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All you ever wanted to know about Italian cooking - what a classic! A cook book from before the food-porn era, it is a guide to how Italians eat as well as the recipes they cook. Each recipe has suggestions for accompanying courses. The book is really a course in Italian cooking. Hazan gives true weight to each region of Italy. This is the book that taught me how to make good rissotto!

I've had this book for about 25 years. It was a revelation to me at the time and I would be using it now if I were still able to cook. I cooked so many of the recipes when my children were young that they consider them to be "Mama's". They rebel against standard pot roast because I regularly used to make Marcella's braised beef with celery and onions (actually in More Classic Italian Cooking). I started to prefer my own cooking to most restaurant fare.

Many of the recipes are basic and within the skill set of all but the utterly inexperienced cook (although others are too fussy for everyday meals). What I especially like about her instructions is that she she always gives you an observable endpoint. For example, "Cook for about 1 hour, or until the skin is well browned and crisp."

By now my volume has burn marks, spatters, and scrawls; it's more a stack of loose pages than a book because the spine has separated.

This book and its sequel, More Classic Italian Cooking, have been superseded by Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Much of the material carries over, with improvements, from the first two volumes to the consolidated version. Unfortunately a few things had to be cut. For example, "Pasta with mushroom sauce", a favorite in our house for years. ( )

I'm not the only one here who loves Marcella. She's great. Strongly Northern Italian. She considers garlic something to be careful with - that garlic is essentially indelicate. I might disagree with her about that, but she's pretty cool mostly. ( )