Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan

Taste and correct for salt, add the chopped chili pepper, stir 2 or 3 times, then remove the pan from heat.Reheat gently when preparing to toss it with pasta. *Ahead-of-time note: The sauce may be prepared several hours in advance up to this point. Stir thoroughly for a minute or two, then adjust heat to cook at a gentle, but steady simmer for 25 minutes, or until the oil floats free from the tomatoes. Add the parsley, stir once or twice, then add the cut-up tomatoes, their juice, the chopped anchovy, and the filtered clam juices. Put the olive oil and garlic in a saucepan, turn on the heat to medium, and cook until the garlic has become colored a pale gold.Spoon some of the filtered juice over the clam meat to keep it moist. Line a strainer with paper towels, and filter the clam juices in the pan through the paper into a bowl.

Unless they are exceptionally small, cut them up in 2 or even 3 pieces.

When all the clams have opened up, detach their meat from the shells, and gently swish each clam in its own juices in the pan to rinse off any sand.

Check the clams frequently, turning them over, and remove them from the pan as they open their shells. Put them in a pan broad enough so that the clams don’t need to be piled up more than 3 deep, cover the pan, and turn on the heat to high. Discard those that stay open when handled.

Wash and scrub the clams as described on page 126.

1 pound pasta: Recommended pasta: Spaghettini, thin spaghetti, takes to clam sauces more successfully than other shapes.

1 flat anchovy fillet (preferably the kind prepared at home as described on page 9), chopped very fine.

2 cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice, or fresh, ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped.

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus a little more for the pasta.

Fortunately, she wasn’t brought up in plants, she was brought up in Italy!” She could take something and she knew what to do with it. Marcella had an empathy with ingredients. “She was crazy about biology and plants,” he remembers. They were together for the next sixty years, eventually moving to the United States. Meeting in her hometown of Cesenatico, Victor recalls being bowled over by his future wife. Marcella Hazan opened up the world to Americans with her collection of recipes, “ Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.” With the thirtieth anniversary of the cookbook’s publication, her husband and collaborator, noted wine writer Victor Hazan reflects on her legacy. In the early 1970s, supermarkets didn’t stock Italian parsley or fresh basil.

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan