The Voice of Italian Cooking : Author: Marcella Hazan is dogmatic and very serious. But her three cookbooks have changed Americans attitudes about the cuisine of Italy.

Marcella Hazan is admonishing her cooking class, about 50 serious women who look as if they’ve taken the morning off from their stockbrokerage jobs.

“I have written about how to clean an artichoke many times, but still I see people doing it incorrectly,” she says. “First, do not trim the stems. They taste just like the heart and it would be a waste to discard them.

“And when you peel the leaves, bend them back against your thumb until they snap and then pull down. Look, the strings come away cleanly. Everything left is completely edible.”

The students look at each other and nod. It’s a master-teacher moment. Later, she expounds on everything from a detailed analysis of the Italian rice varieties that may be used for risotto to instructions for preparing artichokes alla Romana.

She also chews out her chef assistant for not having the whipped cream ready when she needs it, and she will remark disparagingly on his technique in stirring risotto. She does not joke, and the kind of flashy showmanship that sometimes passes for culinary instruction is entirely absent.

Hazan, author of three cookbooks that have helped change the way Americans eat pasta, is serious about Italian food. Too serious, say some, who paint her as a humorless martinet. Yet for many, including former students and those who have only cooked from her cookbooks, she is the ultimate voice of Italian cooking.

To put Hazan into focus, it pays to reminisce. Think back to an earlier time, when every other restaurant on your block was not named Trattoria Something-Or-Other. A time when fresh (albeit slightly gummy) pasta was not a dairy case staple and when--you may laugh at this one--radicchio was considered the height of exotica.

Then, basil came only dried, and people snickered when someone said “virgin” olive oil. Italian delis were famous for their submarine sandwiches, and fancy folk drank cafe au lait rather than caffe latte.

Italian cooking still meant spaghetti and meatballs, and cooking with garlic was considered “racy,” but Hazan was writing about paglia e fieno alla ghiotta (fresh yellow and green noodles with cream, ham and mushroom sauce), calamari ripieni stufati al vino bianco (stuffed squid braised in white wine) and her well-known arrosto di maiale al latte (pork loin braised in milk).

“There wasn’t anything like a classic Italian cookbook before Marcella,” says Judith Jones, then and now Hazan’s editor at Alfred A. Knopf. “She was really the first to make Northern Italian cuisine available to Americans.”

Craig Claiborne, former food editor of the New York Times and an early promoter of Hazan, remembers: “In private homes at that time, Italian cooking was almost unknown. Risotto, the different cuts of pasta, these were all things that we’ve only learned about in the last 10 years.”

Now, 15 years after the widespread publication of her first book, Hazan is back at it--rewriting and retesting almost every recipe in her first two books to come up with a master oeuvre , as yet untitled, that will reflect everything she has learned along the way. It is scheduled to be published in the fall of 1992.

“All of my books are still selling, even the first,” Hazan said in an interview, “but I thought it was better to make them more modern. You know, 20 years of teaching teaches you a lot.

“And many things have changed. To be honest, I felt a little uncomfortable with some of the things I had said before. For example, I said to put sugar in your tomatoes, but that was only because you then had very bad canned tomatoes in this country.

“I said to buy a certain olive oil made in Sicily. It was the worst, but it was the only one available. Now, you have so many olive oils it’s just a matter of choosing the one you like best. Fennel was very hard to find then, and very few people wanted to eat squid, even if you called it calamari. You could go on and on, there were so many things.”

This was the world that Hazan, armed with doctorates in biology and natural sciences from the University of Ferrara, faced when she moved to the United States. She began teaching cooking classes in her home in 1967, and met Claiborne in 1970.

“I had never heard of her, but someone said they had just taken fantastic Italian cooking lessons from this woman, so I called her and introduced myself and said I would like to talk to her,” Claiborne remembers. “She said I might come over for lunch, but she made it clear she had never heard of Craig Claiborne. When the article appeared, she was dumbfounded. She became well known to the general public of New York almost instantly.”

