Mediterranean cuisine

thumb|upright=1.2|[[Bread, wine, and fruit: The Lunch by Diego Velázquez, ]]

Mediterranean cuisine is the food and methods of preparation used by the people of the Mediterranean basin. The idea of a Mediterranean cuisine originates with the cookery writer Elizabeth David's A Book of Mediterranean Food (1950), and was amplified by other writers working in English.

Many writers define the three core elements of the cuisine as the olive, wheat, and the grape, yielding olive oil, bread and pasta, and wine; other writers deny that the widely varied foods of the Mediterranean basin constitute a cuisine at all. A common definition of the geographical area covered, proposed by David, follows the distribution of the olive tree.

The region spans a wide variety of cultures with distinct cuisines, in particular (going anticlockwise around the region) the  Moroccan, Algerian,

Tunisian,

Libyan, Egyptian, Levantine, Ottoman (Turkish), Greek, Italian, French (Provençal), and Spanish, although some authors include additional cuisines. Portuguese cuisine, in particular, is partly Mediterranean in character.

The historical connections of the region, as well as the impact of the Mediterranean Sea on the region's climate and economy, mean that these cuisines share dishes beyond the core trio of oil, bread, and wine, such as roast lamb or mutton, meat stews with vegetables and tomato (for example, Spanish andrajos), vegetable stews (Provençal ratatouille, Spanish pisto, Italian ciambotta), and the salted cured fish roe, bottarga, found across the region. Spirits based on anise are drunk in many countries around the Mediterranean.

The cooking of the area is not to be confused with the Mediterranean diet, made popular because of the apparent health benefits of a diet rich in olive oil, wheat and other grains, fruits, vegetables, and a certain amount of seafood, but low in meat and dairy products. Mediterranean cuisine encompasses the ways that these and other ingredients, including meat, are dealt with in the kitchen, whether they are health-giving or not.

Geography

thumb|center|upright=2.5|[[Elizabeth David defines the Mediterranean region as that of the olive, Olea europaea.]]

Various authors have defined the scope of Mediterranean cooking either by geography or by its core ingredients. Elizabeth David, in A Book of Mediterranean Food (1950), defines her scope as "the cooking of the Mediterranean shores" and sketches out the geographical limits:

Despite this definition, David's book focuses largely on Spain, France, Italy, and Greece.

[[File:Olivový háj.jpg|thumb |upright=1.3|"Those blessed lands of sun and sea and olive trees":

Other authors question that there is any such common core:

The cookery author Clifford A. Wright wrote in 1999: "There really is no such thing as 'Mediterranean cuisine'. At the same time, we seem to know what we mean when we use the expression ..." Wright argued that David's book itself was largely about specifically French Mediterranean food, pointing out that "only 4 percent of her recipes come from North Africa or the Levant", so that the focus was on an aspect of European cuisine, largely omitting coverage of Middle Eastern cuisine.

Since David's time, a variety of books on Mediterranean cuisine have been written, including Abu Shihab's 2012 book of that name; Helstosky's 2009 book; books by other cookery writers include S. Rowe's Purple Citrus and Sweet Perfume: Cuisine of the Eastern Mediterranean (2011); and Mari-Pierre Moine's Mediterranean Cookbook (2014). There are many more cookbooks covering specific cuisines in the Mediterranean area, such as B. Santich's The Original Mediterranean Cuisine: Medieval Recipes for Today (1995), on Catalan and Italian recipes; and H. F. Ullman's (2006), on the cooking of Tunisia, Spain, and Italy, each one subtitled "Mediterranean Cuisine".

Origins

thumb|upright=0.9|The [[haricot beans used in a southern French cassoulet were brought to Europe from the Americas.]]

The ingredients of Mediterranean cuisine are to an extent different from those of the cuisine of Northern Europe, with olive oil instead of butter, and wine instead of beer. The list of available ingredients has changed over the centuries. One major change was the introduction of many foods by the Arabs to Portugal, Spain, and Sicily in the Middle Ages. creating the distinctive culinary tradition of Al-Andalus.

Another major change was the arrival of foods from the Americas in early modern times (around the sixteenth century), notably the incorporation of the potato into Northern European cuisine, and the eager adoption of the tomato into Mediterranean cuisine. The tomato, so central now to that cuisine, was first described in print by Pietro Andrea Mattioli in 1544. Similarly, many of the species of Phaseolus beans now used around the Mediterranean, including P. vulgaris (the French or haricot bean), were brought back from the Americas by Spanish and Portuguese explorers.

In mountainous areas of the Mediterranean, wheat was often replaced by chestnuts as a staple food, earning the chestnut tree the name "bread tree".

Cooking

thumb|left|Syrian [[apricot paste "dissolved in water to make a cooling drink" and stews of meat with vegetables and tomato (such as Spanish andrajos, French ', Italian ciambotta, and Turkish buğu kebabı), are indeed found all around the Mediterranean. Seafood including sea bream and squid is eaten, often in stews, stuffed, or fried, in Spanish, French, and Italian dishes. Despite this, however, the lands bordering the Mediterranean sea have distinct regional cuisines, from the Maghrebi, Levant, and Ottoman to the Italian, French, and Spanish. Each of those, in turn, has national and provincial variations.

File:Mediterranean Cuisines.svg|The major culinary regions of the Mediterranean

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Maghrebi

thumb|[[Tagines slow-cooking on a Moroccan street]]

Mediterranean Maghrebi cuisine includes the cuisines of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. One of the most characteristic dishes of the region is couscous, a steamed, small-grained wheat semolina, served with a stew. The dish is ancient, mentioned by the Medieval traveller Ibn Battuta, and found for example also in the Western Sicilian cuisine, especially in the province of Trapani, where it was re-introduced after 1600.

