DON’T BE OBSESSIVE about methods and materials: that is the motto of the Mediterranean kitchen.
If you can’t quite master a new technique, don’t tell anyone. I can almost guarantee you they won’t know the difference.
Flavor counts far more than elaborate techniques and presentations, and flavor begins with the best ingredients. Each separate ingredient should be the finest you can afford, but if you can’t afford it or you’ve run out of it, don’t worry. Mediterranean cooks are notable for making do with what’s at hand. That’s an attitude I try to cultivate in my own kitchen.
With the exception of pastries, which often require a fairly precise balance of ingredients, nothing in this book is written in stone. If you don’t happen to have an ingredient, or if you don’t have enough to satisfy the recipe requirements, don’t let that stop you from preparing it. If you get halfway through a recipe only to discover that the tomatoes you thought were fine have gone soft, or someone in a midnight feeding frenzy ate up all the pine nuts, just leave out the pine nuts. Or change fish in a tomato-parsley sauce to fish in a parsley sauce and add lemon juice or wine or just plain water to make up for the missing liquid from the tomatoes.
On the other hand, a well-stocked pantry is a great comfort in life. If you have the space, there’s nothing like a wall of shelves filled with the sort of things that keep well: olive oil, vinegars, dried mushrooms, beans, and grains.
You will find, as you flip through the recipes in this book, that many begin with sautéing a mixture of finely chopped vegetables in olive oil or sometimes pork fat such as pancetta. This step is called the battuto or soffritto in Italy and the sofrito in Spain. I mention it because it’s a useful technique for all sorts of soups, sauces, and sauced preparations, whether vegetables, meat, chicken, or fish. In Italy, the ingredients for the battuto—called odori, aromatics—might consist of a carrot, a stalk of celery, and a little bunch of parsley or a sprig of rosemary. The stall holders in street markets give them away to favorite customers. “Odori, signora?” says the market lady from whom you’ve just bought artichokes, and she tucks a little bundle in the bag almost as an afterthought. When you get home, you chop your aromatics with maybe half an onion and half a clove of garlic, add a little finely chopped pancetta, and sauté it all in a spoonful of olive oil. It’s the foundation of an aromatic pasta sauce or soup for lunch. It’s also a way of adding vegetables to your daily diet without even being aware of it.
Most beans and legumes should be soaked before cooking—lentils are a notable exception. To soak them, simply place them in a bowl with twice their quantity of fresh cool water. Set aside overnight. In the morning, discard the soaking water and start the cooking process with fresh water.
If you forget to soak the beans the night before (how many times I have forgotten!), you can use the quick-soak method: set the beans in a saucepan with twice their quantity of fresh cool water. Bring the water to a boil over high heat and boil rapidly, covered, for 1 to 2 minutes. Then remove from the heat and set aside, still covered, for an hour or more. Drain the beans and use fresh water for cooking.
To peel tomatoes, bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil, drop in one or two tomatoes (more will lower the heat of the water too much), and leave them for a slow count to 15. Then extract them with a slotted spoon and proceed until all the tomatoes are done. The skins should lift off easily, without using a knife.
Sometimes a recipe requires seeding tomatoes to make a very dry preparation. Simply cut the skinned tomatoes in half and press each half gently so that the seeds ooze out. (You don’t need to get every last seed.) I do this over a sheet of newspaper, then simply fold the paper up to discard it.
The method is the same, whether the peppers are sweet or hot, red, green, or yellow. Charcoal or wood embers are best for roasting peppers because of the smoky flavor they impart. If you have a grill, set the peppers on a grid about 4 inches above the hot and glowing coals. Turn the peppers frequently so that the skins become thoroughly blackened and blistered. If you don’t have live coals, the peppers can be toasted over a gas flame on top of the stove. Use a long-handled fork and turn them constantly to toast as much of the skin as possible. Or if necessary, they can be toasted under an electric broiler. The point is to soften the peppers and turn the skins very black and loose, making them easy to peel.
No matter which procedure you follow, when the peppers are done, take them off the grill and set them aside under a kitchen towel until they’re cool enough to handle. Then slit them and drain the juices into a bowl. (The flavorful pepper juices can be added to the preparation.) Peel the peppers by pulling and rubbing the blackened skin away with your fingers. Use a sharp knife if necessary to scrape away remaining bits of skin. Peeling the skins under running water washes too much of the flavor away, but a bowl of water is handy for rinsing off difficult bits.
The seeds and interior white membranes of sweet peppers are usually discarded for appearance’s sake. With hot peppers, you may wish to retain some seeds and membrane, because this is where a large part of the pepper’s heat is located. Taste a little bit of pepper, and if it seems not quite hot enough, add some of the seeds and membrane to the preparation.
This procedure can be done well in advance and the peppers refrigerated, if necessary, until you’re ready to cook.