“Classic Italian Cooking” was originally published in 1973 by Harper’s Magazine Press, but her writing career really took off when she met Jones in 1975. Editor of James Beard and Julia Child, Jones bought the rights for the book for Knopf and republished it in 1976. It is now in its 17th printing.

“I don’t think Marcella felt Harper’s had done very much for the book, so she got busy,” Jones says. “She got in touch with Julia Child and went up to Cambridge for lunch. Julia told her to get in touch with me. I went to lunch at her house and I remember (Hazan’s husband) Victor pedaled home from work on a bicycle to join us. I was completely charmed and agreed to help them. It was very European.”

Hazan’s books are the result of years of research, seeking out the best cooks in small towns throughout Italy and learning their recipes.

“She is not a developer of recipes, but a recorder of recipes,” says her friend Nathalie Dupree, another highly respected cooking teacher and cookbook author. “And she is a very good recorder. When you eat Marcella’s food, you feel like you’re in Italy.”

Through it all, Hazan has been buoyed by an implacable--and, for some, unbearable--self-confidence. She can be aloof and distant, and--make no mistake--she brooks no fools (something of which there is no shortage in the world of cooks and cooking schools).

“She is more than a little arrogant,” says one of her friends.

“She’s very sure of what is right,” says Jones. “If I’ve done anything as her editor, it has been to tone down that rigidity. I keep telling her, ‘You are writing for Americans. It is good to be precise, but you have to give a little too.’

“Some things that she had written, I actually felt were insulting. So we had some good discussions, shall we say?”

In her third book, “Marcella’s Italian Kitchen,” published in 1986, Hazan apparently thought the American market had become sufficiently sophisticated to receive her “Elementary Rules,” a kind of “10 Commandments of Italian Cooking” (although--Marcella being Marcella--there are 22).

Among the Elementary Rules are:

* Use no Parmesan that is not Parmigiano-Reggiano.

* Dress salads with no other oil than olive.

* Do not esteem so-called fresh pasta more than the dry, factory-made variety.

* Do not turn heavy cream into a warm bath for pasta or for anything else. Reduce it, reduce it, reduce it.

Jones remembers the battles well. “One thing she was absolutely insistent upon was that fresh yeast was the best for bread making. But it is very difficult to find in this country, and when you do find it, it goes sour very soon, so I asked her to try dried yeast. She tried it and we compared the two loaves of bread. They were the same to me, but she insisted one was better.

“Finally, we got James Beard and his assistant Carl Jerome, my husband, myself and Marcella and Victor together to do a blind bread tasting. When Jim said he could taste absolutely no difference, finally she gave in.

“But when I saw her just recently, she told me, ‘You know, I still prefer fresh yeast.’ ”

Three books and 15 years later, Hazan is amazed--and a little aghast--at the changes she has helped bring.

“It surprises me that Italian cooking has become so popular, it also surprises me some of the things that are called Italian in this country, things that you would never find in Italy,” she says. “There is a style of cooking in California that is called Italian, but it is also French and Chinese and Japanese, too.

“They do use pasta, which is Italian, and they are very concerned with the freshness of ingredients, and that’s very Italian too. But California cooking is very inventive cooking. They try to always put new things together or try to do new things with the same ingredients. It’s not easy to find new combinations. When you find one, you have really discovered something. But to do it just to keep trying. . . .

“With food, the thing you always have to end up with is good taste. And it is important to remember that when you’re cooking, what you keep out is as important as what you put in. The simplicity of the dishes is what makes Italian food the way it is. If you do a lamb roast, you don’t have to dig through the sauce and decide whether it is lamb or not. You taste lamb.”

The dapper Victor, who has written his own highly regarded guide to Italian wines as well as helping write all three of his wife’s books, breaks in.

“The Italian cook in Italy does not attempt to surprise, but he wants to reassure,” he says. “In the kind of cross-breed cooking that is popular now, surprise is one of the most important themes. You might end up with dishes that you enjoy, but rarely dishes that you want to eat again. Two weeks later, you never think that you have to eat that again.”

Marcella agrees. “I was very disappointed when a chef friend from the United States visited us in Venice. We sent him to our favorite little fish restaurant, one that has been there for 100 years. When he came back, he said he was disappointed because they had the same menu as the last time he had visited.

