The quiet power of Marcella Hazan’s kitchen

When Marcella Hazan came to America in 1955, few people were prepared for the kind of innovative Italian cooking she taught. Being as she was a more recent immigrant from Italy than the many Italians who came to the states decades earlier, her advice was quite different from what Americans expected of an Italian-born cookbook author. Instead of hearty meatballs in pasta sauce or pizza recipes, she brought a completely different, unique, but no less wonderful sort of Italian cooking to Americans. So beloved are her recipes and advice, she became a kind of ‘Julia Child’ for Italian cuisine, bringing a more authentic way of preparing Italian food to Americans. 

I’m a recent Marcella fan, having discovered her works only a few years ago. Instantly I came to love what Marcella had to say. She had a no-nonsense approach to food, but one that’s rooted in wisdom and a love of what fresh vegetables can do to heighten a dish, and how simple ingredients can come together to create something extraordinary. 

Below are some of the things Marcella has taught me that I’ve found to be most useful in my own cooking. 

In Season Vegetables

Marcella was a full believer when it came to in season produce. Though Marcella often cooked with meat, poultry, and seafood, vegetables were still at the forefront of what she was creating, what she centered the rest of her meal around. To her mind, vegetables should take center stage in any dish, and be cooked just enough so they aren’t mushy, but retain a delicate flavor.

In Ingredienti, her list of vegetables offers ways to make produce the top priority of grocery shopping. It’s a refreshing way of thinking about food, ignoring the notion that meat should be the epitome, vegetables reduced to a bland side dish. For plant-based eaters, it may feel completely normal to think this way, but for those that still eat meat, this concept is a great way to shift gears and add more plant-based ingredients into your routine.

It will also change the way you think about produce. If vegetables aren’t a highlight for you, let Marcella teach you differently. Organic, fresh produce when it’s ripe and in season is some of the best food you can get your hands on. And when cooked the right way, it completely changes how you experience fresh produce.

The Power of the Bay Leaf

Though there’s nothing wrong with herbs (particularly fresh ones) in a dish, there was something to be said for adding only one or two small bay leaves to a dish and seeing what happens. Up until trying this myself, I never knew just how powerful and wonderful a bay leaf’s flavor could truly be. And while I love conglomerations of herbs as much as the next person, I’ve come to love my bay leaves more than ever before.

It’s a pleasant reminder that not everything has to have the world’s collection of spices and herbs to be delicious. When forced to use only one, you truly begin to acknowledge the majesty of it, to know it deeply, and appreciate what it can do in other dishes.

Not all pasta has to be homemade

Marcella offered multiple recipes for homemade pasta in her works. Like the many other times I’ve decided to give pasta-making a try, it was more overwhelming than I’d bargained for. That’s no knock on Marcella’s instructions, which were perfectly clear. But pasta-making requires a dedication to kneading, perfecting shapes, and loving the process, much of which I devote to my bread-baking, not creating tagliatelle.

But Marcella makes it clear that not all pasta sauces necessarily demand homemade pasta. There are times when a store-bought spaghetti is just the right thing for a particular sauce. Smooth and creamy sauces particularly are better suited to pastas with long strands, ones that have preferably been dried for a while. And in those cases, it’s perfectly fine (perhaps even better) to use a store bought brand.

Simple Sauces

Image from the New York Times.

Many recipes for tomato sauce require bucket loads of herbs, the freshest tomatoes you can get your hands on, a couple tablespoons of garlic, and a whole host of other ingredients. My husband makes a marinara sauce that he purposely cooks slowly and deliberately, adding several ingredients step by step. There’s something to this that makes food taste extra special, a culmination of ingredients that come together beautifully in the end.

That’s why Marcella’s marinara sauce raised some eyebrows when she called for four ingredients only (canned tomatoes, a stick of butter, a peeled onion cut in half, and some salt - no garlic needed) that you put in a pan and let simmer for an hour. The result is nothing short of perfection, and it couldn’t be simpler to prepare.

It’s a needed reminder that not all pasta sauces have to be elaborate productions to be good. Some of the best in fact take 15 minutes to whip up and take very few ingredients to turn into perfection.

Basil

Being as it is a key ingredient in several beloved Italian dishes, it amazed me to learn that I’ve been using it incorrectly all this time. Or rather, I was adding it to my sauces at the wrong time.

With basil especially, the flavor is most potent when the herb is fresh in your hand, before you’ve done anything with it. Too many times, I’ve added basil into a sauce, anticipating the delightful flavor it will make when I finally eat it an hour later, only to barely be able to taste it once I dig into the dish.

The later one adds the basil, the better in Marcella’s book. For dishes where you want the basil to be powerful, consider adding at the absolute end as a garnish. For pasta sauces where the basil is part of a mixture of other herbs, add the garlic towards the end where the flavor won’t completely disappear into the sauce, but still retain some of its potency.

Avoid garlic presses like the plague

Something that often surprises readers is the small use, and sometimes complete lack, of garlic in Marcella’s recipes. Thinking of Italian cuisine oftentimes brings up images of garlic bread, swarths and swarths of it in lasagne or pasta. Not so in Marcella’s recipes. Turns out, not all regions in Italy use garlic with as much free abandon as others. And Marcella’s northern home was one that didn’t particularly cater to its flavor.

What the reader soon understands in cooking Marcella’s recipes is that garlic is only used as an additive, not as something that needs to shine through loud and proud. Marcella believed that other ingredients (vegetables in particular) have their own flavor that we often mask with a coating of other herbs and spices. By taking the vegetable as it is, and learning to appreciate what it has to offer, we open ourselves to a whole new world of flavor. Garlic, being as it is a strong ingredient, can often cloud these flavorings, ridding us of the opportunity to get to experience them fully.

The smaller garlic is minced, the more potent it becomes, putting it in danger of masking other, more important ingredients. For that reason, one should never use a garlic press under any circumstances. Neither does Marcella ever ask the reader to mince their garlic. Garlic slices are slightly less powerful and suitable for most dishes, full garlic cloves being best for the mildest flavor.

Simplicity is Supreme

Perhaps Marcella’s most important advice is that cooking can still be great even if it’s simple. In fact, some of the best cooking in the world is done at home with very few ingredients that come together in a flash.

It’s a novel concept that’s often forgotten. I recently delved into a newly published cookbook, only to be warded off by the vast number of ingredients it called for in just about every recipe. There may be a time and a place for elaborate meals, but if a meal can come together with less, why complicate things? That’s the power of unfussy cooking, if only we let ourselves enjoy the simple things.

In a world that feels overcomplicated, it’s a nice reminder to take food for what it is: wholesome nourishment that doesn’t require bucketfuls of time or condiments to be meaningful. It’s perhaps for this reason, above any other, that Marcella’s wisdom is still as deeply cherished now as it was when her works were first published. And whenever I’m tempted to make something overly complicated or showy, Marcella’s gentle, yet profound advice continues to guide me.