Amarcord or Lancaster County Cookbook

Amarcord: Marcella Remembers

Author: Marcella Hazan

The food publishing event of the season: Beloved teacher and bestselling cookbook author Marcella Hazan tells how a young girl raised in Emilia- Romagna became America's godmother of Italian cooking.

Widely credited with introducing proper Italian food to the English-speaking world, Marcella Hazan is as authentic as they come. Raised in Cesenatico, a quiet fishing town on the northern Adriatic Sea, she'd eventually have her own cooking schools in New York, Bologna, and Venice. There she would teach students from around the world to appreciate—and produce—the food that native Italians eat. She'd write bestselling and award-winning cookbooks, collect invitations to cook at top restaurants, and have thousands of loyal students and readers—some so devoted they'd name their daughters Marcella. Her fans will be as surprised and delighted by how this all came to be as Marcella herself has been.

Marcella begins with her early childhood in Alexandria, Egypt, where she broke her arm. After nearly losing the arm to poor medical treatment, she was taken back to her father's native Italy for surgery. There the family would remain. Her teenage years coincided with World War II, and the family relocated temporarily to Lake Garda— not anticipating that it would be one of the war's greatest targets. After years of privation and bombings, Marcella was fulfilling her ambition to become a doctor and professor of science when she met Victor, the love of her life. They married and moved to New York City. Marcella knew not a word of English or—what's more surprising—a single recipe. She began to attempt to re-create the flavors of her homeland. Shetook a Chinese cooking class in the early '60s with women who asked her to teach them Italian cooking, and she began to give them lessons. Soon after, Craig Claiborne invited himself to lunch, and the rest is history.

Amarcord means "I remember" in Marcella's native Romagnolo dialect. In these pages Marcella, now eighty-four, looks back on the adventures of a life lived for pleasure and a love of teaching. Throughout, she entertains the reader with stories of the humorous, sometimes bizarre twists and turns that brought her love, fame, and a chance to change the way we eat forever.

Publishers Weekly

In 1969 Hazan gave the private cooking class that launched her career as the Italian Julia Child. In an evocative memoir, she recounts her life from childhood to Florida Gulf Coast retirement. Hazan spent her earliest years on another coast, in Cesenatico, a village on the Adriatic; during WWII the family moved to a lake in the mountains between Venice and Milan. Fresh out of the university, she taught college math and science and met a young man who had returned to his Italian homeland after more than a decade in America. He loved food, and his worldliness and sophistication made a good match for the comparatively earthbound author. After they married, the couple moved several times between various places in Italy and America. During a long stay in New York, Hazan began to offer the Italian cooking lessons that later caught the attention of such chefs as New York Times food writer Craig Claiborne. This led to the writing and publication in 1973 of The Classic Italian Cookbook. Hazan's memoir is a terrific history of the expansive, postwar period when Americans were still learning the difference between linguine and Lambrusco, and an engaging chronicle of professional perseverance, chance and culinary destiny. Photos. (Oct.)

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Town & Country - Pamela Fiori

Reading this evocative memoir will perceptibly elevate one's senses and make one appreciate Marcella Hazan's fascinating journey—from girlhood in Italy to womanhood in America, from relative obscurity to her certain fame in the food world.

What People Are Saying

Patricia Wells
Marcella Hazan is an icon in the American food world, and her one-of-a-kind experience makes her own story not only compelling but truly marvelous. (Patricia Wells, author of The Paris Cookbook and The Provence Cookbook)

Frances Mayes
Marcella Hazan's memoir is as delicious as her food. Full of affection, friendships and deep connections to her roots, she ladles a grand minestrone into our bowls. (Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun)

Burt Wolf
Marcella Hazan has done for Italian cooking in the United States what Julia Child did for French cuisine and James Beard for traditional American cooking. I think of her as the Johnny Appleseed of real Italian cooking. (Burt Wolf, Television Journalist)

Paul Levy
Marcella Hazan's memoir is a gripping, elegantly written tale of a life full of surprises, exotic backgrounds, captivating people and generous helpings of good things to eat and drink -- plus the touching, authentically 20th century romance of the marriage of a small-town Italian Catholic to a Sephardic Jew. (Paul Levy, award-winning journalist and author of The Official Foodie Handbook)

Dorothy Kalins
This succulent memoir makes you realize just how much the making of Marcella has to do with the making of dinner every night in America. (Dorothy Kalins, Founding Editor of Saveur)

Fergus Henderson
A fantastic book, by a splendid lady whose classic Italian cooking shaped, more than any other person, this British Chef cooking British food. (Fergus Henderson, Director & Chef, St. John Bar and Restaurant, London)

Table of Contents:

Alexandria and Cesenatico, 1931-1937 1

Cesenatico, La Comitivu, 1940 9

The War, 1940-1945 19

Home Again, 1945 39

Out of the University, into Love and Marriage, 1949-1955 47

On to the New World, 1955-1962 67

Back to the Old World, 1962-1967 91

Back to the New World, 1967-1970 115

A Book Born Twice and Twice Reborn, 1971-1980 135

A Funny Thing Happened, 1973-1975 147

Bologna, 1975-1987 161

Other Worlds, 1984-1992 189

How Not to Get Rich, 1972-1993 209

Venice, 1978-1995 223

My Three Graces, 1963-1999 261

Parting with Knopf, 1975-1993 271

Leaving Venice, 1993-1999 281

Index 297

Interesting book: James Monroe or George Washington

Lancaster County Cookbook

Author: Jan Mast

The residents of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, are famous for their Pennsylvania Dutch cooking. With Pepper Cabbage, Chicken Pot Pie, Creamed Celery, Apple Dumplines, Whoopie Pies, Funnel Cakes, and Shoofly Pie, this new cookbook overflows with their old-time, traditional recipes. Stoltzfus is author of the enormously popular Favorite Recipes from Quilters.

Cooks from every corner of Lancaster County and the various sections of Lancaster City submitted their favorite family recipes to be included in this timeless collection. From their kitchens comes this compilation, filled with recipes which are easy to prepare and pleasant to the palate.

A collection of essays also profiles particular Lancaster County villages and several sections of Lancaster City. A wonderful treasure for people everywhere.