Mediterranean cuisine
Mediterranean cuisine is a term used to generalize about the food from the cultures adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea. Whether this is a useful category is disputed. Given the geography, the Mediterranean nation-states have influenced each other over time in both food and culture, and the cooking evolved into sharing common principles. Mediterranean cuisine is characterized by its range of ingredients and its many regional variations. The terrain has tended to favour the raising of goats and sheep.[1] Fish dishes are also common, although today much of the fish is imported. Seafood is still prominent in many of the standard recipes. Olive oil and garlic are widely used in Mediterranean cuisine. Grilled meats, pita bread, hummus, and falafel are very popular forms of the eastern type of the cuisine.
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[edit] Origin of the term
Sami Zubaida wrote in A Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East:
The idea of the ‘standard Mediterranean’ ... is a modern construction of food writers and publicists in Western Europe and North America earnestly preaching what is now thought to be a healthy diet to their audiences by invoking a stereotype of the healthy other on the shores of the Mediterranean. Their colleagues in Mediterranean countries are only too willing to perpetuate this myth. The fact of the matter is that the Mediterranean contains varied cultures...[2]
[edit] Use of the term
Massimo Alberini wrote in Guida all'Italia gastronomica in 1984:
Around 1975, under the impulse of one of those new nutritional directives by which good cooking is too often influenced, the Americans discovered the so-called Mediterranean diet.... The name... even pleased Italian government officials, who made one modification: changing from diet—a word which has always seemed punitive and therefore unpleasant—to Mediterranean cuisine.[3]
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[edit] References
- ^ Braudel, Fernard (1995). The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520203082. http://www.amazon.com/Mediterranean-World-Age-Philip-Vol/dp/0520203089.
- ^ Sami Zubaida, "National, Communal and Global Dimensions in Middle Eastern Food Cultures" p. 43 in Sami Zubaida and Richard Tapper, A Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East, London and New York, 1994 and 2000, ISBN 1-86064-603-4.
- ^ Massimo Alberini, Giorgio Mistretta, Guida all'Italia gastronomica, Touring Club Italiano, 1984, p. 37
[edit] See also
Albanian cuisine
Algerian cuisine
Armenian cuisine
Bosnian cuisine
Andorran cuisine
Croatian cuisine
Cypriot cuisine
Egyptian cuisine
French cuisine
Gibraltarian cuisine
Greek cuisine
Iraqi cuisine
Israeli cuisine
Italian cuisine
Sardinian cuisine
Sicilian cuisine
Jordanian cuisine
Lebanese cuisine
Libyan cuisine
Macedonian cuisine
Maltese cuisine
Montenegrin cuisine
Moroccan cuisine
Palestinian cuisine
Portuguese cuisine
Romanian cuisine
Serbian cuisine
Slovenian cuisine
Spanish cuisine
Syrian cuisine
Tunisian cuisine
Turkish cuisine
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