Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [0]
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
Copyright © 1992 by Marcella Hazan
Illustrations copyright © 1992 by Karin Kretschmann
Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
This is a fully revised and updated edition of Marcella Hazan’s The Classic Italian Cook Book, originally published in 1973 by Harper’s Magazine Press, and More Classic Italian Cooking, which were published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1976 and 1978 respectively.
Copyright © 1973 by Marcella Hazan
Copyright © 1978 by Marcella Polini Hazan and Victor Hazan
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hazan, Marcella
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking / by Marcella Hazan. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
eISBN: 978-0-307-95830-3
1. Cookery, Italian. I. Title.
TX723.H342 1992
641.5945—dc20 92-52954
v3.1
ALSO BY MARCELLA HAZAN
The Classic Italian Cook Book
More Classic Italian Cooking
Marcella’s Italian Kitchen
Marcella Cucina
For my students
MUCH OF THIS BOOK has been shaped by them. To their questions, I have sought to provide answers. Where they found obscurity, I have tried to bring clarity; what to them seemed difficult, I have tried to make simple. Their experiences and insights have become mine. To those who in the near quarter century that has gone by have followed me into my kitchen, first in my New York apartment, then in Bologna, finally in Venice, this work is dedicated, with affection and gratitude.
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Fundamentals
Appetizers
Soups
Pasta
Risotto
Gnocchi
Crespelle
Polenta
Frittate
Fish and Shellfish
Chicken, Squab, Duck, and Rabbit
Veal
Beef
Lamb
Pork
Variety Meats
Vegetables
Salads
Desserts
Focaccia, Pizza, Bread, and Other Special Doughs
At Table
Index
Preface
THOSE who are acquainted with The Classic Italian Cook Book and More Classic Italian Cooking may well wonder what those recipes are doing here, between a single pair of covers. I, for one, never imagined that some day my first two books would be reincarnated as one. But then, who could have expected them to journey as far as they have, becoming for so many people, in so many countries of the English-speaking world, a familiar reference to Italian cooking?
As volumes one and two, to use our working names for them, continued to go into new printings, my American editor, Judith Jones, and I thought it opportune to look them over and freshen them up, removing some recommendations that were no longer applicable, and where necessary, bringing recipes abreast of the many new ingredients available, and of the changes that had taken place in people’s eating habits. It didn’t appear to be much of an undertaking, just a little bit of housecleaning, but here we are three years later, with nearly every recipe completely rewritten, and many so substantially revised that they could well be considered new.
In the twenty years since The Classic Italian Cook Book was written, and in the fourteen since the publication of More Classic Italian Cooking, I have continued to cook from both books for my classes, for my husband, and for our friends. Perhaps without my always being fully conscious of it, the dishes continued to evolve, moving always toward a simpler, clearer expression of their primary flavors, and toward a steadily diminishing dependence on cooking fat. When I began systematically to go over each recipe for this book, I found myself rewriting each one to focus more sharply on what made the dish work, sometimes just to make one or two steps in the procedure more comprehensible, but often discovering that the recipe had to be wholly reshaped to make room for the perceptions and experiences gained in the intervening years of cooking and teaching.
In reviewing my work, I looked out for those recipes whose place in a book