Cucina di Becca

Marcella cucina

Finally, I finished reading Marcella Hazan's autobiography -- "Amarcord". She is the author of the only Italian cookbooks that you will find in my family's kitchens...or at least the only ones that we use.

She starts with :

    "You could describe the road my life has taken as a      series of unexpected and improbable turns."

Umm...yeah. She was trained to be a science professor. Sound familiar? Maybe a small hint from the universe...

She had many bold moments as she veered away from that career path. She grew up experiencing the horrors of World War II, and then married an Italian Jewish man who had grown up in New York. She ends up back in New York, with no knowledge of the language, no job  and no family or friends besides her in-laws. She does what I would have done....lots and lots of cooking.

She also learns to speak English in order to conduct cooking classes. My favorite example of botching the language was this:

"Somehow, one day, when we were discussing what I was going to teach the next day, I slipped into the language of the lesson. I said, at one point, 'I am going to show them how to screw the shrimp.'

'Say that again,' Victor said.

I repeated the words.

'And you have been saying it all the time?' he asked.

'Sure'.

'And no one has ever made a comment?'

'No, why, what's wrong with it?'

I never tried to use the word 'skewer' again."

That took me right back to my first day in liceo, Italian high school, when the teacher greeted me with "Ciao!" and I responded "Ciao!" and the whole class bust out laughing. Hmmm, that happened to be the only word that I knew in Italian at the time, and I was pretty sure how to use it. WRONG. One never greets an elder that one does not know in this way. "Salve" would have been the proper response.

I found this to be a slow read, but a really interesting one if you like cooking. One particularly sweet moment is when she describes a woman holding an infant at a book signing, explaining that they named their baby after her because of the enormous impact of her cookbooks on their family.

So, in Marcella's honor, I share my hands-down favorite recipe of hers because it is SO SIMPLE.

Lemon Chicken

Wash a whole chicken well, and sprinkle with salt and pepper, rubbing it into the skin with your fingers. Take one large lemon, or two small ones, and rub between your hand to soften it. Pierce it all over with a fork. Stick it inside the chicken.

Put the chicken in a roasting pan breast-side down, and cook for about 30 minutes at 350^o F. Turn the chicken gently, and then cook for about another 40 minutes. Raise the temperature to 400^oF and cook for

 another 40 minutes.

Serve, spooning the sauce created over the chicken.

Important caveat: do NOT check on the chicken. When I was in high school, I tried to make this chicken for a favorite math teacher and his wife. I was so nervous that I checked the chicken over and over. Dinner was delayed by about 1.5 hours, during which time my dad had to sit and talk with them. To put it mildly, they were NOT his favorite people. He finally forgave me during my college years....and then I started dating their son.

(no...it was not Bill...)

First book review

Here is a fabulous book, especially if you find yourself thinking, "Hmmm...maybe I could take my passion for cooking to a professional level..." People have asked me if I ever wanted to do that. Honestly, I really do want to open a cafe ala the chocolatier in the movie Chocolat. But, every time that I read about the life of one who cooks for a living, I change my mind. Maybe in retirement, when I could open the shop a couple of days a week...maybe Luca and Mimi will work there...or like Cary suggested, a dinner once a week with a fixed menu? I just don't know how you can make a decent living without working like a dog.

So, the book is The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman. He is such a wonderful writer; you just glide through this book. That is, if you have an interest in cooking. You have to want to read about the painstaking process of making a raft in order to have crystal clear consomme (such that the date on a dime can be read at the bottom of a gallon). This book is about the life of one who commits to a degree from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA). Ruhlman not only shadows the students, he fully participates in the classes. He takes the tests, does the long days...it is amazing. He also wrote a beautiful book called The Soul of a Chef, which I liked a little better than this book. Towards the end of this book, I found that I wasn't as excited to keep reading. His other book is divided into three sections, one about a culinary exam and the other two about shadowing famous chefs. Awesome read.

Here is an example of why I don't imagine I will ever be a professional chef...Ruhlman visits a friend at his externship, working lunches for a Manhatten restaurant called the Monkey Bar.

"A lot of mise en place," Adam told me. "Like crazy amounts of mise en place. Cutting and cooking and setting up and just all kinds of stuff. I have to dice peppers, mince shallots, and then I have to take the corn off five ears of corn; I have to small-dice a loarge handful of haricot verts; I have to fry a ton of julienned leeks, I have to make probably fifteen pounds of mashed potatoes. I have to make eighteen potato cakes; I have to prep asparagus for soup, saute half a case of oyster mushrooms; I have to fill all the oil bottles, refill the stock bottles, set up my bain-marie with all my sauces, bring the soup up to temperature, cut potatoes for the soup set, prepare the meat for the soup set, pick thyme for the chef; and I have to cut shallots for the chef as well, along with a bunch of miscellaneous other things, like I have to clean and slice and fry four celery roots for celery-root chips for the cod plate."

So, have you thrown up yet? This is only what he does from 8 AM until 12 PM when the lunch orders start coming in. Then, he cooks at an unbelievable speed until about 3 PM, at which point he begins to prep for dinner. Yes, more chopping. He doesn't leave until 6:30 PM, and has little to no breaks during the day. Would you even want to eat anything after that? And there is no week off for Christmas, no summer vacation...restaurants just keep going and going and going.

That said, I was definitely inspired to learn more of the methods that he talked about. Oh, another reason why I would never attend the CIA -- the brown veal stock. Boy, do they use a lot of veal. Couldn't do it.

So, if you want to live vicariously through these people, who are doing the equivalent of med school in my opinion, read it!