A Mediterranean Feast: The Story of the Birth of the Celebrated Cuisines of the Mediterranean from the Merchants of Venice to the Barbary Corsairs, with More than 500 Recipes [Hardcover]

Clifford A. Wright (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 1999

A groundbreaking culinary work of extraordinary depth and scope that spans more than one thousand years of history, A Mediterranean Feast tells the sweeping story of the birth of the venerated and diverse cuisines of the Mediterranean. Author Clifford A. Wright weaves together historical and culinary strands from Moorish Spain to North Africa, from coastal France to the Balearic Islands, from Sicily and the kingdoms of Italy to Greece, the Balkan coast, Turkey, and the Near East.

The evolution of these cuisines is not simply the story of farming, herding, and fishing; rather, the story encompasses wars and plagues, political intrigue and pirates, the Silk Road and the discovery of the New World, the rise of capitalism and the birth of city-states, the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, and the obsession with spices. The ebb and flow of empires, the movement of populations from country to city, and religion have all played a determining role in making each of these cuisines unique.

In A Mediterranean Feast, Wright also shows how the cuisines of the Mediterranean have been indelibly stamped with the uncompromising geography and climate of the area and a past marked by both unrelenting poverty and outrageous wealth. The book's more than five hundred contemporary recipes (which have been adapted for today's kitchen) are the end point of centuries of evolution and show the full range of culinary ingenuity and indulgence, from the peasant kitchen to the merchant pantry. They also illustrate the migration of local culinary predilections, tastes for food and methods of preparation carried from home to new lands and back by conquerors, seafarers, soldiers, merchants, and religious pilgrims.

A Mediterranean Feast includes fourteen original maps of the contemporary and historical Mediterranean, a guide to the Mediterranean pantry, food products resources, a complete bibliography, and a recipe and general index, in addition to a pronunciation key. An astonishing accomplishment of culinary and historical research and detective work in eight languages, A Mediterranean Feast is required--and intriguing--reading for any cook, armchair or otherwise.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

To answer the question, "What does Mediterranean mean and what is Mediterranean food" in The Mediterranean Feast, Clifford Wright delves into not merely history, but also agronomy, economics, geography, and more. He dedicates this monumental synthesis of the influences that eventually produced Mediterranean food as we know it to "the philosophers and the cooks." Fortunately, when it seems the intellectuals have taken over completely, one comes on Wright's lyrical description of eating a cassoulet, the golden-crusted, complex French bean stew, and other passages proving that Wright's intense quest for knowledge is based on a cook's culinary passion.

Illustrated with maps and brimming with more than 500 recipes, A Mediterranean Feast is Wright's way of leading the reader beyond the popular, romantic image of this region as an eternally bountiful land. He explains how the complex web of influences between the fall of the Roman Empire in the 6th century and the Age of Reason in the 17th century transformed the Mediterranean from a harsh place where poverty and famine made "dying of hunger ... a defining occurrence," to one we could romanticize, seeing it as ever lush with citrus, sun-ripe tomatoes, laden vines, exquisite cheeses, artisanal breads, and simple but well-fed folk. Those who rise to absorb the encyclopedic knowledge and engage with the ideas set forth in this dense work, such as the peasants' willingness to accept new, unfamiliar foods to relieve the boredom and scarcity of subsistence eating, will receive a profound education about Mediterranean life as it historically relates to food.

While A Mediterranean Feast feeds the mind, it also offers a wealth of authentic and intriguing dishes from the entire region, from France to Algeria and Spain to the Near East. Readers primarily interested in cooking can flip through this massive book, picking out remarkable recipes such as the pine nut omelet of southern France, Umm Ali, a creamy Egyptian pudding containing phyllo, nuts, coconut, and raisins, and Nohutlu Pilavi, the buttery Turkish pilaf of rice simmered with chickpeas. --Dana Jacobi

From Library Journal

Wright's first cookbook was Cucina Paradiso, a fascinating exploration of the Arab influences on Sicilian cuisine. Since then he has published several collections of quick and easy Italian food, but now he has returned to the culinary history and anthropology that is obviously his true love. Originally a Middle Eastern scholar, Wright has devoted an enormous amount of research to answering the question, "What is Mediterranean cuisine?" He debunks the common view of the region as one of historical culinary bounty, and he traces the influences and interconnections among the food and cooking of the diverse cultures that ring the Mediterranean Sea. Along the way, he considers such topics as "The History of the Fork" and provides dozens of what he refers to as "heirloom recipes"Athey have a history to them, but they are contemporary rather than re-creations of medieval or other early dishes. A unique work, this is recommended for history as well as cookery collections.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 840 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks (October 20, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688153054
• ISBN-13: 978-0688153052
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 8.4 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #371,333 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #87 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > European > Mediterranean

