"American supermarkets," she nearly spat during a recent visit to Philadelphia, "are like a big cemetery." As for the chicken produced by this country, well, she's "never seen anything so dead." The pasta is either mushy or underdone. Our basil "tastes like mint." And please, do not get her started on this silly fad called "organic."

After years of cooking from her recipes, I had come to think of this small, snowy-haired octogenarian as simply "Marcella." I imagined her as an exacting but warmhearted peasant, bent over a pot (earthenware, preferably) of her glorious Bolognese, patiently coaxing it through its four-hour journey from raw ground beef to an ambrosial cream for pasta (tagliatelle, preferably).

But after spending an evening watching her talk up her new memoir, Amarcord: Marcella Remembers, to fans at the America-Italy Society and Free Library, I made a mental note never to address her by anything other than Mrs. Hazan. I doubt I'll ever think in the same way about the witty but prickly woman with the double doctorate in natural sciences. Her well-honed tongue rapidly sliced and diced through questions both silly and earnest, in a voice scoured rough by a lifelong fondness for tobacco and whiskey.

The same litany of saucy pronouncements and long-held grievances garnish Hazan's memoir. Hazan is a person who, when she suffers a slight, clearly remembers it forever. As does her Italian-born, American-raised husband of 53 years, Victor Hazan, the collaborator who might just as well have had his name alongside hers on Amarcord's jacket.

This helps explain the title, which means "I remember" in Marcella's native Emilia-Romagna dialect. Together they skewer former editors, food-industry associates, and thick-fingered students, as they selectively recall Marcella's rise to fame.

There are several beat-up cookbooks on my kitchen shelf, but nothing bears the scars of use as much as the tomato- and olive-oil-soaked pages of Hazan's The Classic Italian Cookbook, the first of her six. It appeared in 1973, in that primitive time when Americans considered veal parmigiana and garlic bread the glory of the Italian table, and instantly turned her into the Julia Child of Italian cuisine.

Hazan exposed those dishes for the pretenders they were (and remain in some places). She taught America to respect real Italian food, with its emphasis on intense, earthy, minimally adorned flavors. She can conjure up stunning dishes using nothing more than a marinade of olive oil, lemon and sea salt. While I've since gotten friendly with the gals at The River Cafe Cook Book, and their more modern take on Italian cuisine, it's Marcella I always come back to for guidance.

I am not alone in my devotion, judging by the adoring crowds at last week's events. Alan Razak, a Philadelphia developer who discovered Italian cooking as a high school exchange student, cites Hazan's commitment to authenticity as her greatest achievement. "She's better than anyone at translating Italian recipes for American cooks," he explained.

I knew Hazan was demanding from the stern tone of her cooking instructions. And you can't argue with her low opinion of American supermarkets or chicken. But until I read her memoir, I hadn't recognized the zealot under the covers, or understood that her promotion of a pure, unchanging idea of Italian cuisine amounted to an almost religious crusade.

Or, that like many crusaders, she discovered her cause late.

Some of her memoir's most evocative passages are set during her pre-cooking period, which coincided with World War II. Forced to take refuge in the countryside, her citified family fell back on their deeply embedded food-making skills to survive. They raised pigs, bartered home-produced salt for honey, and learned to substitute chili for the unavailable peppercorns when they cured meat.

Cotechino, a creamy sausage made from the rind of a pig's snout, became Hazan's favorite. But all food was precious. If the air raid siren blew during dinner, the family raced to the shelter with plates in outstretched hands, lest the meager meal should be spoiled by falling plaster. But the actual cooking was mainly something Hazan's mother and nonna did, while she pursued her doctorates.

She was 45 and living a reluctant expatriate life in Manhattan when her kitchen skills were discovered in 1970 by the New York Times' influential food editor, Craig Claiborne. His name meant nothing to her, but she invited him to lunch anyway when he called. After his feature story about her fledgling cooking school appeared, she became a sensation and belatedly discovered her life's calling.

Hazan's telling of the encounter with Claiborne pretty much captures her ambivalence about American life. She had moved to New York after Victor's Italian-Jewish parents demanded he take over the family's furrier business. Not understanding a word of English, Marcella abandoned her science career and embraced the role of a traditional Italian housewife, to the point of preparing a hot lunch daily for her husband.

Before coming to America, she recalled, "I had cooked not one meal in my life." Victor, who had been a dapper aspiring writer, was the one obsessed with food.

Determined to please, she researched traditional Italian cooking as assiduously as she had zoology at school. This was the 1950s, when olive oil and basil were exotic substances that had to be hunted down. When Victor expressed an interest in Chinese cuisine, she signed up for cooking classes.

It was during a class that her fellow students peppered Hazan with questions about what she cooked at home. Their question struck her as bizarre. "Why, normal food, of course," she replied.

It's the ultimate provincial answer and explains everything about Hazan and her food prejudices. For her, the simple, artisanal dishes of her Emilia-Romagna childhood constitute normal food. Everything else, French cuisine included, she considered aberrant.

The good part about this attitude is that it compelled Hazan to become a preservationist for Italy's great food traditions at a time when natural food production and home cooking were under assault by modern life, even in Italy.