Cookbook author Marcella Hazan, 89, died at home in
Florida on Sunday. As the NYT observes, "Even people who have never heard
of Marcella Hazan cook and shop differently because of her, and the six
cookbooks she wrote, starting in 1973 with The
Classic Italian Cook Book: The Art of Italian Cooking and the Italian Art of
Eating."
via Publishers Lunch
and from Shelf Awareness:
Marcella Hazan, "a chain-smoking, determined former biology scholar who reluctantly moved to America and went on to teach a nation to cook Italian food," as the New York Times put it, died yesterday. She was 89.
"The impact Mrs. Hazan had on the way America cooks Italian food is impossible to overstate," the Times wrote. "Even people who have never heard of Marcella Hazan cook and shop differently because of her, and the six cookbooks she wrote, starting in 1973 with The Classic Italian Cook Book: The Art of Italian Cooking and the Italian Art of Eating." The books were translated by her husband, Victor Hazan, who survives her. Hazan also wrote a memoir, Amarcord: Marcella Remembers.
When Hazan arrived in New York from Italy in 1955, "Italian food was still exotic, served in restaurants with straw-covered Chianti bottles and red-checked tablecloths," the Times continued. "She was a newlywed who did not speak English, transplanted to a country whose knowledge of her native cuisine was not much more than spaghetti covered with what, to her, tasted like overly spiced ketchup.
"The culture shock nearly crushed her. She was appalled by canned peas, hamburgers and coffee she once described as tasting no better than the water she used to wash out her own coffeepot at home.
At her first Thanksgiving meal, she nearly gagged on the cranberry sauce."
She didn't know how to cook, but quickly learned and began teaching cooking classes. In 1970, she "caught the attention" of Times food editor Craig Claiborne, which served as an entrée into a cookbook career.
and from Shelf Awareness:
Marcella Hazan, "a chain-smoking, determined former biology scholar who reluctantly moved to America and went on to teach a nation to cook Italian food," as the New York Times put it, died yesterday. She was 89.
"The impact Mrs. Hazan had on the way America cooks Italian food is impossible to overstate," the Times wrote. "Even people who have never heard of Marcella Hazan cook and shop differently because of her, and the six cookbooks she wrote, starting in 1973 with The Classic Italian Cook Book: The Art of Italian Cooking and the Italian Art of Eating." The books were translated by her husband, Victor Hazan, who survives her. Hazan also wrote a memoir, Amarcord: Marcella Remembers.
When Hazan arrived in New York from Italy in 1955, "Italian food was still exotic, served in restaurants with straw-covered Chianti bottles and red-checked tablecloths," the Times continued. "She was a newlywed who did not speak English, transplanted to a country whose knowledge of her native cuisine was not much more than spaghetti covered with what, to her, tasted like overly spiced ketchup.
"The culture shock nearly crushed her. She was appalled by canned peas, hamburgers and coffee she once described as tasting no better than the water she used to wash out her own coffeepot at home.
At her first Thanksgiving meal, she nearly gagged on the cranberry sauce."
She didn't know how to cook, but quickly learned and began teaching cooking classes. In 1970, she "caught the attention" of Times food editor Craig Claiborne, which served as an entrée into a cookbook career.
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