THE HAZAN FAMILY

The First Family of Italian Cuisine

By Susan Filson, Photos By Chad Spencer

Family traditions. We all have them. The ones that usually come to mind first are those centered around holidays, birthdays or other milestones in our lives. But it’s those basic, everyday routines and rituals that create a family’s unique identity.

Throughout the ages, families have nurtured future generations by sharing and perpetuating these traditions, imparting values and preserving their culture and heritage. Simply said, family traditions are the glue that binds one generation to another. Among them, those that seem to shine brightest are the ones involving food. It’s no wonder. Food nourishes not only our bodies but our souls as well. The family table is where relationships are forged, bonds are strengthened and memories are made.

Here on the Gulf Coast, three generations of one family in particular are making food memories of their own. On any given weekend, you’ll find them rolling out homemade pasta on the kitchen counter, tending a simmering Bolognese sauce on the stove or basking in the afterglow of a lovely meal taken al fresco on the lanai among the sun-kissed hibiscus and sheltering oaks. This is the legendary Hazan family, our area’s first family of Italian cooking.

With six bestselling cookbooks to her name, family matriarch Marcella Hazan is one of the most celebrated (and most formidable) authorities on Italian cuisine. She is often referred to as the Julia Child of Italian cooking. Her philosophy on cooking is both simple and brilliant: Find the best ingredients you can, and make the best you can out of them.

Her rise to culinary superstardom began almost by chance.

Born Marcella Polini in the Italian village of Cesenatico, her career path first led not to the kitchen but to the laboratory. She earned degrees in natural sciences and biology and was teaching math and science at a teachers’ college when she met Victor Hazan. Growing up with a mother, two grandmothers and an assortment of others who took responsibility for all of the cooking, Marcella Hazan never gave much thought to the food she ate or how it was prepared. In fact, she didn’t cook at all until after her marriage to Victor Hazan, an aficionado of Italian cuisine.

Victor Hazan, a noted wine expert with two published books, was born in nearby Cesena, Italy, to Sephardic Jews. His parents immigrated to New York in 1939, when he was 9 years old, to run a fur business. He returned to Italy in the early 1950s to reconnect with his roots, and while there met the love of his life.

Shortly after the couple married in 1955, they relocated to New York, where he went into the family business. Marcella Hazan found herself alone and lonely in unfamiliar territory with a hungry husband and, soon, a child to feed. She needed to figure out how to get food on their table, and fast!

Armed with a few Italian cookbooks, she began to teach herself the fundamentals and soon it all began to fall into place. In her recently published memoir, Amarcord: Marcella Remembers, she writes, “I was awakened by sensations from another time and other places. I saw, I smelled, I tasted dishes that, until recently, had been commonplace in my life. My taste memories were being released, and attached to them, mysteriously, was an intuitive understanding of how to produce those tastes. Cooking came to me as though it had been there all along, waiting to be expressed; it came as words come to a child when it is time for her to speak.”

Despite her natural affinity for coaxing greatness out basic, fresh ingredients, Marcella Hazan had never considered the culinary arts as a profession until 1969, when six women she met in a Chinese cooking class begged her to teach them how to prepare Italian food. She agreed and soon found herself conducting weekly cooking classes in her New York apartment.

Her big break came a year later via Craig Claiborne, then the food editor of the New York Times, who called her for an interview about her cooking classes. She invited him to lunch. Claiborne wrote a glowing article about her. Word spread. After that, the phone never stopped ringing and the rest, they say, is kismet. She was 47 years old.

Though she arrived rather late to her cooking career, Marcella Hazan achieved the kind of success that most culinary professionals only dream about. That fateful lunch with Claiborne was the catalyst that spawned an empire, encompassing the aforementioned six cookbooks, including her landmark Classic Italian Cookbook in 1973, and the popular School of Classic Italian Cooking in Bologna, which she and her husband relocated to their beloved Italy in 1976.

The Hazan legacy doesn’t stop there. The Hazans’ son, Giuliano, has built a career as an author, lecturer and cooking instructor. Giuliano currently has four cookbook credits and, along with his wife, Lael, and business partner, Marilisa Allegrini, runs a popular cooking school based in Verona, Italy.

Given his background, it seems only natural that Giuliano would follow in his famous mother’s culinary footsteps. After all, he spent a good part of his youth helping out in the kitchen, both at home and at the family’s cooking school. But like his mother, Giuliano also never planned on a career in the kitchen.

At Swarthmore College in Philadelphia, he first majored in biology, eventually switching to French literature. Interested in theater, he also spent two years at the Trinity Repertory Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island. They say, however, that all roads lead to home, and within a few years, he stepped back into the family business and began teaching his own cooking classes and penning his own cookbooks, including the recently released Thirty Minute Pasta.

While on the road promoting his first book, Giuliano found himself on a stopover in Sarasota and he was hooked. With a travel-laden schedule of teaching, lecturing and promoting his books, he decided he might as well live in paradise during his down time. At his next opportunity, Giuliano packed up his life in Portland, Oregon, and headed south. It was during one of these down times that Guiliano met Lael, also a recent transplant to the Suncoast. With her background in Italian history and love of Italian food and culture, the match was inevitable. The couple wed 12 years ago, and have two beautiful daughters. Based in Sarasota, they all divide their time between their home here and their school, Villa Giona, in Verona.

With their only child happily ensconced in the area, the elder Hazans soon made the move and settled on Longboat Key in 1997. As Marcella Hazan recounts, “We love to be near the water—we lived for 20 years in Venice [Italy] with water all around—and we like the beach and the warm weather.”

The temperate weather aside, one of the real perks of living here for the Hazans is being able to spend time with their granddaughters. These two little pixies with wide impish grins and wild flowing curls are both already budding culinarians. Gabriella is 11 and has been an expert pasta maker from age 6, learning at the aprons of both her proud father and grandmother. Michaela, at 6, is not far behind, already showing her burgeoning prowess at cake decorating and meatloaf making.

Though officially retired, Marcella Hazan still cooks for her husband every day. They begin each morning with a double espresso and a lively discussion of what will be on the menu for that day. In true European style, the couple still takes their main meal in the early afternoon, as they have for the past 54 years.

“Cooking carefully and eating well is the tradition that has shaped our family,” explains Victor Hazan. “Our food is a reflection of who we are and where we came from. To us, preparing our family meals is not just putting food on the table, but an expression of our love and affection for each other.” Marcella Hazan adds, “It is the food prepared and shared at home that, for more than 50 years, has provided a solid center for our lives. What can compare with eating something good made by someone you can hug?”

RECIPES

PAN ROASTED VEAL WITH PANCETTA AND SAGE

TORTELLONI FILLED WITH SWISS CHARD