MANILA, Philippines - Who is the Italian cookery writer whose cookbooks made her the high priestess of Italian cooking for many Americans?
She was born in 1924 in the village of Cesenatico in Emilia-Romanga in Italy, and earned a doctorate in natural sciences and biology from the University of Ferrara.
In 1955, she married an Italian-born New York-raised Sephardic Jew who subsequently gained fame as a wine writer, and the couple moved to New York a few months later.
Although she had never cooked before her marriage, she found herself “having to feed a young, hard-working husband who could deal cheerfully with most of life’s ups and downs, but not an indifferent meal.â€
She began by using cookbooks from Italy, but then realized that he had an exceptionally clear memory of flavors she had tasted at home and found it easy to reproduce them herself.
She began giving cooking lessons in her apartment and opened her own cooking school, The School of Classic Italian Cooking in 1959.
In the early ‘70s, Craig Clarborne, who was then the food editor of the New York Times asked her to contribute recipes to the paper. She published her first book, The Classic Italian Cookbook in 1973. The book’s version adapted for British readership won an Andre Simon Award in 1980.
The sequel, More Italian Classic Cooking followed in 1978, and the two were collected in one volume, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking in 1992. In 1997, Cucina won the James Beard Best Mediterranean Cookbook award and the Julia Child Award for Best International Cookbook.
In 1998, she retired from her cooking school and taught courses at the French Culinary Institute. In 2005 she was given a knighthood by Italy’s President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
She died in 2013 in Longboat Key, Florida. Her son Guiliano is also a noted cookery writer and teacher.
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Answer: Kunio Maekawa
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