Mediterranean

The Magical Unity

In the images of gnarled olive trees, colorful fishing boats in turquoise harbors, warm breezes, and whitewashed terraced villages, an enchanting magic draws historian and traveler alike to the Mediterranean. This great middle sea pulls us in awe to its architectural glories, to its dolorous yet eternally hopeful people, and to its evocative pantry of foods. A Mediterranean feast is not only the act of eating together with family and friends, it also refers to the experiences that enrich us whenever we touch upon Mediterranean history and life.

What is Mediterranean cuisine? The Mediterranean is composed of many different cultures, and there seems to be no single image that represents a "magical" unity. Even with the shared trinity of ingredients (olive oil, wheat, and the vine), Italian food is a world apart from Turkish food, yet both are Mediterranean.

The Mediterranean of today is entirely different from the Mediterranean of the classical world. In classical times there were no oranges or lemons, or potatoes and tomatoes, which had yet to arrive from the East and the New World. Asiatic rice, called "the blessing brought by the Arabs", was unknown as were peppers from South America, maize from North America, and coffee from East Africa.The grandeur of the Mediterranean has led to a conception of a culinary rich Mediterranean that in reality is a late twentieth-century development based on centuries of evolution.

Mediterranean food is not Spanish, French, or Italian food. Because of the complexity of its history, cultures, religions, and geography, Mediterranean food has developed not as national cuisines but as a variety of regional cuisines based on an extreme geography. The Mediterranean cuisines we eat today did not evolve from the classical era nor were they born in France in the mid-seventeenth century; rather they came about as a result of three great revolutions affecting Mediterranean history: the Arab agricultural revolution of the ninth through twelfth centuries, the Age of Exploration in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the creative impulse of the Renaissance. The past millenium has formed the Mediterranean food of today. The most important facet of this culinary evolution is the constant historic battle of Mediterranean peoples against famine. The Mediterranean food we eat today is the result of Mediterranean peoples inspired by, if not completely receptive to, the advanced Islamic culture and agronomy of the early part of the millenium, enhanced by the foods brought to the Mediterranean from exploration and refined by the aesthetic ideals of Renaissance humanism.

Mediterranean cuisines developed as a reaction against the monotonous foods of centuries of famine and starvation. The historical progression of Mediterranean culinary culture is a battle of taste over monotony, of life over death.

Cuisine is the telos of productive agriculture and husbandry beyond sustenance. For the historian to conclude his or her inquiries with the agricultural and not with cuisine seems to miss the whole point. Cuisine is the tactile connection we have to breathing history. History and culture offer us a vibrant living society that we taste through cuisine. All cuisine is a reflection of the society from which it emanates. All cuisine is historical, rooted in the agricultures of the region in question. And cuisine has always been rooted in two foundations, the poor and the rich. In the end, cuisine is the result of culture. Food is essential to our lives and our happiness, and the cooking of good food satisfies both.