Even artichokes that are to be served whole must be prepared before cooking. You’ll need a bowl large enough to hold all the artichokes, filled with cool water to which the juice of a lemon has been added to keep the artichokes from darkening. To prepare the artichokes, cut the stems back to about an inch from where they join the fruit; or, if the artichokes are to be served whole, standing up on the plate, trim the artichoke stem off flush with the fruit. Break off the very tough outer leaves. For a fancier presentation, trim the tough points of the remaining leaves with kitchen shears to present a uniform appearance. As you work, rub the cut surfaces of the artichoke with a lemon half to keep the exposed flesh from darkening. Toss each finished artichoke into the bowl of lemon water. When all the artichokes are trimmed, drain and proceed with the recipe.
To prepare artichoke hearts, trim off most of the leaves until you have only a few layers left around the heart. Using a sharp knife, cut off the tops of the artichokes down to where the heart begins. Using a serrated grapefruit spoon, pull out the spiny choke that lies on top of the heart. Again, rub the cut surfaces with lemon and toss the finished artichokes into lemon water.
Some recipes call for quartered artichokes. For this, you need not go all the way down to the heart, but when you reach the tender leaves, cut the tops off, cut the artichokes into quarters, and use a serrated grapefruit spoon to scrape away the choke. Again, place in lemon water.
The part in Mediterranean cookbooks that I love best is the introductory chapter on batterie de cuisine, with its evocation of a lost world of craftsmanship and caring—artisanally sculpted earthenware pots, each form carefully molded to a specific purpose; hammered copper skillets and soup kettles so heavy they must be lifted with both hands; and an intricate variety of tools, implements, and other handy gear like a French chinois, a conical sieve for straining sauces, or an Italian mezzaluna, a half-moon-shaped knife that makes chopping parsley a breeze, or a Spanish plancha, a flat iron griddle for gambas a la plancha (shrimp on the grill) and other similar treats.
These are all eminently useful objects and often very beautiful ones, too. Collecting such paraphernalia and learning how to use them is a source of great pleasure—especially when they are sought out on their home ground. Real food lovers traveling in the Mediterranean always find a trip to the local market far more enlightening than a visit to any three-star restaurant. Not only will you find food products that are perfectly legal to bring back,1 but markets are always surrounded, naturally enough, by little shops selling whatever else is needed in the kitchen.
The reality in most Mediterranean kitchens, however, is rather different. Even in the hands of truly gifted cooks, the batterie de cuisine often consists of cheap, dented aluminum pots with lids that don’t quite fit, dull stainless-steel knives that are impossible to sharpen, and various catchall, makeshift, often comical, and sometimes out-and-out dangerous arrangements for preparing and serving food. Most Mediterranean cooks make do with what’s on hand. And an ordinarily well-equipped American kitchen would almost always put what’s on hand to shame.
Although you don’t need any specialized equipment to adopt a Mediterranean way of cooking, there are a few tools, most of them inexpensive, that I consider essential. Here’s my short list (see Resources):
Good carbon-steel knives, kept sharp with a stone. You’ll know a good knife when you heft it—it feels well balanced and comfortable in the hand. A repertoire of knives might include an 8-inch chef’s knife, indispensable for chopping and slicing, a couple of 5-inch paring knives, a serrated bread knife, and a smaller stainless-steel serrated knife for slicing tomatoes, lemons, and other fruit. Carbon-steel knives are very expensive and should be treated like jewels—washed after use, dried to prevent rust, sharpened before being put away in a special knife drawer or stand where each blade lies separate from the others, and sharpened again just before being used.
A large, heavy cutting board or a wooden countertop. Try to have at least two boards—one for chopping garlic and onions, cutting up meat and fish, and so forth; one for making breads and pastry—so the pasta frolla won’t taste of onions. Keep your boards or countertops scrupulously clean and scrubbed, especially after cutting up chicken. One way salmonella spreads is through raw salad greens that have been contaminated by being cut up on a board used to cut chicken. Thorough cooking kills off the salmonella in chicken, but the uncooked salad becomes a fertile breeding ground for the invisible bugs. (A plastic cutting board, contrary to what we were told recently, is actually more likely than wood to engender this type of accidental contamination.)
A mortar and pestle is not just a nostalgic symbol of Old World craftsmanship, but a useful and necessary tool. More easily than with a food processor or blender, you can see when the food you’re working with reaches precisely the right texture and consistency. Garlic, especially, should almost always be pounded in the mortar rather than tossed into the food processor—I’m persuaded that mechanical processing and blending give garlic a bitter aftertaste. And for small batches of food—half a cup or so of nuts, for instance—it’s actually easier to use a mortar and a whole lot quicker to clean up.
I keep two mortars—one for pounding garlic and other strong-flavored foods, one for sweet spices and nuts; this way you’ll keep the cookies from tasting of garlic and anchovies.