“I don’t really know what he was expecting. They’ve had the same menu for 100 years. But that is a different idea of cooking.”

“No one else in Italy cooks rice in so many different ways as the Venetians,” Hazan says. “They have at least several dozen basic dishes, not counting individual variations, where rice is combined with every likely vegetable, meat, fowl or fish. Of all of them, the one Venetians have always loved the best has been Risi e Bisi. In the days of the Republic of Venice, Risi e Bisi was the first dish served at the dinner given by the Doges each April 25 in honor of St . Mark. Those, of course, were the earliest, youngest peas of the season, which are the best to use for Risi e Bisi. But one can also make it with later, larger peas, the ones Venetians call senatori. You may use frozen peas, if you must, and this recipe shows you how, but until you’ve made it with choice, fresh peas, your Risi e Bisi will be a tolerable but slightly blurred copy of the original.

“Risi e Bisi is not risotto with peas. It is a soup, although a very thick one. Some cooks make it thick enough to eat with a fork, but it is at its best when it is fairly runny, with just enough liquid to require a spoon.”

RICE AND PEAS (Risi e Bisi)

1/4 cup butter

2 tablespoons chopped onion

2 pounds fresh peas (unshelled weight) or 1 (10-ounce) package frozen peas, thawed

Salt

3 1/2 cups homemade meat broth for fresh peas, 3 cups for frozen

1 cup rice, preferably Italian arborio

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Melt butter in stockpot over medium heat. Add onion and saute until lightly golden.

Add fresh peas, if using, with 1 teaspoon salt. Saute 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Add 3 cups broth. Cover and cook at very moderate boil 10 minutes. Stir in rice, parsley and remaining 1/2 cup broth. Cover and cook at slow boil 15 minutes, or until rice is al dente, tender but firm to bite. Stir occasionally. Adjust salt to taste.

(If using thawed frozen peas, add peas and 1 teaspoon salt and saute 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Add 3 cups broth and bring to boil. Add rice and parsley. Stir. Cover and cook at slow boil 15 minutes, or until rice is al dente. Stir occasionally. Adjust salt to taste.)

Just before serving, mix in cheese. Makes 4 servings.

Note: This dish demands flavor and delicacy of homemade broth. If using store-bought broth, use canned chicken broth in following proportions:

For fresh peas, 1 cup broth mixed with 2 1/2 cups water.

For frozen peas, 1 cup broth mixed with 2 cups water.

This may be Hazan’s most famous recipe.

PORK LOIN BRAISED IN MILK

(Arrosto di Maiale al Latte)

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons oil

2 pounds pork loin in 1 piece, with some fat on it, securely tied

1 teaspoon salt

3 or 4 twists freshly ground black pepper

2 1/2 cups milk, about

Heat butter and oil over medium-high heat in casserole large enough to only contain pork. When butter foam subsides, add pork loin, fat-side facing down, and thoroughly brown on all sides, reducing heat if butter starts to turn dark brown.

Add salt and pepper. Slowly add milk. After milk comes to boil, reduce heat to medium. Cover, but not tightly, with lid partly askew, and cook slowly 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until meat is easily pierced by fork. Turn and baste meat occasionally. Add little milk if needed. When meat is done, milk should have coagulated into small nut-brown clusters. If still pale in color, uncover pan, increase heat to high and cook briskly until it darkens.

Remove meat to cutting board and allow to cool slightly few minutes. Remove trussing string. Carve into 3/8-inch-thick slices and arrange on warm platter. Draw off most of fat from pan with spoon and discard, being careful not to discard any coagulated milk clusters. (There may be as much as 1 to 1 1/2 cups removed.) Adjust salt to taste. Add 2 or 3 tablespoons warm water. Increase heat to high and boil away water while scraping and loosening all cooking residue in pan. Spoon sauce over sliced pork and serve immediately. Makes 6 servings.

Both recipes are from Marcella Hazan’s “Classic Italian Cooking” (Alfred A. Knopf: 1976, $25).