The 30th Anniversary Edition drops this week
One of our favorite chefs, Marcella Hazan, wrote one of our favorite cookbooks, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, of which the 30th Anniversary Edition is released this week. On Wednesday, we’re excited to share with you Mark’s interview with her husband, Victor Hazan — another one of our favorites — on Food with Mark Bittman.
Below you’ll find a few recipes Hazan mentions on the podcast, plus more to come later this week.
In the meantime, we hope you’ll join us to reread Mark’s “Remembering Marcella,” in the New York Times. Among our favorite passages:
What Alice Waters did for restaurants, Hazan did for home cooks, demonstrating that the simple treatment of decent ingredients leads to wonderful dishes.
In a way, Hazan was the anti-Julia Child, and Child had a sense of that. In a conversation shortly before her own death, Child said to me: “I don’t get the whole thing with Italian cooking. They put some herbs on things, they put them in the oven and they take them out again.” Exactly.
There’s also this beautiful video.
On to the recipes.
Mixed Baked Vegetable Platter
Fried Zucchini in Vinegar and Garlic
Tomato Sauce With Onions and Butter
Making Fresh Tomatoes Ready for Sauce
Unless the recipe indicates otherwise, fresh, ripe tomatoes must be prepared to use for sauce following one of the two methods given below. The blanching method can lead to a meatier more rustic consistency. The food mill method produces a silkier, smoother, sauce.
The blanching method: Plunge the tomatoes in boiling water for a minute or less. Drain them, and, as soon as they are cool enough to handle, skin them, and cut them up in coarse pieces.
The food mill method: Wash the tomatoes in cold water, cut them lengthwise in half, and put them in a covered saucepan. Turn on the heat to medium and cook for 10 minutes. Set a food mil fitted with the disk with the largest holes over a bowl. Transfer the tomatoes with any of their juices to the mill and puree.
Grilled Shrimp Skewers
— All recipes from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking: 30th Anniversary Edition, by Marcella Hazan.
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