Anyone have Marcella Hazan's Essential Classics of Italian Cooking?

T

traca

Well-known member
My cookbook group covered this book yesterday. (We do a potluck based on a cookbook.)

Here's what we ended up making, my favorites are marked with an asterisk:

- Chickpea Soup with Rice (subbed cubed polenta)*

- Cucumber and Orange Salad

- Scallop Sauce with Olive Oil, Garlic, and Hot Pepper over Pasta*

- Braised Carrots with Parmesan*

- Baked Escarole Torta*

- Baked Polenta with Bolognese Meat Sauce*

- Pork Stewed with Porcini Mushrooms and Juniper*

- Olive Oil Cake & Vin Santo

- Homemade Limonocello

The overall winner for the evening? The Baked Polenta with Bolognese. Super time consuming (I made this dish), but worth it.

 
Marcella Hazan Cookbooks

I too like this book Traca. I believe it contains the contents of an earlier one, "The Classic Italian Cookbook" plus new additional recipes. I like the original one because of the menu suggestions after every recipe. I have used her ideas a lot. You're right, time consuming but great. You can probably pick up the original one in a used bookstore if you don't have it.

 
Another great Marcella recipe from that book is Sweet and Sour Onions. Warning.....

if you make this for friends they will ask for it over and over again and it is very time consuming and peeling those onions is a pain no matter what trick you use. Better to make a batch and eat it all yourself!

 
Curious to know - is the Bolonese this same recipe?

I tried this one a while ago, we found it very bland. A big disappointment considering the time and ingredients. It turned me off from trying any more of her recipes.

Marcella Hazan's Bolognese Sauce

- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 4 tablespoons butter, divided
- ½ cup chopped onion
- 2/3 cup chopped celery
- 2/3 cup chopped carrot
- ¾ pound ground beef chuck
- Salt
- Fresh ground black pepper
- 1 cup whole milk
- Whole nutmeg
- 1 cup dry white wine
- 1-½ cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, torn into pieces, with juice
- 1-¼ to 1-½ pounds pasta (preferably spaghetti), cooked and drained
- Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese at the table

1. Put oil, 3 tablespoons butter and chopped onion in a heavy 3-½-quart pot and turn heat to medium. Cook and stir onion until it has become translucent, then add chopped celery and carrot. Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring vegetables to coat well.

2. Add ground beef, a large pinch of salt and a few grindings of pepper. Crumble meat with a fork, stir well and cook until beef has lost its raw, red color.

3. Add milk and let simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has bubbled away completely. Add a tiny grating, about 1/8 teaspoon, fresh nutmeg and stir.

4. Add wine and let it simmer until it has evaporated. Add tomatoes and stir thoroughly to coat all ingredients well. When tomatoes begin to bubble, turn heat down so that sauce cooks at the laziest of simmers, with just an intermittent bubble breaking through the surface.

5. Cook, uncovered, for 3 hours or more, stirring from time to time. While sauce is cooking, you are likely to find that it will begin to dry out and the fat will separate from the meat. To keep it from sticking, add ½ cup water as necessary. At the end of cooking, however, the water should be completely evaporated and the fat should separate from the sauce. Taste and correct for salt.

6. Add remaining tablespoon butter to the hot pasta and toss with the sauce. Serve with freshly grated Parmesan on the side.

From "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking" by Marcella Hazan

http://seattletimes.com/html/foodwine/2002983420_bolognese10.html

 
Marcella Hazan has two different recipes for bolognese...

A few years back I cooked with a group that was working through this book. This recipe for bolognese IS time consuming (always make a double batch!), and IS worth it...but I prefer the version in her book, The Classic Italian Cookbook. Essentials has a lot of carrot in the recipe, making it on the sweet side...I prefer the other recipe, somewhat less sweet, and even better if you add lean ground pork to the mix. Love your menu!!

 
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