WHEN I WROTE the first edition of this book, back in 1993, American eating habits were changing—possibly, it seemed, for the better. Beef consumption had fallen by 26 percent in the immediately previous decades, while chicken, seen as a healthier alternative, had risen by a whopping 75 percent. But this optimistic picture was not to last. Looking back from today’s perspective, we can see that our overall meat consumption has climbed steadily, despite the occasional glitch up or down, throughout the second half of the last century and into the first decade of this one. In 1950, Americans consumed 144 pounds of meat per person—that is, meat purchased at the retail level, as cuts ready for cooking, or in restaurants and other types of food service. In 2007, the projected figure is 222 pounds per person per year—an increase of more than 50 percent.

Although beef consumption reached its peak back in 1975, with an astounding 85 pounds per person annually (that’s a quarter pound of beef a day, every day of the year, for every man, woman, and child in the United States), it is still today, at 66 pounds, 50 percent greater than it was in 1950. And chicken—that healthier alternative, once the symbol of the working-class family’s Sunday lunch—could you possibly guess how much more chicken we consume now than we did in 1950?

Four hundred percent, that’s how much more. Hardly, in such quantities, a healthier alternative.

Although there are many other factors to consider in the mess of our American diet (a more sedentary population, increased consumption of fast food, and a hugely increased intake of high-fructose corn syrup in the form of sweetened drinks), it seems clear that one cause of our national epidemic of obesity has to be found in this enormous quantity of meat.

These dietary changes are invading the countries of the Mediterranean as well, and elsewhere throughout the developed world, and they are having similarly unhappy effects on the health of populations. If the traditional Mediterranean diet included meat only rarely, often in very small quantities, today in Greece, Spain, Italy, France, and urban centers of the eastern Mediterranean, most people expect to have meat on the menu several times a week if not more often, and in quantities much greater than their parents or grandparents consumed.

Scientists, nutritionists, dietitians, even some government health specialists advise us that our lives would be healthier, happier, and more productive if we would just cut down on the amount of meat we eat. The customary restaurant serving of a pound-per-person slab of well-marbled beefsteak, its edges curling with crisply browned fat, its cholesterol-rich juices forming a savory puddle for a butter-drenched baked potato topped with a dollop of sour cream, is assuredly nutritional madness.

But you just can’t get around the fact that most of us who are not vegetarians really like to eat meat. There are complex physiological, psychological, and cultural reasons behind this, not the least of them being that meat adds depth, richness, and complexity of flavor to dishes that vegetables, no matter how fresh and delicious, can’t supply. Moreover, quantities of meat on the table have always served as a cultural marker for high status, which is one good reason why government agencies like the federal Department of Agriculture promote the image of an American table groaning under the weight of all that meat.

I am not a vegetarian. But years of living and working in Mediterranean countries have taught me that meat does not need to be, in fact still in many places seldom is, at the center of the plate. The trick in traditional Mediterranean kitchens is to use meat in small quantities, more as a flavoring ingredient than as the focus of a dish. The best example of this is a pasta sauce in which ½ to ¾ pound of meat makes enough sauce, with tomatoes and other vegetables, for six to eight servings. The sauce is savory with herbs, spices, dried wild mushrooms, and other aromatics, but the richness comes from the meat flavor.

Sauces are not the only example of this principle. Many traditional meat dishes are made with almost more vegetables than meat and are intended to be served, like a sauce, with a carbohydrate, whether pasta, rice, potatoes, or polenta. Even at festive meals, Mediterranean cooks precede the meat with a vegetable-sauced pasta or light soup and follow it with fruit, plain or cooked, depending on the season. Although meat is at the center of the plate in such meals, it is only one plate in the succession of the menu, and the rest of the plates are all determinedly nonmeat.

Please note that in the following recipes I have counted on a serving size, in general, of 3 to 4 ounces of whatever meat is served—not counting bones. All recent health and nutrition research concurs that there is no need for healthy, normal humans, whether children or adults, to consume more than that amount daily, and a growing body of evidence suggests that excess consumption can cause cumulative health problems that go well beyond weight and cholesterol counts.

If this looks like a small amount of meat on your plate (and it will, I am certain), you should add more grains, legumes or beans, and vegetables to extend it. Most of the following preparations, for instance, go well with rice, baked or steamed potatoes, steamed bulgur pilaf, cornmeal polenta, steamed barley, or some of the small pasta shapes (small shells, orzo, elbows, etc., but not spaghetti or linguine) that are intended for this purpose.

Precede the meat dish with a light vegetable or bean soup, a salad of raw or cooked vegetables, or a plate of a single vegetable that is the star of the current season. (In early summer, for instance, try a plate of plain little green string beans. Fresh from a market garden, lightly steamed and dressed with oil, lemon, and a little garlic, they are ever so much more desirable than asparagus imported out of season from Mexico.) Follow the meat with a green salad and a small piece of cheese, or fresh fruit, or a simple, easy-to-make sweet, and you have a very substantial meal.

As much as possible I use meat from animals that have been raised humanely, in unconfined spaces with plenty of room to range. I also look for meat from animals that have been fed nonmedicated feed and have been given drugs only when necessary to fight off disease. The two conditions go hand in hand, for animals raised in confinement, whether chickens in battery cages or pigs and veal calves in cramped stalls, are exposed to innumerable sources of infection and need to be medicated to stay alive long enough to be slaughtered. When I take an antibiotic or, heaven forfend, a hormone, I want a dosage prescribed by my medical advisers for my specific condition and not an obscure quantity prescribed by some distant animal-feed manufacturer and dosed to the animal willy-nilly by the factory farm manager.

