Mediterranean Vegetables: A Cook's ABC of Vegetables and Their Preparation [Hardcover]

Clifford Wright (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 17, 2001

Wright presents an original and comprehensive A-to-Z culinary reference.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

First born as a simple appendix to Clifford A. Wright's bestselling A Mediterranean Feast (the 2000 James Beard Cookbook of the Year), Mediterranean Vegetables has grown up to be a stunning and useful guide in its own right. Part cookbook, part scholarship, part gardening guide, this A-to-Z reference encompasses the entire Mediterranean region and is sure to interest food scholars, those who grow vegetables, amateur cooks, food industry professionals, and foodies of every stripe, and open up the American kitchen to a whole new world of vegetables. Each of the more than 200 alphabetical entries--from Acanthus-Leaved Thistle to Zucchini--describes a vegetable; explains its origins, its culinary history, how to grow it, and where to get it; and provides recipes that range from simple to downright exotic.

Qarac bi'l-Tahina (Pumpkin Spread with Sesame Paste) is a pleasingly lighter and infinitely more intriguing version of the ubiquitous chickpea hummus, flavored, like its cousin, with sesame tahini, plenty of garlic, lemon juice, and freshly ground cumin seeds. The Syrian dish Bamya bi'l-Zayt (Okra with Olive Oil), flavored with 40 cloves of garlic, an onion, a bit of lemon juice, and fresh coriander, is made distinctly Middle Eastern by the pomegranate molasses that sweetens it. Carciofi con Mollica, or Artichoke Hearts in Citrus Sauce, harks back to the 19th century, when French-inspired Sicilian chefs of the aristocracy invented fabulous baroque recipes. The earthiness of the artichokes is drawn out by the tangy sauce, while salty anchovies and crunchy bread crumbs add welcome layers of complexity.

While most American cooks will never be able to get some of the vegetables and herbs listed (when was the last time you saw paper pumpkinseed or skirret at the local market?), the majority of the most popular vegetables in the Mediterranean--and of those included in Mediterranean Vegetables--are easily found in American markets. --Robin Donovan

From Publishers Weekly

A thoroughly comprehensive guide to vegetables from Mediterranean countries, Wright's latest is part cookbook, part academic reference. Originally an appendix to Wright's Mediterranean Feast, this book's alphabetically ordered vegetables run the gamut from acanthus-leaved thistle to zucchini. Wright admits that "practically speaking, only about eighty or ninety of the over two hundred vegetables listed will be even remotely available to a typical American cook." The book lists vegetables' English and Mediterranean names, characteristics, varieties, plant origins and history, and explains how to buy, store and prepare them for cooking. No nutritional information is given; the author wants to guide the reader away from what he views as "the gastronomically destructive `food as fuel' concept." While information on grape hyacinth, paper pumpkinseed and sea holly might seem esoteric to the average cook, some of Wright's recipes are treasures indeed. Shawandar bi'l-Laban (Beets with Yogurt) is stunningly colorful, and the fresh mint along with garlic is new and unexpected. Makbuba (A Potato and Bell Pepper Frittata in the Style of the Tunisian Jews) is made with ingredients most American cooks have, and caraway and coriander seeds enhance its simple ingredients in new ways. While Wright's recipes focus on vegetables, they are not exclusively vegetarian; it is common in Mediterranean cuisine for meat and dairy products to be used as condiments for vegetables. Impeccably researched, this book will appeal to botanists, food scholars and vegetable aficionados. Agent, Doe Coover.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Common Press (August 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558321969
• ISBN-13: 978-1558321960
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,049,867 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Culinary Reference of the First Order, November 22, 2003

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mediterranean Vegetables: A Cook's ABC of Vegetables and Their Preparation (Hardcover)

Clifford Wright is one of the leading writers, along with Elizabeth David, Paula Wolfert and Claudia Roden, on the cuisines of the Mediterranian. He describes this volume as an expanded appendix to his monumental, award winning `A Mediterranean Feast'.

I believe this book would be of interest to anyone with more than the most minimal interests in food. At the very least, it is a highly accessible catalogue of good vegetable dishes. Although some dishes do contain meat, fish, or meat stocks, it can also serve as an excellent resource for enlivening vegetarian diets, as the author does minimize meat ingredients.

These types of books are not commonly written in English by British or American writers. It always seems to be the Germans and the French who write the great compendia volumes for various interests. Unfortunately, good German and French and Italian works like this are hard to come by, even at the local Borders or Barnes and Noble. So, I am immensely grateful that Wright has rescued us, at least in the specialized world of Mediterranean cuisine.

