Hazan Family Favorites: Beloved Italian Recipes (2024)

As a child in America, Giuliano Hazan’s mother, Marcella, packed him meatballs with potatoes and peas, veal stew with mushrooms, and other homemade dishes for lunch—dishes that in no way resembled the peanut butter sandwiches his classmates enjoyed. And so began his appreciation of great food. Hazan Family Favorites celebrates delicious recipes from the Hazan family, prepared just as Giuliano prepares them for his own family today. Here are 85 recipes for every course in the Italian meal, including Appetizers, Soups, Pastas and Rice, Meats and Seafood, and Sides and Desserts. With recipes from Swiss Chard Tortelloni to Strawberry Gelato to everything in between, Hazan Family Favorites offers an intimate look at this iconic family and their most beloved recipes.

As an Italian food lover, this book was right up my alley. I am more familiar with Southern Italian cookbing, but I thoroughly enjoyed the recipes, recipe backgrounds and anecdotes. I realize some think there were too many anecdotes, but this was a family history of food and I felt they struck the right tone.

The recipes were amazing. Where do I start? Old favorites, new loves and some non-traditional recipes (latkes anyone?) with an Italian twist. I'm dying to try the Brussel Sprouts Braised with Pancetta, Pistachio Baklava, Boeuf Giuliano, and so many more. I have a large list to cook now. I can't wait to get started!

I received a digital edition of this book through NetGalley.com for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

A simple book with a price that makes you wonder at first whether it is a misprint, containing many Hazan (who?) family favourite recipes that have been passed down and refined over time.

In all there are 85 different recipes, covering the entire gamut of traditional Italian food, starting with a pizza that takes from start to finish nine hours - yet to be fair most of that time is spent letting the dough rise! It is difficult to really decide about this book as whilst there are many recipes it just feels a bit of an over-priced disappointment. If the book hadn't pushed the family recipes angle so hard and cut the price for an ebook, this would have been a reasonably good mainstream recipe collection. Some recipes feature a few lines about a family connection or reminiscence and there are a few family photographs but the whole thing feels disjointed, unconnected and pasted together.

The recipes themselves are relatively well written and easy to understand. There was a good range some intriguing examples worthy of a trial. This is clearly a book that you don't cook from in a hurry - no 30 minute meals here. It is disappointing that not every dish has a colour photograph of the finished article - a serious omission in any high-end cookbook and unforgivable in an ebook. Some of the photography is simple yet stunning but there are a fair few so-so pictures too. For some bizarre reason the recipes only feature imperial measure units, forcing readers more used to metric units to consult a table at the back of the book. In a printed book this is an annoying pain, even more so with an ebook.

Sadly it feels that the negatives outweigh the positives with this title. It feels rushed and cobbled together rather than being a piece of work. At a third of the price maybe it wouldn't have felt so bad, but as a premium-priced ebook it just doesn't seem to work. There are plenty of Italian cookery books out there so unless you really have a connection to the author AND must have this book in an ebook format don't bother with it. At the time of writing, a leading online bookseller has new printed versions of this book for less than half the price of the ebook and used versions even cheaper. At that price, even with the other annoyances, it could be worthy of a look…

Interesting Italian/Middle-Eastern fusion, ideas for experienced cooks

I will admit that I haven't yet cooked from this, and I hate e-cookbooks (hard to navigate, often missing pictures, just annoying in general, like e-travel guides). That said, many of the recipes sound good in principle, but assume kitchen experience and ability to problem solve. Many give some ingredient quantities in weight, others in different measures (12 oz. zucchini, but 4 1/2 c. flour). They substitute canned ingredients for fresh, not always with justification or advice ("canned tomatoes," but ONLY fresh artichokes, for the trimming of which encouragement is provided, but inadequate instructions are given). They use kitchen appliances for some processes, but not others where they would be helpful (e.g. a food processor, but not a mandoline). Directions assume an experienced cook with a good pantry and access to a wide range of ingredients. That said, there are unusual and intriguing recipes here (e.g. artichoke frittata). Since I have 50 years of travel and kitchen experience, and live in a major urban area, I will certainly try some. At the promotional price, it's a nice idea book. I wouldn't pay full price.

Some really great recipes, tho' the commentary doesn't add a lot of value.