Spice mills: Because the flavor impact of freshly ground spices like allspice, cinnamon, and clove is so important in eastern Mediterranean dishes, I buy whole spices instead of previously ground ones. I keep a separate, small pepper mill with allspice berries in it and a separate small electric coffee grinder that I use when necessary for cinnamon, cloves, and other hard spices. These appliances, if they deserve such a fancy name, are cheap, and the convenience and flavor they afford is worth every penny.
A hand-turned food mill, with three different disks, along with the mortar and pestle, is indispensable for pureeing—especially for tomatoes since, unlike the processor or blender, it holds back seeds and bits of skin that can embitter a tomato sauce. And now and then, when you want an elegantly strained, velvety pureed soup or sauce, you will find it can really be done only with a food mill. Mechanically processed or blended purees must be further strained through a fine sieve to achieve this consistency.
Tongs are not something you see in domestic kitchens in the Mediterranean, but all professional chefs, there as well as here, find them so indispensable that, slid into the apron strings in back, they become part of the professional costume. I was introduced to tongs only a few years ago, but I can’t cook without them today. Both my kitchens have three or four sets of the spring-loaded variety. For turning fried or grilled foods, for moving hot pots about on top of the stove, they are without peer.
A baking stone and a wooden peel are not quite mandatory but are certainly very useful if you intend to bake bread or pizza. For my money, the heavy rectangular stones are superior to so-called pizza disks. The stone mimics, to some degree, the action of a traditional baking oven lined with fireproof brick. You can devise your own system, using unglazed ceramic tiles, available at building supply houses.
Whichever you use, the stone or tiles must heat up for at least 30 minutes before you put in the bread or pizza. (Be sure to put the cold stone into the cold oven to prevent cracking.) Even when the oven light goes off, indicating that the proper ambient temperature has been reached inside, the temperature of the stone may be lower.
Note too that the bread or pizza is placed directly on the stone, not in a pan or on a baking sheet. This is known as casting and imitates the action in a traditional oven where the bread or pizza is cast directly onto the floor or hearth of the oven. (Traditional American baking powder biscuits, by the way, are terrific baked on a baking stone.)
A long-handled wooden peel is also useful in baking, especially for pizza. The best peels have a beveled edge so that pizza or bread loaves slide off the peel and onto the stone with a quick jerk of the hand, an action that seems to give most people who practice it an enormous amount of pleasure and satisfaction.
The subject of olive oil raises questions in the minds of American consumers, probably because for many of us it’s a new product, a new taste, one we’re not accustomed to using. Why is olive oil so expensive? Are we really getting what we pay for? If we buy cheap oils, are they bound to taste like rancid crankcase grease? What is extra-virgin oil, and why should I buy it?
The International Olive Oil Council, a United Nations—backed organization of oil-producing countries, sets world standards for different grades of olive oil. Only two concern us as consumers. The finest is extra-virgin oil, an unrefined product that is produced simply by extracting the oil from the olives through mechanical or physical (but not chemical) processes, whether an old-fashioned crush-and-press operation or a newfangled centrifugal extractor. No matter how it’s produced, extra-virgin oil must have a free oleic acid content of 0.8 percent or less and “perfect” aroma, color, and flavor.
The second quality of oil is called pure olive oil or just plain olive oil—somewhat confusingly, since both extra-virgin and pure oils are pure in the sense that they are clean and contain nothing but the oil of olives. Pure oil is extracted from lesser-grade olives, those that, for a number of reasons, have undesirable characteristics of acidity, odor, and taste. This oil is refined to make a colorless, odorless, flavorless oil; then extra-virgin or virgin oil (an intermediate category that is not generally for sale) is added in small quantities to give the oil some character.
Extra-virgin olive oil is a great food product, lending taste and structure to dishes in which it is used. Each extra-virgin oil has its own particular color, flavor, and aroma—what professional tasters call organoleptic characteristics. I compare it to wine: in oil, as in wine, the complex of flavors and aromas in the finished product depends on a number of critical variables—the variety of the plant, whether vine or tree, the structure of the soil, the microclimate of the immediate environment, the quantities of fertilizer and irrigation used during the growing season, the time and method of harvest, and finally the care with which the raw fruit is turned into the finished product, bottled, and stored. Like wines, the finest extra-virgin oils vary from one region to another and from one season to another. But they are almost invariably made from immature olives that are handpicked and pressed quickly in cool temperatures before the oil starts to oxidize and ferment.
One caveat in comparing olive oil to wine: unlike wine, extra-virgin olive oil doesn’t improve with age. Anyone who’s had the privilege of tasting olive oil in the first few weeks after pressing knows that the fresher it is, the better it tastes. While a freshly pressed and unfiltered oil is not especially good for high-temperature cooking, since the unprecipitated vegetable matter may burn in the process, it is superb for consuming raw. A sauce in and of itself, it needs no embellishment beyond perhaps a few grains of salt.
