Theart ofItalian cooking

Giuliano, people say that your mother, Marcella Hazan, was for Italian cuisine, a bit like Julia Child for French cuisine in America...

No, listen: many people say this, that is the origin of Italian cuisine in USA, I would say homemade style not a restaurant style, and also not the first to introduce Italian cuisine to America, but how it is eaten in Italy instead of what had become Italian-American.

You were born in New York but you lived the first years of your life in Italy, do you feel more Italian?

A bit complicated because we returned to America where I continued my studies and then I always continued to go to Italy every summer, I went to stay with my grandmother in Cesenatico until I finished my studies.

When you returned to America, you were seven, what memories do you have of the cooking classes your mother organized at home?

To tell the truth, my mom had never thought of cooking before she met my father. She liked to eat well and her mother, my grandmother, cooked very well but it’s not that my mother usually spent time cooking. On Saturdays, however, once she was with my father, she did. Mom always said my dad could handle a lot of things but not a bad meal! So she started cooking using recipes my grandmother gave her and some cookbooks too. Then she discovered that she just had a talent for cooking, so it was a locked thing inside her that she wasn’t ready to go out.