Some people may find issue with his selection of vegetables. Wright's strategy is to be as broad as possible, including both vegetables only found in the wild and vegetables which have been imported to the Mediterranean shores from the orient or from the new world. I am very happy with this choice, especially since entries indicate the most likely point of origin for each plant and it's current distribution. There is nothing more annoying than looking for an entry in a reference book, not finding it, and wondering why it was left off, out of laziness or because it did indeed fall outside the scope of the book. With this book, that question should never arise. I also endorse the vegetable classification done by commercial criteria rather than by scientific criteria. Who could imagine this book without the tomato! My only disappointment here was that mushrooms were all lumped together under a single heading. Culinarily, this makes some sense, as most mushrooms are interchangeable in dishes, but I have to believe the distribution and ethnic uses of morels is quite different from portobellos.

One of the great joys of the book is that it's emphasis is both culinary and scholarly, in that much material, such as scientific names and common names in many different languages is available here along with very useful recipes. One direction in which the book is not exhaustive is in the choice of recipes. For vegetables such as artichokes and tomatoes, only a small representative sample is included. Whole books could be dedicated to the dishes of these vegetables. What we find is interesting, tasty examples which may not be found elsewhere.

I find the culinary contents of this book to be truly amazing and of tremendous value in any foodie's library. Surprisingly, I find several problems in the more scholarly content of the book. There are at least two statements on artichokes I find very surprising. One is that the choke is edible and the second that the stalk of the choke is not eaten. I rely on the authority of Mario Batali to believe both of these statements is incorrect, at least for Italians, who, Mario reports, regularly buy artichokes with long stems, peel, cook, and eat them with the heart. Another statement says that white asparagus is actually normal green asparagus, blanched before it is picked. `Blanched' is simply the wrong word, as it indicates a brief heating in water. A better word may be `bleached', although that has misleading associations as well. The fact is that they are whitened by mounding soil around the stalks to keep them away from sunlight. No heat of chemical is involved. The book would have been well served by a really good copy editor. Well, all the blurbs on the back cover are from culinary stars. No Nobel laureates here.

That aside, this is a wonderfully useful book. I wish many more of this type from Wright and other English speaking authors.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An ideal addition to regional recipe cookbook shelves, November 11, 2001

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mediterranean Vegetables: A Cook's ABC of Vegetables and Their Preparation (Hardcover)

Clifford Wright's Mediterranean Vegetables truly lives up to its title in offering more than two hundred delicious and inspiring recipes drawn from the such diverse Mediterranean bordering nations and regions as Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, North Africa, and the Middle East. From Umak od Hren sa Jabukom (Horseradish and Apple Sauce); Harisa (Hot Chile Paste); and Spinaci alla Genovese (Genoa-Style Spinach); to Yogurtin Salgam (Fried Turnips with Yogurt); Ardi shawki Maqli bi'l-Taratur (Fried Artichokes with Tartur Sauce); and Potage au Cresson (Watercress Soup); Mediterranean Vegetables is an ideal addition to the regional recipe cookbook shelves of anyone who enjoys culinary enhancements of daily meals or party menus.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Recipes from countries around the Mediterranean..., February 23, 2002

By 

Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mediterranean Vegetables: A Cook's ABC of Vegetables and Their Preparation (Hardcover)

MEDITERRANEAN VEGETABLES is misnamed. Many of the vegetables Clifford Wright lists in his book are not native to the Mediterranean, but rather hail from the Western Hemisphere. I was slightly annoyed when I realized this as I am a gardener and naively thought this book would get back to some "original" foods, but it does not. However, that being said, the book does contain some rather good recipes, and unlike other books on the various cuisines of the area, this book contains a nice selection of dishes that include eggplant. I am an eggplant nut, so for that reason alone I'll keep the book. Not only does the book include 10 recipes with eggplant as the star, all the recipes are tasty--although some are a bit spicy and not all are low-cal (maybe none of them are).

There are plenty of other good vegetable dishes. I also fancy okra, and Wright has included a delicious recipe "Okra with Olive Oil" that uses pomegranate molassas. Another dish Wright describes as a "guiless dish from Apulia" is "Oven-baked Potatoes and Mushrooms" with portobello mushrooms and pecorino cheese.

Wright says he is not a vegetarian, so don't buy this book if you're opposed to animal products in your vegetables. However, if you're an "ovo-lacto" veggie, you might check it out.