Carefully stored in a sealed metal or glass container, preferably in a cool (but not refrigerated), dark cupboard, olive oil is good for up to two years, but after that the oil will have passed its prime and should be used as soon as possible. Olive oil that is exposed to heat and light for a period of time, on the other hand, can turn rancid. Keep a small quantity in a metal oil can by the work counter and store the rest in the cupboard.
I sometimes hear American chefs assert that extra-virgin olive oil is no good for cooking and should be reserved for dressing salads and garnishing plates. Nothing could be further from the truth. Chefs in the best restaurants in Spain, southern France, Italy, and Greece would be as perplexed as I am to hear that since they would not dream of using anything else. I take my cue from these experts and use extra-virgin olive oil for all cooking except deep-fat frying when, because it’s cheaper, I mostly use refined plain olive oil or canola oil.
Even then, extra-virgin olive oil is fine if you can afford it. Of course you won’t use first-rate, estate-bottled oil for deep-fat frying, any more than you would use a top-quality Châteauneuf-du-Pape to make a stew. But the suggestion that somehow extra-virgin olive oil has a very low flash point is mistaken. The optimum temperature for deep-fat frying is 350 to 375 degrees, and olive oil has no problems at that temperature, or even higher. Once, with my friend the olive oil maven Mort Rosenblum, I deep-fried a turkey for Thanksgiving. It came about because I discovered in the back of my pantry a stainless-steel container with a good 15 quarts of olive oil in it, fine extra-virgin oil that had been pressed from another friend’s crop and hidden in the cool, dark cantina in Tuscany for at least four years. The oil had lost a lot of its flavor and aroma but it wasn’t the least bit rancid. What better use could it serve than deep-frying a turkey? In the end, a whole turkey was way too big to fit in the cooking pot but we managed to fry an enormous leg quarter and the consensus around the Thanksgiving table was impressive—crisp and golden on the outside, succulent on the inside, it was the best turkey, we all agreed, we had ever eaten.
Which olive oil is best? It’s a question I’m often asked and it’s impossible to answer. Which cheese is best, you might well ask, or which wine? It all depends on how and when you want to use it, how much you want to spend, and various other variables. In fact, there are great oils from all over the Mediterranean and from farther afield—California, Chile, New Zealand, and South Africa, among the many places that have initiated olive oil production in recent years. Many of these great oils are produced in small quantities and aren’t generally available. So if my specialty foods market in Maine, for instance, has access to a terrific little oil from the Mani peninsula of Greece, that doesn’t necessarily mean you too can find it in a food shop in another part of the country.
A couple of buying tips:
A good web site for olive oil information, with a selection of oils for sale from all over the world, is www.oliveoilsource.com. And the Internet resources listed in the back of this book include many outlets for fine extra-virgins.
The best thing to do is taste, taste, taste, as many different oils as you can find, preferably purchased in small bottles, until you find what you like. Let your suppliers know you’re interested in oil and would appreciate an invitation to a comparative tasting if one is in the works. Taste oil on its own, not with a piece of bread or anything else that may confound the flavor. And when you travel to parts of the world where olive oil is produced, continue tasting and questioning, visit olive mills when they’re in operation to deepen your understanding of how oil is produced, and bring samples home with you—it’s perfectly legal to bring in olive oil, although you may have some problems with security restrictions if you try to carry liquid on board a flight.
Wheat is the very foundation of the Mediterranean diet, whether in the form of bread, of pasta and couscous, or of bulgur. The many types of wheat range from farro or emmer (Triticum dicoccum), an ancient wheat newly popular in Italy, to regular bread wheat, similar to our all-purpose flour, to hard durum semolina, used for pasta—in fact, legally required for commercial pasta in Italy—and for bread making alike. Durum is the quintessential Mediterranean wheat. As such it is still grown in some parts of the Mediterranean, but a lot of the semolina used today comes in fact from the western prairies of the United States and Canada. Durum yields a gritty semolina, the result of the vitreous nature of its grains, with a creamy yellow color from the carotenoids naturally present in the wheat.
For all-purpose flour, I prefer unbleached, unbromated King Arthur from Norwich, Vermont; it is widely available throughout the country and from the King Arthur web site, www.kingarthurflour.com. This is actually a great site for all kinds of flour, including semolina and barley flour, as well as French- and Italian-style flours and an excellent flour for bread making, European-style Artisan Bread Flour.
