Clifford Wright - Mediterranean Small Plates: Platters and Spreads from the Worlds Healthiest Cuisine

PLATTERS AND SPREADS FROM THE WORLDS HEALTHIEST CUISINE

CLIFFORD A. WRIGHT

Around the Mediterranean, these small foods are known as hors doeuvre, amuse-gueules, amuse-bouches, passatempi, antipasti, tapas, mazza, meze, zakuski, qimiyya, and d, not to mention a host of inviting snacks and street foods. These little foods of the Mediterranean are becoming better known in America, where all of them are assumed to be appetizers. An appetizer is a food usually served before a meal as a means of stimulating the appetite, although Joe Moore in The Quotable Cook calls appetizers the little things you keep eating until you lose your appetite. For me an appetizer is a preview, a taste of things to come. Every recipe in this book is an appetizer, but many of these recipes are much more, and much less, because throughout the Mediterranean it is not a shared culinary tradition that the appetite needs an opening, a stimulation. In many cultures, especially in countries of North Africa and the Middle East, the notion of an appetizer is foreign. Keep in mind that the Mediterranean is a vast region, and people come from many different cultures, so even though their cuisines are founded on the same trinity of the olive, the grape, and wheat, they eat differently.

THE MEDITERRANEAN, IN A NUTSHELL

The Mediterranean region is made up of the countries and islands that touch the Mediterranean Sea. These nations include Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Albania, and Greece on its northern edge, and Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel to the east; Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco to the south; and the region is also sprinkled with many islands large and small such as Corsica (French), Sardinia (Italian), Sicily (Italian), Majorca (Spanish), Malta, Crete, Cyprus, and all the Greek Islands. The Mediterranean has hot and dry summers and cool, humid winters. Much of the landscape is hilly and dry, which are ideal conditions for growing the olives, grapes, dates, apricots, pistachios, and other fruits and nuts that feature prominently in Mediterranean cuisine. Being a large inland sea surrounded by three continents, the Mediterranean can boast seafood in a variety of specialties.

This book, then, is not what it appears: a book of appetizers. Instead, it is an introduction to the way people eat in the Mediterranean. The entire psychology of eating is different in the Mediterranean from how it is in the United States. Here we eat to live and in the Mediterranean they live to eat. Here we feed at the trough of the all-you-can-eat restaurant, while in the Mediterranean they would ask, Why would you want to eat all you can eat? Here we guzzle a beer or knock back several martinis on an empty stomach, and in the Mediterranean they are likely to sip wine that complements food. Here a man is admired if he is a human garbage disposal, while in the Mediterranean a man is more likely to be a gourmet, savoring each nibble of food as if he were kissing a womans neck. Here a woman will brag to her date that she doesnt cook, while in the Mediterranean women know the way to a mans heart. And men know the way to a womans heart. Having said that, I understand that this volume will be used both as an appetizer book and as a book on the Mediterranean style of eating, and you can feel comfortable with both approaches.