A Book of Mediterranean Food

PENGUIN BOOKS A BOOK OF MEDITERRANEAN FOOD Elizabeth David discovered her taste for good food and wine when she lived with a French family while studying history and literature at the Sorbonne. A few years after her return to England she made up her mind to learn to cook so that she could reproduce for herself and her friends some of the food that she had come to appreciate in France. Subsequently, Mrs David lived and kept house in France, Italy, Greece, Egypt and India, as well as in England. She found not only the practical side but also the literature of cookery of absorbing interest and studied it throughout her life. Her first book, Mediterranean Food, appeared in 1950. French Country Cooking followed in 1951, Italian Food, after a year of research in Italy, in 1954, Summer Cooking in 1955 and French Provincial Cooking in 1960. These books and a stream of often provocative articles in magazines and newspapers changed the outlook of English cooks for ever. In her later works she explored the traditions of English cooking (Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen, 1970) and with English Bread and Yeast Cookery (1977) became the champion of a long overdue movement for good bread. An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (1984) is a selection of articles first written for the Spectator, Vogue, Nova and a range of other journals. The posthumously published Harvest of the Cold Months (1994) is a fascinating historical account of aspects of food preservation, the worldwide ice trade and the early days of refrigeration. South Wind Through the Kitchen, an anthology of recipes and articles from Mrs David’s nine books, selected by her family and friends, and by the chefs and writers she inspired, was published in 1997, and acts as a reminder of what made Elizabeth David one of the most influential and loved of English food writers. A final anthology of unpublished recipes, uncollected articles and essays entitled Is There a Nutmeg in the House? is also available in Penguin. In 1973 her contribution to the gastronomic arts was recognized with the award of the first André Simon Memorial Fund Book Award. An OBE followed in 1976, and in 1977 she was made a chevalier de l’ordre du Mérite Agricole. In the same year English Bread and Yeast Cookery won Elizabeth David the Glenfiddich Writer of the Year Award. The universities of Essex and Bristol conferred honorary doctorates on her in 1979 and 1988 respectively. In 1982 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 1986 was awarded a CBE. Elizabeth David died in 1992. ELIZABETH DAVID A Book of Mediterranean Food SECOND REVISED EDITION DECORATED BY JOHN MINTON AND PUBLISHED BY PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England www.penguin.com First published by John Lehmann 1950 This edition revised for Macdonald and Co. by Elizabeth David and first published by them in 1958 First revised edition published in Penguin Books 1955 Second revised edition 1965 Reprinted with a new introduction 1991 14 Copyright © Elizabeth David, 1958, 1965, 1988 All rights reserved An illustrated and revised edition was published by Dorling Kindersley in 1988 Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser ISBN: 978-0-14-195649-7 TO Veronica Nicholson * Contents * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Introduction Acknowledgements Preface to the Penguin Edition Preface to the Second Revised Penguin Edition Introduction to the 1988 Edition Table of Equivalent Gas and Electric Oven Temperatures Table of Equivalent American Measurements SOUPS EGGS AND LUNCHEON DISHES Snails FISH Shell Fish Sea and Freshwater Fish Octopus and Cuttlefish MEAT Veal Lamb and Mutton Beef Pork Kid Boar SUBSTANTIAL DISHES POULTRY AND GAME Hare and Rabbit VEGETABLES COLD FOOD AND SALADS Note on Hors d’Œuvre A FEW SWEETS JAMS AND PRESERVES SAUCES Index Introduction * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * THE cooking of the Mediterranean shores, endowed with all the natural resources, the colour and flavour of the South, is a blend of tradition and brilliant improvisation. The Latin genius flashes from the kitchen pans. It is honest cooking, too; none of the sham Grande Cuisine of the International Palace Hotel. ‘It is not really an exaggeration’, wrote Marcel Boulestin, ‘to say that peace and happiness begin, geographically, where garlic is used in cooking.’ From Gibraltar to the Bosphorus, down the Rhone Valley, through the great seaports of Marseilles, Barcelona, and Genoa, across to Tunis and Alexandria, embracing all the Mediterranean islands, Corsica, Sicily, Sardinia, Crete, the Cyclades, Cyprus (where the Byzantine influence begins to be felt), to the mainland of Greece and the much disputed territories of Syria, the Lebanon, Constantinople, and Smyrna, stretches the influence of Mediterranean cooking, conditioned naturally by variations in climate and soil and the relative industry or indolence of the inhabitants. The ever recurring elements in the food throughout these countries are the oil, the saffron, the garlic, the pungent local wines; the aromatic perfume of rosemary, wild marjoram and basil drying in the kitchens; the brilliance of the market stalls piled high with pimentos, aubergines, tomatoes, olives, melons, figs, and limes; the great heaps of shiny fish, silver, vermilion, or tiger-striped, and those long needle fish whose bones so mysteriously turn out to be green. There are, too, all manner of unfamiliar cheeses made from sheep or goat’s milk; the butchers’ stalls are festooned with every imagineable portion of the inside of every edible animal (anyone who has lived for long in Greece will be familiar with the sound of air gruesomely whistling through sheep’s lungs frying in oil). There are endless varieties of currants and raisins, figs from. Smyrna on long strings, dates, almonds, pistachios, and pine kernel nuts, dried melon seeds and sheets of apricot paste which is dissolved in water to make a cooling drink. All these ingredients make rich and colourful dishes. Over-picturesque, perhaps, for every day; but then who wants to eat the same food every day? I have, therefore, varied this collection with some classic dishes and recipes from regions of France other than those bordering the Mediterranean. I have also devoted a special chapter to dishes which constitute a meal in themselves, such as Paëlla, Cassoulet, and Pilaffs, and another chapter to cold food, fine dishes which are particularly suitable to our servantless lives; prepared in advance and either preceded or followed by a spicy, aromatic southern dish, what more could one want? With this selection (it does not claim to be more) of Mediterranean dishes, I hope to give some idea of the lovely cookery of those regions to people who do not already know them, and to stir the memories of those who have eaten this food on its native shores, and who would like sometimes to bring a flavour of those blessed lands of sun and sea and olive trees into their English kitchens. London, 1950 E.D. MIDDLE EASTERN COOKERY. A handful of the recipes in this book, learned when I lived in Alexandria, Cairo and Greece, demonstrate the cooking of the Near East. To those who would like to know more of this most interesting and beautiful food I cannot do better than recommend a recently published and comprehensive book on the subject: Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden (Nelson, 1968). 1969 E.D. Acknowledgements * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * MY thanks are due to the late Norman Douglas and to his publishers Messrs Chapman & Hall and Messrs Secker and Warburg for permission to include the recipe from Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology and the extracts from South Wind respectively; also to Messrs Faber & Faber for two extracts from Prospero’s Cell by Lawrence Durrell; to John Lane (The Bodley Head) for a quotation from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein; to Messrs Hutchinson & Co. for permission to reproduce a passage from Cross Channel by Alan Houghton Brodrick; to Messrs William Heinemann and Mrs Frieda Lawrence for the extract from D. H. Lawrence’s Sea and Sardinia, and also to Messrs Macmillan for the passage from Sir Osbert Sitwell’s Great Morning; to Messrs Cassell & Co. for permission to quote from Sir Compton Mackenzie’s First Athenian Memories; to Messrs Edward Arnold for permission to reproduce a recipe from Colonel Kenney-Herbert’s Fifty Luncheons; to the owner of the copyright of Things that have Interested Me by Arnold Bennett; to Mr Innes Rose of John Farquharson Ltd for his permission to include an extract from Henry James’s A Little Tour in France; to Alfred Knopf Inc. of New York for permission to give the passage from Théophile Gautier’s book Un Voyage en Espagne, translated into English by Catherine Alison Phillips under the title A Romantic in Spain; and to Les Editions Denoel and Messrs Ivor Nicholson & Watson for the passage from The Happy Glutton by Alin Laubreaux.

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