Bulgur (in Turkish, the word most commonly used in this country) or burghul (in Arabic) is made of whole wheat berries that are steamed, then dried and cracked. It needs no further cooking for salad preparations but should be soaked in warm water to soften it before using. (Cover it with warm water—2 cups of water to 1 cup of bulgur—and set it aside for 20 to 30 minutes. Then drain and squeeze dry in a kitchen towel.) Bulgur also makes an elegant pilaf (this page); for cooking, it does not need to be soaked beforehand.
Bulgur is commonly available at health food stores and specialty shops, as well as in Arab and Armenian neighborhood stores. It comes in three grades, depending on the size of the cracked grain. Number three (coarse) is best for pilaf. Number two (medium) is best for tabbouleh and other salads. Number one (fine) is for making kibbe.
Couscous is not a distinct grain but rather a type of pasta, made, like commercial pasta, from hard durum semolina and water—nothing more. Once upon a time couscous was made at home, but nowadays, even in North Africa, most cooks use commercially prepared couscous.
Pasta comes in hundreds of shapes and sizes, mostly classifiable as either long and skinny noodles or short, stubby forms that capture dense sauces. Whatever shape it takes, however, commercial dried pasta must be made from semolina and water, with eggs added in the north of Italy but not generally elsewhere.
Among commercial pastas that are widely available are the Italian brands Barilla, the largest pasta-maker in the world, as well as De Cecco and Delverde. But look too for artisanal pastas made in Italy using old-fashioned bronze dies and slow, low-temperature drying methods that yield a superior product. Among the brands available are Benedetto Cavalieri, Rustichella d’Abruzzo, and Latini.
Rice is almost as complex a subject as wheat, but fortunately, in the Mediterranean it is simplified into two types—short-grain, used in risotto and paella, and long-grain, used in pilaf. (And, yes, there is a medium grain, grown in Spain and also used in paella.) Arborio is the most widely available short-grain rice, traditionally used for risotto but also an acceptable rice for paella. If you can find them, carnaroli and vialone nano are superior for risotto. The best rice for paella is arroz bomba or calasparra from Spain’s eastern rice-growing regions, increasingly available in this country.
For pilaf, any long-grain rice is good. The best is basmati, a very fragrant rice originally from India but now grown in California and Texas. Other long-grain specialty rices grown in this country, like popcorn rice and pecan rice, are also good in pilaf.
Polenta is just cornmeal, either white or yellow, though yellow is more typical. In polenta recipes you can use any American cornmeal (except self-rising cornmeal, which contains chemical leavening), and it is often a better choice than run-of-the-mill imported polenta, which may be less than fresh. The best Italian polenta, like the best American cornmeal, is stone ground using the whole grain, including the germ. For polenta, a rather coarse-textured meal is preferred. An interesting variation, available from many suppliers (see Resources), is polenta taragna, a mixture of cornmeal and ground buckwheat. It can be substituted for plain polenta in any recipe.
Two of the best stone-ground American cornmeals come from Rhode Island—Gray’s Grist Mill in Adamsville (graysgristmill.com) and Kenyon Cornmeal Company (kenyongristmill.com) in Usquepaugh. But there are small mills all over the country that are good sources for this native American product.
Yogurt: Fernand Braudel quotes Busbecq the Fleming, writing in 1555: “The Turks are so frugal and think so little of the pleasures of eating that if they have bread, salt, and some garlic or an onion and a kind of sour milk which they call yoghoort, they ask nothing more. They dilute this milk with very cold water and crumble bread into it and take it when they are hot and thirsty … it is not only palatable and digestible, but also possesses an extraordinary power of quenching the thirst.”
The Turks probably introduced yogurt into the Mediterranean, and it is still more often used in the old Ottoman Empire countries of the eastern Mediterranean than it is in the West. Yogurt, sweetened with a little honey, is sometimes served for dessert in France, but it is not otherwise used in cooking. In the East, travelers will find rich and tangy yogurts made from sheep’s or goat’s milk, and this style of yogurt is becoming more available in this country from small local dairies. Look for such products in specialty and health food stores.
Another useful yogurt product is labneh or yogurt “cheese” (it’s not really a cheese at all), made by straining the whey from ordinary yogurt (this page).
Look for pure unflavored yogurt with live acidophilus cultures and no added gelatin or other stabilizers.
Cheeses: Parmigiano is, to my mind, the finest cheese in the world. Only the genuine product, parmigiano reggiano, should be used. It comes in giant wheels of cheese stamped proudly all over their waxy outsides with the words parmigiano reggiano. Avoid Argentine parmesan or the previously grated stuff that comes in a shiny green tube (any freshly grated cheese is better than that). Real parmigiano has a remarkable nutty, sweet, slightly caramel flavor and a texture that is smooth and hard with pleasing bits of crunch from the embedded crystals that form as the cheese ages. It is expensive, but a little goes a long way. If you can’t afford parmigiano reggiano for cooking, use a well-made local hard cheese, even a local cheddar. The flavor will be totally different, but the integrity of the dish will remain.