One stew that may be served with couscous is the Moroccan tagine, a hearty, somewhat dry dish of meat and vegetables, cooked slowly in a pot (called a tagine) with a tall conical lid. Dishes from the Maghreb region of North Africa are often coloured and flavoured with the hot spice mixtures harissa and ras el hanout (containing such spices as cumin, coriander, saffron, cinnamon, cloves, chillies, and paprika). Other characteristic flavourings of the region are preserved lemons and dried apricots and raisins.

Egyptian

thumb|[[Ful medames on an Egyptian street with bread and pickled vegetables]]

Egyptian cuisine has ancient roots, with evidence that, for example, cheese has been made in Egypt since at least 3,000 BC. Falafel are small fried croquettes of bean or chickpea flour, currently also eaten across the Levant and the West, but originating in Egypt's Roman era; they are claimed as theirs by Coptic Christians. Duqqa is a dip made of pounded herbs, hazelnuts, and spices, eaten with bread. Kushari is a vegan dish of rice, lentils, and pasta, variously garnished; it began as food for the poor, but has become a national dish.

Levantine

thumb|[[Levantine cuisine|Levantine tabbouleh]]

Levantine cuisine is the cooking of the Levant (Mediterranean coast, east of Egypt). Among the most distinctive foods of this cuisine are traditional small meze dishes such as tabbouleh, hummus, and baba ghanoush. Tabbouleh is a dish of bulgur cracked wheat with tomatoes, parsley, mint, and onion, dressed with olive oil and lemon juice. Baba ghanoush, sometimes called "poor man's caviar", is a puree of aubergine with olive oil, often mixed with chopped onion, tomato, cumin, garlic, lemon juice, and parsley. The dish is popular across the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa.

Ful medames, originally from Egypt and still a national dish there, consists of fava beans with oil and cumin; it is popular throughout the Levant. The dish may be ancient: dried beans of Neolithic age have been found near Nazareth, Israel.

Ottoman

thumb|left|[[Ottoman cuisine|Ottoman and Turkish cuisine combine similar elements.]]

Ottoman cuisine has given rise to the cuisines of modern Turkey, parts of the Balkans, Cyprus, and Greece. A distinctive element is the family of small flaky pastries called börek. These are popular and widespread across the Eastern Mediterranean region, and date as far back as ancient Roman times. Börek are made of thin sheets of filo pastry, filled with mixtures such as meat, caramelised onion and sweet peppers.

Another widespread and popular dish is moussaka, a baked dish of aubergine or potato with various other ingredients: often minced meat and tomatoes, sometimes a layer of egg custard or béchamel sauce on top. In its Greek variant, well known outside the region, it includes layers of aubergine and minced meat with custard or béchamel sauce on top, but that version is a relatively recent innovation, introduced by the chef Nikolaos Tselementes in the 1920s.

Greek

thumb|upright=0.8|[[Greek salad ]]

Greek cookery makes wide use of vegetables, olive oil, grains, fish, wine, and meat (white and red, including lamb, poultry, rabbit, and pork). Other important ingredients include olives, cheese, aubergine, courgette, lemon juice, vegetables, herbs, bread, and yoghurt. Some more dishes that can be traced back to ancient Greece are: lentil soup, fasolada, retsina (white or rosé wine flavoured with pine resin), and pasteli (sesame seeds baked with honey); some to the Hellenistic and Roman periods include: loukaniko (dried pork sausage); and Byzantium: feta cheese, avgotaraho (bottarga), and paximadhia (rusk). Lakerda (pickled fish), mizithra cheese and desserts such as diples, koulourakia, moustokouloura, and melomakarono also date back to the Byzantine period, while the variety of different pitas probably dates back to ancient times. Much of Greek cuisine is part of the larger tradition of Ottoman cuisine, the names of the dishes revealing Arabic, Persian, or Turkish roots: moussaka, tzatziki, yuvarlakia, keftes, and so on. Many dishes' names probably entered the Greek vocabulary during Ottoman times, or earlier in contact with the Persians and the Arabs. However, some dishes may be pre-Ottoman, only taking Turkish names later; the historians of food John Ash and Andrew Dalby, for example, speculate that grape-leaf dolmadhes were made by the early Byzantine period, while Alan Davidson traces trahana to the ancient Greek tragos and skordalia to the ancient Athenian skorothalmi.

Balkan

David barely mentioned the non-Greek Balkans, stating only that yoghurt and moussaka are widespread in the region.

Italian

thumb|left|[[Spaghetti alle vongole, a typical Italian dish of pasta with clams]]

Mediterranean Italian cuisine includes much of Italy outside the north and the mountainous inland regions. It is a diverse cuisine, but among its best-known and most characteristic foods are pizza in Neapolitan and Sicilian styles, pasta dishes such as spaghetti, and risotto. Anna Gosetti della Salda's book of Italian regional cookery lists 37 risotto recipes, 18 of them from the Veneto. Variations among Veneto risottos can include chicken, eels, quails, or clams.

Pizza is a piece of bread dough rolled out thin, with a topping which varies from place to place, but is generally much simpler than those in the English-speaking world. Although the toppings in Italian pizzas may be, depending on the order, unquantifiable, in the most rigorous tradition of Neapolitan cuisine there are only two variants: Margherita and marinara.

Spaghetti dishes also vary. It may be eaten as David says "simply with olive oil and garlic", without cheese, or with a sauce of "very red and ripe peeled tomatoes", cooked briefly and flavoured with garlic and either basil or parsley.

French

thumb|[[Marseille bouillabaisse, with the fish served separately after the soup]]

Mediterranean French cuisine includes the cooking styles of Provence, Occitania, and the island of Corsica. Distinctive dishes that make use of local ingredients include bouillabaisse and salade niçoise.