Marcella Says...: Italian Cooking Wisdom from the Legendary Teacher's Master Classes, with 120 of Her Irresistible New Recipes

by Marcella Hazan

Marcella Hazan is acclaimed for her trailblazing cookbooks, but first and foremost she is a teacher. From cooking classes held in her small New York City apartment kitchen in the 1960s to the avidly sought after Master Classes she led in her beautiful Venice home, Marcella has been the authoritative guide to Italian cooking. This much-anticipated follow-up to Marcella Cucina offers 100 new tantalizing recipes that bring Marcella's warm, conversational, and illuminating teachings into home kitchens everywhere. The legendary author and cooking teacher shares invaluable lessons in Italian cooking, including mastering traditional techniques, selecting and using ingredients, and planning and preparing complete Italian menus. Drawing on her unique ability to present each recipe as a narrative with subplots, characters, and rich history, Marcella demonstrates just how many delicious new stories she still has to tell.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Italian Literature, Nonfiction

390 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2004

About the author

Born in 1924 in Italy, she later moved in New York where she founded a cooking school specialized in traditional Italian cooking. She published her first cooking book, The Classic Italian Cook Book, in 1973.

Reviews

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book Of Marcella Hazan's that I bought and I have really enjoyed it. I find it to be an excellent addition to "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking",but I have to say if this had been my first encounter with her cooking, I might have been disappointed. It has been great fun ,though, to see what kind of recipes she has come up with based on the availability of ingredients in the area she lives in.
It has a very different vibe, than "Essentials..."-I highly recommend "Marcella says...", but if you are new to Italian cooking you might want to pick up "Essentials....." first.

[Christie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I'm glad that Marcella is enjoying her retirement in Florida... but I'm not so glad that the book is devoted to the ingredients available at her local quikmart. The bits of advice are good, the recipes... eh.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her shrimp asparagus risotto recipe from this book is my standby...while I no longer cook to it...I make this dish quite a bit...every week if my husband loved seafood as much as me.

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

Make the homemmade pasta with pine nuts, garlic and golden raisins and have it as a late night dinner with some cold white wine and you will be very very pleased.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I found several recipes I can't wait to try, the real value in this one is in the 80+ pages of introductory information that covers lessons on developing the flavors of a dish, seasoning, pasta, and the use of various ingredients, including three and a half glorious pages on pecorino cheese. The writing ranges from poetic to practical, and as always, the introductory notes of her recipes are packed with helpful details. It also has a ton of little asides squeezed in among the recipes, which seems to give exactly the cooking-school feel she explains that she was going for.

If you want a more modern type of cookbook with lots of photos of in-process or finished dishes, this may not be a good fit for you. But Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking has been one of my go-tos for at least fifteen years, and her style of recipe writing goes back to a time before cookbooks were expected to involve the glossy eye-candy that we tend to get now. Her instructions are clear, practical, opinionated, and expressive in a way that I don't always find in books that can rely on the crutch of lovely photos.

For someone totally new to Hazan's work or who's just starting to delve into fresh, from-scratch Italian food, I'd be more likely to recommend her Essentials. But this is a great pick for existing fans, for folks who like older-school cookbooks, or for anyone who's explored fresh pasta and wants to kick things up to the next level.

[Marilou Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

While waiting for "Essentials of Italian Cooking" to arrive in my doorstep, I borrowed this book to get a hint of why people highly recommend her cookbooks. I like that the recipes are simple and the ingredients are accessible. The sections "Marcella Says: ......." are actually helpful tips for each recipe. I am dropping 2 stars from this books because of the lack of relevant food photos. The photos in the book is of no relevance to the recipes. I like to see the finish dish and not the author. The style of the book is outdated considering this was published in 2004. If the book has food photos I would have given it five stars. I was wondering why her publishers agreed for the book to be published this way. My husband asked me if she is a well known cook and I said yes. She is considered an "institution". To that, he said that Marcella's publisher's didn't need to go through all the trouble with coloured photographs of food because it would have cost more for the books to be produced. I get his point. But as an owner of close to 200 cookbooks I know what I want. This is a book about food and not an autobiography. Marcella probably doesn't need to compete in the cookbook realm. The publishers were truely confident of her past track record.

[Clwseattle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Marcella's books is like reading a gentle novel in front of a roaring fire - comforting and fulfilling.

In Marcella Says... she instructs us on technique, tells us about the "right" equipment, and gives us background on ingredients and where they come from and of course wonderful recipes.

I hardly got past the first crostino without wanting to stop and make some, and I laughed when I saw a recipe for avocado crostini, AKA, avocado toast!

There are two disappointing things that dropped Marcella Says... from a 5 Star review to a 4 Star review. I abhor when a new recipe begins on the same page as the previous recipe ends. I like recipes written in a concise manner on as few pages as possible. I'm a messy cook. Also, there are no delicious pictures to tempt us to make any recipe in Marcella Says.... There are black and white photos of Marcella's classes and a few of her and Victor.

4 Stars for Marcella Says. . ..

[Judy Yeargin · Rating 5 out of 5]

When it comes to true Italian cooking, Marcella is the alpha and omega.

[Deidra Chamberlain · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this one because it is the only cookbook my library has by Marcella. I was a little disappointed. She spent a lot of the book saying you can still cook great Italian food in America, and then turned around and said this or that could not really be replicated, but here is a pale shadow of the original. I think I need to read her Essentials.