Marcella !

Marcella…

Marcella says…

What does Marcella say?

In 1919, my grandparents, Marjorie and Algernon, sailed to Italy and soon had three children, all of whom—like they—would always feel that Italy was their true home. My mother spent nearly her entire life in Rome, and not an inconsiderable part of it in markets, food stores, cooking, researching restaurants, and, of course, enjoying wine and food.

When my uncle Louis and aunt Barbara came to visit us from Boston in Rome—as they often did, sometimes for long stretches associated with a physics experiment or conference Louis had arranged—the focus on all things culinary would amplify. Louis loved to eat. My mother always said that her mother claimed his very first word was “mozzarella!” And in Barbara, he had a partner who not only loved to eat but loved to cook—and was perhaps the best non-native Italian cook I have ever known.

Barbara had an intense curiosity about ingredients and technique. Though she spoke no Italian, she was nearly always—through Louis’s translations—able to extract multi-step recipes from restaurant cooks, who, taken by her warmth and enthusiasm, would sit down at her table to describe exactly how a tortello was made, how it was stuffed, how it was sauced. She would find a salad leaf no one else had noticed, take it out, put on her glasses, and examine it closely. “Louis,” she would say, “ask the owner what this leaf is—did you try it? It is divine.” And soon enough, she would have her answer, write it down, and never forget it.

(This, to a large extent, is how Wilson’s Farm in Lexington, MA, had—well before anyone else—such an expansive selection of Italian greens. Barbara found them, and wanted them for herself and for others.)

One of my earliest childhood memories is of being at Cacciani, in Frascati, on their big terrace on a summer day. I remember Barbara saying—perhaps to herself, or to my mother and Louis—Marcella says… Playing with a breadstick, half-asleep after a splendid plate of tagliatelle alla bolognese, I didn’t think much of it. “Marcella,” I assumed, was perhaps a friend or neighbor.

Barbara was thinking about Marcella’s bolognese and wanted to know exactly what was in the soffritto. Was it like Marcella’s—or was there more? And there—because Tommaso Cacciani was suddenly at our table—we learned that it did not contain celery. Why was that?

Soon enough, Barbara—4 foot 11, a powerhouse of intelligence, enthusiasm, and curiosity—was no longer at the table but in the kitchen. And throughout my childhood and adolescence, whenever Barbara and Louis came to Rome—at our table, or at restaurant tables in Erice, Urbino, or Verona—Marcella says… became a refrain. Marcella was such a familiar presence, thanks to Barbara’s deep knowledge of The Classic Italian Cook Book and More Classic Italian Cooking, that it felt—comfortingly—as though she was at the table with us.

Marcella’s true identity was revealed to me when I left the last vestiges of my long Roman childhood and went to college in 1980.

Marcella. Her cookbooks were a lighthouse in the dark for me, when—from Campo de’ Fiori—I found myself in suburban Virginia, completely lost, with no idea how to replicate the flavors, lifelines, and culture of the table I had left behind.

I would have starved—or gone into a true decline—had Aunt Barbara not given me, in late August 1980, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.

Marcella spoke to me, with her direct, opinionated voice, and showed me how to recreate the dishes I had known in Italy. I clung to her. I could eat well, and all’italiana! Within months, that gold-and-green cover was splattered with tomato and sugo. Barbara then gave me More Classic Italian Cooking. I cooked my way through that too.

I took such comfort in Marcella’s prefaces, in her memories of specific dishes and how they were eaten in her childhood, in her reflections on their regional origins. I developed my own confidential relationship with her. And I understood why Barbara had found in Marcella exactly what she had long been seeking—ever since she first came to Italy (by coincidence, Venice—Marcella’s home): a canon of strictly traditional Italian cookery, untouched by American or British influence.

When I returned to Italy in 1984, I brought both books back with me. I’ve cooked from them for nearly forty years now, and have given easily 100 copies as wedding presents, birthday gifts, and tokens to clients and friends committed to understanding technique, regionality, ingredients, and how Italian food should taste.

It’s no surprise that Italian friends often ask to borrow my Marcella cookbooks. The illustrations, the clarity, the honesty of the recipes—all resonate with them, used as they are to Italian cookbooks that can be vague and imprecise.

My young adult children, now both enthusiastic cooks themselves, have learned as much about Italian food from Marcella as they have from a childhood spent traveling and eating in Italy. This evening, they’re cooking: Marcella’s parmigiana di melanzane, and, just because they love it, her salsa verde—arguing, as they have for years, whether to use two anchovies or three.

Marcella—with her husband Victor as her greatest supporter, translator, collaborator, and cultural bridge—is, and always will be, a welcome guest at our table. But she was so much more.

She brought Italy to me when I missed it most, and I brought her back with me to Italy, continuing to cook with her—adding more stains, more dog-eared pages, more olive oil to my old friends.

With every year, I am more grateful still for the Hazans’ commanding, precise, and encouraging voice—and for their absolute insistence on authenticity, seasonality, and quality of ingredients. And for their profound, simple love of Italian regional cooking.

Marcella says.

Grazie di cuore, Marcella.

Marjorie Shaw
16 July 2025

www.insidersitaly.com