Parmigiano should not be cut with a knife but rather broken away from the mother wheel using a wedge-shaped cutter so that the grain and texture of the cheese are exposed. Grate it freshly to use in cooking or serve it in chunks with the salad or fruit or to finish off a bottle of fine red wine. Parmigiano can be kept in the refrigerator, wrapped in paper and then loosely in plastic wrap, for months. It may get too hard for eating but will still be an excellent grating cheese.
Mozzarella is traditionally made from the milk of water buffalo that graze in pastures in the territory around Naples. Imported mozzarella di bufala is increasingly available in this country, but, alas, it is made by machine rather than the old-fashioned way by hand. Mozzarella from cow’s milk is properly called fior di latte but may be marketed just as mozzarella or muzzarel’. You can often find handmade fior di latte in cheese shops in Italian neighborhoods. It can also be ordered from Paula Lambert’s Mozzarella Company (mozzco.com). What is not to be used is the rubbery skim-milk cheese called mozzarella available in supermarket dairy cases. It bears no relationship whatsoever to the real thing, and how it came to be called mozzarella is a mystery.
Mozzarella is not meant for long keeping and should be used within a few days of purchase.
Pecorino from Italy and manchego from Spain are sheep’s milk cheeses, increasingly available in fine cheese shops in this country. The best are 100 percent sheep’s milk; they are aged for varying periods of time. At three months the cheese has a lovely nutty flavor and a creamy paste, a fine eating cheese. Aged longer, it becomes hard and dense and is good for grating. Pecorino romano is a very hard cheese with a distinctive sour flavor that is good in strong-flavored dishes but not universally appropriate.
Feta is the most characteristic Greek cheese. In Greece it is made only from sheep’s or goat’s milk, while in North America it is most often made from cow’s milk. For this reason only imported Bulgarian or Greek feta is recommended in the recipes in this book, but if you can find feta from a local sheep or goat dairy, by all means use it. Feta is cured in a salt brine, and it varies in quality and in saltiness—ask to taste a bit before you buy. If you don’t use it right away, store feta in the brine that comes with it in the refrigerator.
Manouri or manourgi is a soft, fresh Greek cheese, made like ricotta from whey with a little cream or milk added. Mizithra is similarly soft and fresh, made from the whey rendered in feta production. Like ricotta, too, they are not meant for long keeping. Paula Lambert at mozzco.com makes delicious goat’s milk ricotta and feta.
Pancetta is unsmoked, salt-cured bacon, widely available, especially in Italian specialty food shops, but also often found at supermarket deli counters. Like bacon, pancetta, well wrapped in foil, may be stored in the freezer for months.
Prosciutto and jamón serrano are raw dry-cured hams, prosciutto from Italy and jamón serrano from Spain. The finest kind is thinly sliced from a ham with the bone left in, but that is almost never available in this country where convenience rules over all and the bones are removed before the ham ever arrives here. These are very fine products, and expensive, so they should be treated with respect. Sliced thin (but not paper thin), they are usually served as part of a tapa or antipasto course, often with melon slices, fresh figs, or other fruits to accompany the salty ham. But prosciutto, like pancetta, is also used in very small quantities (a tablespoon or so of very finely chopped meat) in the battuto that forms the basis of many Italian sauces.
The best tomatoes are of course the ones you grow in your own garden and harvest at the peak of ripeness about 30 seconds before you slice and eat them. Failing that, a farmers’ market is a close second.
Like most Mediterranean cooks, I use canned tomatoes when fresh ones are not suitable. For those who live in New England and are fortunate enough to have gardens, the season usually lasts about two and a half days before the first frost, so when I’m in Maine I use a lot of canned tomatoes. The best canned tomatoes are San Marzanos from the area around Naples. Look for San Marzano DOP, indicating a protected denomination of origin. Academia Barilla’s Pomodorini Pelati are peeled cherry tomatoes, also very good. Among American brands, I like Muir Glen organic whole tomatoes for their firm texture, their thick juice, and their flavor, which is thoroughly tomato, with nothing added. Whatever brand you use, make sure it contains nothing but whole tomatoes—often processors add other ingredients to boost the flavor.
Estratto di pomodoro is a pure tomato extract, about the same texture as tomato paste (the stuff that comes in a tube or a squat little can) but worlds apart in flavor. The best is made from tomato puree dried in the Sicilian sun. Both manicaretti.com and gustiamo.com have estratto from Sicily. It is very expensive but a little goes a long way to enliven soups and sauces.
I mention here only those herbs and spices that seem to need comment.
Use flat-leaf parsley if at all possible, and if your supermarket can’t or won’t stock it, grow your own—it’s very easy, in a pot on the window ledge if nowhere else, although you’ll probably need several pots to supply a Mediterranean kitchen. (Cilantro will also grow well in a pot.)
