depending on their freshness and youth.
While the peas are cooking, put the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter and the chopped onion into a 10-inch skillet and turn on the heat to medium high. If you are using frozen peas, start the sauce at this point, putting all 4 tablespoons of butter into the skillet with the onion. Cook the onion, stirring frequently, until it becomes light gold, then add the strips of ham. Cook, stirring, for about a minute. If the peas are not done, remove the skillet with the onion and ham from the heat.
If using frozen peas, add them to the pan at this point. If using fresh peas, when they are cooked, transfer them to the skillet and cook for 5 minutes at medium heat, turning them over from time to time to coat them well.
Swirl in the cream, taste and correct for salt, add liberal grindings of black pepper, turn the heat up to high, and cook down the cream, stirring frequently until it is reduced to a dense consistency.
Cook and drain the pasta and toss immediately and thoroughly fTC with the sauce, mixing into it the grated Parmesan. If using another tablespoon of butter does not alarm you, swirl it into the pasta. It will greatly enhance the flavor.
For the next recipe, Hazan suggests using a tangelo, temple orange or other fragrant variety of citrus.
Orange cake, Ancona-style
Serves 8 to 10
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour, plus flour for dusting the pan
3 eggs
grated peel, avoiding the white pith, of three oranges
4 tablespoons ( 1/2 stick) butter, softened to room temperature, plus butter for greasing the pan
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons ouzo liqueur
1 tablespoon whole milk
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups freshly squeezed orange juice with 3 tablespoons sugar dissolved in it
Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Put flour, eggs, grated orange peel, 4 tablespoons softened butter, sugar and liqueur in a food processor and run until the ingredients are evenly amalgamated.
Add the milk and baking powder, and process again to incorporate into the mixture.
Thickly smear a tube cake pan with butter and dust with flour. Put the cake mixture in the pan and place the pan in the upper level of the preheated oven. Bake for 45 minutes or slightly longer, until the top of the cake becomes a rich gold.
When the cake is done, place the bottom of the pan over a tumbler or tall mug, using pot holders, and push down to raise the loose bottom. Take the cake out of the hoop, work the cake loose from the bottom with a knife, and lift it away from the tube. Place it on a plate with a slightly raised rim.
While the cake is still warm, poke many holes in it using a chopstick or any similar narrow cylindrical tool. Into each of the holes, slowly pour some of the orange juice. At first, the hole fills to the brim with juice, but the juice is subsequently -- in about 1 hour -- absorbed by the cake. Serve at room temperature.
Pub Date: 10/22/97