For a cookery writer who has confined herself almost exclusively to exploring the classic dishes of Italian cooking, it is both a surprise and a delight that Marcella Hazan's new book, Marcella Cucina, should be so personal and so intimate. Senora Hazan, now a formidable 73 years old, explains the book's genesis simply. "The book evolved the way it did because I wanted to write more about myself, and more about my life with Victor [her husband]. I wanted to write about how we eat and also how we think about eating," she says, the voice crisp and sharp, as ever.
If this sounds like a self-evident synopsis of any writer's work, it has not up until now been the case with Marcella Hazan's books. She is a rigorous perfectionist, and her trio of masterly titles - The Classic Italian Cookbook, The Second Classic Italian Cookbook, and Marcella's Kitchen, (gathered together in the indispensable The Essentials Of Classic Italian Cooking) - has studiously avoided any sense of exploring her private likes and preferences, and simultaneously avoided any personal tone just as rigorously as Elizabeth David's work ever did.
The atypical nature of her new book also reflects the way in which it evolved over the years. "In fact, the book was not planned originally like this," says Hazan. "It was going to be a book dealing with the cooking of the different regions of Italy, but as I wrote it I found I wanted to do it as if I was telling a story, which is why it became so personal."
The story she tells amounts to one of the glories of modern-day cookery writing. Marcella Cucina is a masterpiece, and its intelligence and discrimination places Marcella Hazan in that select pantheon of food writers, with Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, M.F.K. Fisher, Richard Olney, Paula Wolfert, Claudia Roden and Alan Davidson, the great scholar cooks. Its particular genius is perhaps explained by that remark, "how we think about eating". Marcella Hazan is a scientist by training, and her acute analysis of why things work together, her celebration of the successful companionship of basic technique and pure ingredient working together, make for a book which reveals culinary secrets as if they were blindingly obvious facts.
"After so many years of teaching, of explaining to students about tastes, I have decided that what I really am trying to achieve is to instruct them in taste," she says. "This is why I use the example about using the notes to make music: you use the ingredients to make taste."
The musical example given in the book's introduction is the famous remark by the composer Richard Strauss, who once rebuked an orchestra he was rehearsing by shouting: "Gentlemen, you are playing all the notes perfectly, but please, now let me hear some music."
Culinary harmony is the core of Marcella Cucina. "I am not interested in fusions or cross-cultural culinary hybrids, in rootless, inconsequential cooking that does not express a clear sense of identity, of place," she writes. "First comes the taste, then the technique. Cooking must express taste, not technique, because technique alone does not communicate anything."
Blindingly obvious, of course, yet with Marcella Hazan, this imprimatur creates food which enjoys the force of revelation. The three recipes I have chosen from the book to illustrate her style are simple, but they are so delicious you would get up in the middle of the night to eat them.
The basil frittata, for example, is so light and yet so unflinchingly wholesome that it quickly joined the huge list of Marcella dishes which are a staple of our kitchen. The bean and chicken dishes, likewise, are unarguable: solid senders of meticulous, immaculate flavours. Anyone can cook these dishes, because their sole import is precision of execution and purity of taste.
My wife chided me one night, when I was talking about the idea of working some sort of improvisation of a fabulous Marcella dish of tinned tuna in a tomato sauce, by telling me: "You don't work spins on Marcella Hazan's dishes. You just cook them, and they work, and they are perfect".
Marcella Cucina is another bible of dishes that you cook; they work; and they are perfect. If we treasure it for its magnificence, we should also treasure it as most likely the final chapter in the glorious Hazan library.
"This will be my last book, so I felt more free to write, to do the text as I wanted to do it," says Hazan. "It was very natural to write it in such a style, and I found that it was like telling a story to my best friend."
