Marcella Hazan (pronounced mar-CHELL-ah huh-ZAHN), born Marcella Polini on April 15, 1924, was also dealing with a physical handicap. When she was 7, she fell while running on a beach in Alexandria, Egypt, where her family was living. She broke her right arm and endured several operations. Her arm remained undersize and bent, but still able to hold a knife. Throughout her life, her arm would make her cringe when she saw herself on television. 
 
 In the couple’s tiny apartment in Forest Hills, Queens, Mrs. Hazan began to learn English by watching television and following the Brooklyn Dodgers. And she began to learn to cook, relying on her memory and Mr. Hazan’s copy of a cookbook by Ada Boni. 
 
 “Cooking came to me as though it had been there all along, waiting to be expressed; it came as words come to a child when it is time for her to speak,” she wrote in her 2008 memoir, “Amarcord: Marcella Remembers.” The couple eventually moved to Manhattan, and had a son, Giuliano Hazan, who would go on to become a noted cooking teacher himself. 
 
 They returned to Italy for a time, where Mr. Hazan pursued a career in advertising and Mrs. Hazan became enamored of the food in Milan and Rome, which was much different from the regional cooking she had grown up with in the village of Cesenatico in Emilia-Romagna, about 120 miles south of Venice. 
 
 By the 1970s, the family was back in New York. Mr. Hazan would come home to share lunch every day — a tradition the couple continued until her death. 
 
 On Saturday, the day before she died, they shared a meal he made of trofie, the twisted Ligurian pasta, sauced with some pesto made with basil from the terrace garden. 

 The food world lost a giant today, and chefs around the world mourned the death of cookbook author and “the Julia Child of Italian food,” Marcella Hazan, at age 90. 
 
 The news was confirmed by Hazan’s daughter-in-law, Lael Hazan, on Twitter. 
 
 The world of cooking has lost a giant today. My mother-in-law Marcella Hazan melted away peacefully, my father in law at her side. — Lael Hazan (@educatedpalate) September 29, 2013 
 
 As The New York Times noted in a 2008 interview, Marcella’s husband, Victor, was responsible for translating her classic Italian dishes and recipes into English. Hazan, credited with bringing authentic Italian cooking to America, wrote six cookbooks; her first, the standard for all Italian cooking, The Classic Italian Cook Book: The Art of Italian Cooking and the Italian Art of Eating, in 1973, and one memoir, Amarcord: Marcella Remembers. 
 
 The New York Times’ Mark Bittman was the first to Tweet the news; the floodgates opened for other celebrity chefs and the food world to remember Hazan’s contributions. 
 
 RIP Marcella Hazan, one of the true cooking greats in US history. Died this morning, Longboat Key, FL. — Mark Bittman (@bittman) September 29, 2013 
 
 A sad day in American — and Italian –cooking. Marcella Hazan has died in Longboat Key, FL, @bittman reports. — Sam Sifton (@SamSifton) September 29, 2013 
 
 Very very sad to hear the passing of Marcella Hazan .My thoughts are with the her family . You touched my soul .RIP darling Marcella — April Bloomfield (@AprilBloomfield) September 29, 2013 
 
 In Italy w John for our anniversary & just heard the sad news Marcella Hazan has passed. We will remember her in our hearts & our food. — rachael ray (@rachael_ray) September 29, 2013 
 
 RIP, and God bless you, Marcella Hazan. Your books bridged a gap between my mother & I during very bad times. You continue to inspire me. — robicellis (@robicellis) September 29, 2013 
 
 I met Marcella Hazan when I first started cooking and she made me obscenely buttered toast with fresh sardines. I'll never forget. RIP — alex guarnaschelli (@guarnaschelli) September 29, 2013 
 
 A sad farewell to Marcella Hazan, whose books taught me more about happiness than those of any philosopher. Sit tibi terra levis. — David Wondrich (@DavidWondrich) September 29, 2013 
 
 Farewell to Marcella Hazan. Italian food in this country (and in so many others) would have been much less the poorer without her. — Jay Rayner (@jayrayner1) September 29, 2013 
 
 Marcella Hazan is survived by her husband, Victor, son Guiliano, and daughter-in-law, Lael. 
 
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 Marcella Hazan, whose many cookbooks introduced Americans to the true food of Italy, died Sunday morning at her home in Longboat Key, Fla., according to her husband, Victor Hazan. She was 89 and had been in failing health for several months. 
 
 Her daughter-in-law Lael Sara Caplan Hazan announced Hazan’s death on her Facebook page. “The world of authentic home cooking has lost a giant today. My mother-in-law Marcella Hazan, melted away peacefully, my father-in-law Victor was at her side.” 
 
 Hazan was sometimes compared in importance to Julia Child, and if she never quite achieved Child’s personal popularity, her impact can be measured in the widespread popularity in this country of the cuisine she loved and championed. 
 
 Tributes have poured in from fans all over the world, famous and non-famous alike. Television star Rachael Ray tweeted: “In Italy w John for our anniversary & just heard the sad news Marcella Hazan has passed. We will remember her in our hearts & our food.” 
 
 British restaurant critic Jay Rayner tweeted: “Farewell to Marcella Hazan. Italian food in this country (and in so many others) would have been much less the poorer without her.” 
 
 And fan William Parker posted on Hazan’s Facebook page: “You gave your soul to others, generously and passionately. You taught the world. You brought Italy to life for the world.” 
 
 For all of her achievements — seven bestselling books and an army of fans who turned out for every cooking class — Hazan was an accidental cookbook writer. She had earned doctorates in biology and natural science from the University of Ferrara when she followed her husband to the United States in the late 1950s. She began teaching cooking classes to have something to do and was quickly discovered — as were so many cookbook authors of the day — by the late New York Times food editor Craig Claiborne. 
 
 “I had never heard of her, but someone said they had just taken fantastic Italian cooking lessons from this woman, so I called her and introduced myself and said I would like to talk to her," Claiborne told me in 1991. "She said I might come over for lunch, but she made it clear she had never heard of Craig Claiborne. When the article appeared, she was dumbfounded. She became well known to the general public of New York almost instantly." 
 
 Her first book, "Classic Italian Cooking," was originally published in 1973 by Harper's Magazine Press, but her writing career really took off when she met famed cookbook editor Judith Jones two years later. Editor of James Beard and Julia Child, Jones bought the rights for the book for Knopf and republished it in 1976. It is still in print more than 35 years later. 
 
 "There wasn't anything like a classic Italian cookbook before Marcella," Jones once said. "She was really the first to make Northern Italian cuisine available to Americans." 
 
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– Marcella Hazan—"the first mother of Italian cooking in America," according to restaurateur Lidia Bastianich—has died at age 89 in her Florida home, after years of emphysema. Even if you've never heard her name, Hazan may have influenced your cooking, the New York Times points out; in a tweet, Mark Bittman calls her "one of the true cooking greats in US history," the Braiser reports. Known for her Bolognese, minestrone, and pork braised in milk, she emphasized simplicity. When the Italian-born Hazan first moved to the US, she was disgusted by US versions of her native food, the Times explains. She began teaching cooking classes at her home; eventually impressing then-New York Times food editor Craig Claiborne. Three years later, in 1973, she published her first cookbook, Classic Italian Cooking. It was translated, like all her writing, by her husband, and remains in print today. After that, she wrote six more bestsellers, the Los Angeles Times notes. "She was really the first to make Northern Italian cuisine available to Americans," says editor Judith Jones.