More About the Author

Clifford A. Wright is a cook, food writer, and independent research scholar who won the James Beard/KitchenAid Cookbook of the Year award and the James Beard Award for the Best Writing on Food in 2000 for A Mediterranean Feast (William Morrow). His book A Mediterranean Feast was also a finalist for the cookbook of the year award given by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. He is the author of fourteen other books, twelve of which are cookbooks, including his latest The Best Soups in the World (Wiley, 2010). Colman Andrews, former editor of Saveur magazine called Wright 'the reigning English-speaking expert on the cuisines and culinary culture of the Mediterranean--the real Mediterranean, the whole Mediterranean.' Clifford writes regularly for Saveur, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Fine Cooking, and Food and Wine and wrote all the food entries for Columbia University's Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East. Clifford has also lectured on food at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Georgetown University, and the Culinary Institute of America among other universities and venues. As a cooking teacher he has taught cooking classes at the Rhode Island School of Design, Sur la Table, Central Market in Texas and other cooking schools around the United States and Italy.
Before writing about food, Clifford was a foreign policy researcher at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., a Staff Fellow at the Institute of Arab Studies, Belmont, MA, the Executive Director of the American Middle East Peace Research Institute, Cambridge, MA and the publisher of Raising Kids, a child development newsletter for parents. He was written two books on the politics and history in the Middle East.
You can visit him at www.cliffordawright.com and read his food writing at www.zesterdaily.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Could be one of the greatest cookbooks ever written., November 15, 1999

By 

Nancy Gilson (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Mediterranean Feast: The Story of the Birth of the Celebrated Cuisines of the Mediterranean from the Merchants of Venice to the Barbary Corsairs, with More than 500 Recipes (Hardcover)

This is one of the great cookbooks of all time. "A Mediterranean Feast" is just that, a rich stew that one could feast on for years. The recipes are woven into the history of the Mediterranean and its foods, from the history of macaroni, to the spice trade, and the economic and social forces behind the cuisine; this is an altogether new approach to the cook book. The book itself is beautifully done, and the recipes look mouth-watering...everything from complex ones to a simple pasta with homemade ricotta cheese, ground pistachios and almonds and how to make a proper couscous. A fascinating culinary history with recipes.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant tour de force And Delicious Food, August 10, 2000

By 

Alfred Caton (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Mediterranean Feast: The Story of the Birth of the Celebrated Cuisines of the Mediterranean from the Merchants of Venice to the Barbary Corsairs, with More than 500 Recipes (Hardcover)

This tour de force is not your usual cookbook. It is a story, a history, told through recipes, the recipes acting much the same way illustrations do in an art book. The recipes are authentic and some are difficult and some are very easy. I tried the bouillabaisse recipe and it was as good as what I've had in Marseilles. The organization of the book is also untraditional. It's not organized like a cookbook but like a history, so the recipes appear as illustrative of the various historical trends that the author is writing about. This book is simply the best cookbook I've ever seen, the singularly most informative, and a real treasure that seems endless in its depth and information. A library without this book is like a library without a dictionary.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Food scholarship, September 13, 2000

By 

E. N. Anderson (Riverside, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Mediterranean Feast: The Story of the Birth of the Celebrated Cuisines of the Mediterranean from the Merchants of Venice to the Barbary Corsairs, with More than 500 Recipes (Hardcover)

This is an amazing resource, a thorough compendium of Mediterranean foodlore. Perhaps the most valuable aspect is the ethnographic research, with many unique folk recipes from the author's own observations. Almost equally valuable is the amazing bibliography, which lists all the significant historical works on food in the region, including medieval Arab titles. The author is far too modest on p. 567 when he claims to be a mere "food writer" and "consumer of scholarship." The scholarship here is superior and incredibly up-to-date on matters ranging from wheat taxonomy to Meccan trade. A few tiny errors have crept in (foxtail millet is NOT panic millet...). I disagree with the negative reviewer, above, on everything except one point: the organization of the recipes in the book is beyond rational analysis. But one can use the indexes, where everything is arranged for the cook.