Basil Frittata
Serves 4 four, or 8 eight as a small appetiser 2 medium potatoes (about 350g, 12oz) 75g (1oz) butter 75g (21/2 oz) chopped onion 4 eggs salt and freshly ground black pepper 4 tablespoons fresh basil cut into very thin strips 55g (2oz) freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano Use a 30cm (12-inch) non-stick frying pan with a flameproof handle
1. Boil the potatoes in their skins, drain when done, peel them, and then puree them into a bowl using a food mill or a potato ricer. 2. Turn on the grill. 3. Put 25g of butter and chopped onion in a small frying pan, turn on the heat to medium, and cook the onion, stirring from time to time, until it becomes coloured a deep gold. Empty the contents of the pan over the potatoes in the bowl. 4. Lightly beat the eggs in a deep dish, then put them in the bowl with the potatoes. Add salt and pepper, and turn over the contents of the bowl with a fork and spoon to amalgamate them. 5. Add the basil and ParmigianoReggiano and mix thoroughly once more. 6. Put 50g of butter in a non-stick frying pan and turn on the heat to medium. Do not let the butter become coloured, but as soon as it begins to foam, pour the egg and potato mixture into the pan. Turn the heat down to very low. When the eggs have set and thickened, and they are creamy only in the centre of the pan, briefly place the pan under the grill. Take it out the moment the surface of the frittata has set, but not browned.
Ahead of time note: You can prepare the frittata batter hours in advance, but not overnight. Cover the bowl with cling film and, if cooking it much later, refrigerate.
Boiled Broad Beans With Olive Oil And Sage
Serves four to six 1.35kg (3lb) fresh, young broad beans in their pods 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil Sage, 4 or 5 leaves if fresh or 1 teaspoon chopped dry leaves
salt and freshly ground black pepper 1. Shell the beans, discarding the pods, and put them in a saucepan with half the olive oil, all the sage and enough water to cover by 2.5cm (1 inch). Cover and turn on the heat to low. Cook for 30 to 40 minutes until they are tender to the bite.
2. When the beans have been cooking for 25 minutes, add salt and a liberal grinding of black pepper, and stir thoroughly.
3. Before serving, swirl in the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Serve with all their juices and crusty bread.
Ahead of time note: although their taste is most alluring when lukewarm, the beans can be served several hours later at room temperature. If by some mishap you must serve them the day after, refrigerate in their juices, then reheat very gently, but thoroughly.
Fricasseed Chicken With Bay Leaves Serves four
A 1.5kg (31/2lb) chicken cut into 8 pieces
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
115g (4oz) onion, very finely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped Italian flat leaf parsley
1 celery stalk, very finely chopped
1 large garlic clove, lightly mashed with the handle of a knife and peeled
4 bay leaves
salt, black pepper, freshly ground
100ml (4 fl oz) dry white wine
1. Wash the chicken pieces in cold water and pat thoroughly dry with kitchen paper. 2. Choose a sautee pan or frying pan in which the chicken pieces can later fit in a single uncrowded layer, without overlapping. Put in the olive oil and the onion, turn on the heat to medium high and cook the onion, stirring frequently, until it becomes coloured a light gold. 3. Add the parsley, celery and garlic and cook for about a minute, stirring frequently. 4. Put in the chicken pieces, skin side down. Brown them well, then turn them and brown the other side. Add the bay leaves, salt and a generous grinding of black pepper, turning over all the contents of the pan with a wooden spoon. 5. When the chicken pieces have been deeply browned on all sides, add the white wine. While you let it bubble away completely, scrape loose with your wooden spoon any browning residues stuck to the pan. When the wine's alcohol has completely evaporated - you can smell it going - put a lid on the pan and turn down the heat to very low.
6. Turn the chicken pieces from time to time and, if the juices in the pan should become insufficient to keep the chicken from sticking, add two to three tablespoons of water. Cook until the meat comes easily away from the bone, about 45 minutes. Serve piping hot.
Ahead of time note: you can make it a full day in advance. Reheat gently, but thoroughly, adding a tablespoon or two of water if necessary.