Mar 302015
 
"A Little Bit of Italian Will Improve Any Dish. Even Any Life." — Victor Hazan

A continuation of the conversation with Victor Hazan on the matter of my Irish beef & Guinness stew (see previous post): A deft rebuttal, my dear. Italians may sometimes mention nutrition, but they don’t believe in it, really. They go for taste. The interesting thing is that the taste of good Italian cooking turns out to be so salubrious. At least the people look so much better. I have a very catholic appreciation of  the tastes of other cuisines, save when they seem to be an aberration. I find no grounding in principles of taste in boiled potato skins. That parsnips are […more…]

Mar 302015
 
Victor Hazan Italianizes My Irish Stew

My readers will now and then offer comments on my recipes, but no one is more exacting than Victor Hazan, husband of and collaborator with the late Marcella Hazan and indeed himself a very fine cook. Here is a message he sent me about my Beef and Guinness Stew recipe, which I offered in my Zester Daily column for St. Patrick’s Day:  I followed it more or less scrupulously, save for some things an Italian cook wouldn’t go for, e.g. boiled potatoes served with their skins on. Che barbarità! I peeled and quartered them and threw them in with the meat after it had […more…]