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Marcella and Victor Hazan

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 was raised in Cesenatico, a quiet fishing town on the northern Adriatic Sea. Marcella begins the memoir 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 orwhat's more surprisinga single recipe. She began to attempt to re-create the flavors of her homeland. She took 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. 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.

Biography
Recipient of two Lifetime Achievement Awards (from the James Beard Foundation in 2000 and the IACP in 2004), and a knighthood from her own country, Marcela Hazan is the author of six classic cookbooks published over the past thirty-five years. Her husband is her lifelong collaborator and writing partner, himself an authority on Italian food and wine.