Thyme is used both fresh and dried, both garden cultivated and wild, throughout the Mediterranean. It’s a typical plant of the macchia or maquis, the low scrub forest that covers barren lands of the region. The flavor varies in intensity, depending on where the plant grows, but wild thyme generally contains more of a powerfully fragrant essential oil called thymol, a disinfectant, which is probably why I was given an infusion of wild thyme in Morocco to cure an unhappy stomach. Wild thyme, called zacatar in Arabic, is an ingredient in a fragrant mixture of thyme, sesame seeds, and sumac that is mixed with olive oil and sprinkled over freshly baked bread in the morning. (Confusingly, the mixture itself is also called zacatar. You can find both the mixture and the thyme in shops in Middle Eastern neighborhoods, so be sure you know what you’re getting.)
Oregano is, like thyme (basil, too, for that matter), a pungent member of the mint family (Labiatae) that is used in both cultivated and wild versions. It is a quintessential ingredient in true Neapolitan pizza. Oregano, called rígani, is also important in the Greek kitchen, and the wild version is used in Greece to make tea. Dried wild oregano, which has a delightfully astringent aroma, can be found in shops in Greek neighborhoods, often tied up in pretty bundles. (Mexican oregano is a different plant, botanically, but with a similar pungency. Marjoram is a variety of oregano, with a sweeter and more delicate flavor.)
Bay leaves, or laurel, are not hard to find, but do use Turkish bay leaves if possible rather than the stronger, more medicinal-tasting bay leaves from California. McCormick’s packages the Turkish ones, as do other commercial spice companies, and they are worth seeking out for the subtler flavor.
Sumac, the pleasantly astringent red berries of a Mediterranean shrub related to the sumac that grows in this country, is used in the eastern Mediterranean to impart an agreeably acid flavor to everything from salads to meat and chicken stews. It is part of the breakfast spread called zacatar in Lebanon and always used in the Lebanese salad fattoush (this page). In Turkey, sumac is sprinkled on kebabs and other grilled meats. You’ll find both whole berries and ground powdered sumac in shops in Middle Eastern neighborhoods.
Saffron came with the Arabs to Spain—the word comes from the Arabic zafaran, meaning “yellow.” Some of the world’s best saffron comes from southern Morocco. It’s said to be the most expensive aromatic in the world since it takes the hand-collected stigmata of about 75,000 wild autumn-flowering crocuses to make a pound of saffron. Don’t buy powdered saffron, which is often just cheap coloring with none of the musky, earthy flavor of true saffron. Saffron threads can be crumbled directly into a dish or steeped in water or broth first, then the saffron with its steeping liquid tipped into the sauce. Be discreet with saffron—too much can be overpowering.
Wild fennel pollen, sometimes called fennel flowers or finocchietto (the Italian name for wild fennel), is creating a small sensation among North American chefs who are apt to describe it as rare, mysterious, hard to find. In fact, it is sold in season (late summer to early autumn) in every country market in Tuscany and Umbria and while it is expensive, because it’s hard to collect the dusty little mustard-colored flowers of wild fennel, it’s worth every penny for its deep, almost musty but floral aroma—more like a fine garam masala than anything Mediterranean. But it’s traditional in central Italian cooking for pork and rabbit especially, and is also good with fatty fish like salmon and mackerel. Imported Tuscan fennel pollen is available through many of the importers listed in Resources, see here; it grows along roadsides in California—try fennelpollen.com for wild California fennel pollen.
The best salt I have ever tasted comes from the island of Gozo in the Maltese archipelago. It has a crisp, penetrating, but never acrid flavor that is more appreciated as a garnish added at table than as an ingredient in a stew or sauce. It may seem strange to attach so much importance to salt, but if you don’t believe it’s important, try a taste test: buy several different varieties of salt, including sea salt, kosher salt, and ordinary shaker salt. Taste them on their own, completely nude. I think you’ll be amazed at the difference.
In the Mediterranean, a squeeze of lemon juice or a splash of vinegar, what the French call un filet de vinaigre, often serves the same function as salt in bringing out the flavors of a dish. In places like Turkey and Tuscany, where meat is important in the cuisine, grilled meat always comes with a garnish of lemon wedges so that each diner can add a refreshing fillip of lemon juice to his or her plate. For people who must watch the amount of sodium in their diets this is an especially good practice.
Vinegar is almost as important for discriminating cooks as olive oil. Use red wine or white wine vinegar, depending on the color of the sauce. Many wine vinegars strike my palate as too acerbic and acid; I prefer imported aged sherry vinegar for its mellow yet robust flavor.
