TRANSCRIPT
(lively music) – Italian cooking is very simple, but it’s not easy.
(lively music) – Marcella Hazan was the person who helped you transmit love to somebody through the kitchen.
– Julia Child has called her, “My mentor in all things Italian.”
– She is to Italian cooking what Muhammad Ali is to boxing, the champ.
– [Presenter] Marcella Hazan.
– Marcella Hazan.
– Marcella Hazan.
– Most people in America had never really experienced Italian food like people eat in Italy.
– When I grew up, we didn’t have extra virgin olive oil, we didn’t have arugula, we didn’t have radicchio.
– We didn’t even know what risotto was.
– She unlocked one of the greatest joys in the world, which are the culinary pleasures of Italy.
– It was a revelation.
(eager music) – The woman was an intelligent, trained scientist.
– I never cooked in my life until I married.
I never boil water if it was not in the beaker in the laboratory.
– Marcella realized that there had always been a cook inside her.
She decides to begin teaching Italian cooking to American women.
Marcella gets it all.
– We said, “Would you like to do a cookbook?
A cookbook?”
– I decided it was impossible because I don’t write in English.
And Victor said, “Well, if you want, I will translate.”
(eager music) – And in less than a year, we had produced the book.
A book that made history.
(eager music ending) (joyful music) – She was an absolute perfectionist.
There was only one way of doing things.
– She has no qualms about saying if you’re doing something wrong.
– And if she didn’t feel something was right, she voiced it.
– People in power, especially in the food world, find very threatening a woman who has the guts to stand up for herself.
(joyful music) – I’m in love with you, always have been.
– Thank you.
– To you, Marcella, and for all the good that you did to America’s food.
Thank you.
(joyful music)