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What's so special about Mediterranean food?

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  • What's so special about Mediterranean food?

    Middle East Online
    Dec 1 2004

    What's so special about Mediterranean food?


    Paradox of how Mediterranean became source of chef's inspiration,
    temple for gastronomy.


    By Dominique Ageorges- PARIS

    The Mediterranean region has grown into one of the main inspirations
    for cook books over the years, claiming a prominent place on
    restaurant menus, but the phenomenon is somewhat of a paradox.

    The region around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, poor
    agriculturally, has succeeded over the centuries in turning itself
    into a temple for gastronomy.

    Italian food is most often conjured up as the Mediterranean diet but
    the region stretches from southern Spain to Lebanon.

    With its islands and rivers, the Mediterranean region is the cradle
    of three religions -- Christianity, Judaism and Islam -- and "was a
    basin where basically only vines and olive trees grew", said Paul
    Balta, author of "Boire et Manger en Mediterranee" (Drink and Eat in
    the Mediterranean).

    But he said several plants originating from China acclimatised in a
    number of central Asian countries, such as almond trees in
    Afghanistan and apricot trees in Armenia, before spreading to the
    Mediterranean basin.

    "What is quite extraordinary is that little by little this
    Mediterranean formed itself into a way of life, a gastronomy, by
    adopting products from China for example, and adapting them and
    exporting them itself," Balta added.

    In the seventh century for example, invaders from Arab countries took
    oranges and watermelons to Spain. Later, red beans and potatoes came
    from the American continent.

    Over about 10,000 years, the region of the Mediterranean Sea has
    never stopped being a "crossroads for exchanges" in trade and
    culture, he said.

    Renowned French chef Alain Ducasse has since 1987 celebrated
    Mediterranean cooking in his Three Star Michelin restaurant in Monaco
    and counts among his books "Le Grand Livre de Cuisine de la
    Mediterranee", a reference for this style of cooking.

    "Nowhere else have as many civilisations and therefore cuisines
    succeeded, clashed together and accumulated," he said.

    "Everywhere there remain the traces of explorers, invaders, warriors,
    religious figures, travellers who have enriched, changed, transformed
    the original dishes of each," he said.

    Couscous or tapas are examples of where dishes from different
    cultures have crossbred. "Jewish people added meatballs to couscous,
    a formula then adopted by the Arabs," Balta said, who was born in
    Egypt and specialises in the Arab world.

    Lebanese mezze, Spanish tapas and French appetizers "reflect a love
    of conversation, a conviviality that is typically Mediterranean", he
    added.

    Guy Martin, chef of the Grand Vefour restaurant in Paris, hails from
    Savoie in southeast France, a region that was once Italian.

    He said he grew up eating lots of nuts and olive oil but that the
    Mediterranean for him also conjured up the idea of a wide variety of
    brightly coloured vegetables.

    Oscar Caballero, an Argentine journalist who has just published a
    book on the restaurant of Spanish chef Ferran Adria, El Bulli, said
    the taste for the Mediterranean was recent.

    "Twenty years ago in Catalonia you would never have seen a bottle of
    olive oil on the table of a restaurant," he said, adding it was
    thanks to chefs like Ducasse who "showed the way".
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