Balsamic vinegar (aceto balsamico) became hugely popular a few years back, and for a while chefs were throwing it indiscriminately on all kinds of preparations. It’s a unique product; the best artisanally made balsamic vinegar, called aceto balsamico tradizionale di Modena or di Reggio, is produced under stringent regulations in and around Modena and Reggio Emilia and aged in fragrant wooden casks for 10 years or more. It’s a rare treat, with a price to match, and should be reserved for very special occasions.
Once at Badia a Coltibuono, a fine Tuscan wine estate (also makers of excellent olive oil), I sampled 100-year-old aceto balsamico, served around the table, from small silver spoons, like some strange gourmet rite of communion. It was dark colored, almost black, with flashes of red lights, rather syrupy, and with an extraordinary flavor, penetrating and lush, mellow and palate filling, all at the same time. Another time, in Florence, a particularly fine parmigiano from Lodi, north of Parma, was served with drops of aceto balsamico poured lovingly on each shard of cheese. This is the best way to serve aceto balsamico tradizionale—with love, awe, and respect.
A more commonly available, but still rather expensive, balsamic vinegar is produced commercially of wine vinegar to which caramel and herbal essences have been added, producing a rather similar, but by no means comparable, product. Even this should not be used with a lavish hand, however. A few drops in a salad dressing are all that is necessary. Among balsamic vinegars generally available in this country, the best is available from Academia Barilla.
Tahini is a paste, the consistency of peanut butter, made from ground sesame seeds. I have tried health-food-store tahinis and mostly find them wanting, insipid in flavor and sticky in texture. The best I’ve found is Joyva, made in Brooklyn but widely available. Tahini may separate in the can—just stir it back together with a fork. Once you’ve opened a can of tahini, store it in the refrigerator.
Peppers used in Mediterranean recipes are usually sweet (not hot) peppers, either round bell peppers or long skinny ones such as are marketed in this country as Italian or cubanelle long peppers. Fiery peppers, like the chilies we’re used to from Mexican cuisine, are appreciated only in parts of North Africa. The small hot red pepper used in Italy is called peperoncino rosso, but it is used in very small quantities. For the rest, though Spaniards and Turks may tell you their dishes are hot, you probably won’t find them so. A single hot dried chili or a teaspoon of hot red pepper flakes will flavor a sauce to serve six people.
Paprika or pimentón or piment is made of crushed or ground dried red chili peppers, nothing more (it should not be confused with Southwestern chili powder, which is usually a mixture of chilies, cumin, and other spices). Like chilies themselves, the ground stuff comes in a broad range of heats, but most of the Mediterranean is seduced more by chilies on the mild side than really hot ones. Those of us who like fiery Mexican or Thai chilies will find Mediterranean red peppers decidedly un-hot. The best, however, have a distinctive flavor that adds tremendously to dishes in which they are used. My favorites are Aleppo red pepper from Syria, mostly available as crushed pepper flakes, and piment d’Espelette, from the Basque region of southern France, which is mostly ground pepper. The Spanish are particularly attuned to the different flavors of their pimentones, with ñoras as the all-time favorite. Pimentón de la Vera should also be mentioned—it’s a chili grown in the Vera valley of western Spain where the climate is so moist that the peppers must be dried over oak fires, giving the pimentón a distinctive smoky aroma.
Anchovies are at their best when packed in salt. In Greek, Middle Eastern, and Italian neighborhood shops you will find them in big round cans to be purchased by the piece or by the pound. Buy them in quantity if you find them: wrap carefully in foil and place in a sealable plastic bag to avoid contaminating other food with their strong aroma. They will keep for several months in the refrigerator. Before using, rinse each anchovy well under a running tap to rid it of salt. Then pull the two fillets away from the spine and discard the backbone and tail. Don’t worry about the tiny side bones—they will be unnoticeable in a sauce or pizza topping.
The flavor of anchovies is unique and not to everyone’s taste, but you might be surprised, if you say you detest anchovies, at the number of times you have eaten them thoroughly disguised in a sauce. The best chefs know that anchovies give a deep and complex flavor to dishes in which they’re used.
In the absence of salt-packed anchovies, canned oil-packed anchovy fillets can be used instead. Because the fillets are so small, I substitute on a roughly two-to-one ratio—two oil-packed fillets to one salt-packed fillet.
Like anchovies, salt-packed capers are best. What are capers exactly? The unopened bud of a flowering plant that grows in crannied walls all over the Mediterranean. They are gathered in the late spring and preserved by packing in salt or pickling in brine. Brine-cured capers are widely available, but if you can find salt-cured ones in Greek or Italian neighborhood stores, they are superior. Rinse them under running water to rid them of salt before using.
1 As a general rule of thumb for Customs, no meat products and no fresh fruits and vegetables may be brought back by travelers. But you can bring back dried beans, dried mushrooms, dried fruits, nuts, dried herbs and spices, rice and other grains, pasta, olive oil, and most cheeses.