I also wish to give voice to a respect for life that has been the source of ethical questions since the beginning of human self-consciousness. Since we take life to sustain our own lives, it seems to me unquestionable that we owe an indulgence to the life we take, at least that that life be lived in dignity and lost with a sense of respect on the part of those who take it.

For me, the finest food begins with the finest ingredients. All else being equal, the meat of animals raised humanely, whether chickens, hogs, or so-called “wild” venison, is better in flavor and texture and contributes more to the dish than that from commercial factory farms.

FASTING AND FEASTING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

At the beginning of the last century l’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, a substantial country town in the Vaucluse region of Provence, had only two butcher shops. Not surprising perhaps in a rural area where many people probably got their meat from farmyard animals like chickens and rabbits. What is surprising, though, René Jouveau, chronicler of Provençal food lore, tells us, is that the two butcher shops were open only twice a year, at Christmas and Easter.

Like other people of the Mediterranean at that time, the people of l’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, it seems, scarcely ate meat at all, especially beef. Lamb was for Easter, turkey for Christmas, and for the rest, on Sundays if they were fortunate they might have a roasted chicken, rabbit, pigeon, or duck. And if they were not fortunate, Sunday might see little more than an extra dollop of olive oil and an extra cut of cheese to go with the daily beans and bread.

This was the pattern in country districts throughout the Mediterranean until sometime well after World War II, long periods of meager diet punctuated by brief and welcome bouts of feasting. It was the pattern in Greece in the 1950s when butcher shops were closed during Lent and other fasts, and it was the pattern in Crete and southern Italy when the Seven Countries Study (see Appendix I) was initiated in the early 1960s.

The cycle of fasting and feasting was reinforced by religious proscriptions, especially among Christians. In the Orthodox tradition, observant laypeople fasted during the following periods: Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year except during Easter and Pentecost weeks and for 10 days after Christmas; the 48 days leading up to Easter; the 40 days before Christmas; the 15 days culminating in the Feast of the Assumption on August 15; and, in honor of the Apostles, from the end of Pentecost Week to June 29, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. Fasting, for Greeks, Syrians, Bulgarians, and other members of the Orthodox community, means no meat, eggs, or dairy products all the time and no oil, wine, or fish during particularly acute periods. (During Lent, for instance, oil and wine are permitted on Saturdays and Sundays, and fish is allowed on the two feast days that fall in Lent, Annunciation, on March 25, and Palm Sunday.) Fully a third of the year, then, is given over to a very meager diet during which meat and dairy are completely excluded—and that’s not counting Wednesdays and Fridays—although how many people in the Orthodox church still observe these stringent rules is not clear.

The Catholic tradition is more lenient. Long ago, a papal dispensation released Spaniards from the weekly obligation to abstain from meat so as to conserve their strength to battle the Infidel. In other parts of the Catholic community today, Lent is observed only by the pious and penitent, Fridays have ceased to be meatless, and other fasting periods seem to have been largely forgotten.

This is a pity, not just for religious reasons (perhaps for that as well), but because the obligation to abstain from meat and dairy products for long periods throughout the year was clearly beneficial to physical well-being as much as to spiritual health. I mention this particularly because it seems like a good practice, especially for people who have no interest in becoming totally vegetarian, to observe days or periods of abstention from meat and dairy products.

The total fast of Yom Kippur is also now but one day a year, but among pious Jews traditionally there were weekly abstentions on Mondays and Thursdays, the days when the Torah was read. Moslems fast in a rather different manner. Throughout Ramadan, the month-long period that commemorates the revelation of the Koran, Moslems abstain from food and drink (and tobacco and sexual intercourse as well) from daybreak until sunset, when traditionally the fast is broken with a few dates or a small cake like knaife or katayef, honey-drenched sweets with fresh cheese or chopped nuts. Men go to the mosque to pray; women prepare or supervise the preparation of an evening meal that must be nourishing enough to provide for the next 24 hours.

Throughout the Mediterranean, every long period of fasting was broken by a feast, and none more glorious in the Christian world than Easter. To me this is the quintessential Mediterranean feast, summing up in its emotional surge and its iconography the fundamental Mediterranean belief in a god (or goddess) who dies and returns to life and in some mystical way redeems humanity from the terror and mystery of our own dying. It is a powerful myth, deeply embedded in the history of the region.

In the Orthodox church, the long fast of Lent culminates in an even more rigorous Passion Week fast, when every scrap of fat is banned from the diet. Greeks break the fast on Easter Eve, after midnight Mass. When the Orthodox priest delivers the poignant and stirring pronouncement “Christ is risen!” it is the signal for a round of feasting that begins almost immediately with magheritsa, a rich thick broth of organ meats, butter, oil, and eggs, an eruption of goodness and flavors that burst or explode in the mouth after the long, lean weeks of Lent. Magheritsa is traditionally made with all of the innards, including the lungs, tripe, and carefully rinsed intestines, of the lamb that was slaughtered for the Easter feast. And the feasting continues the next day, with the same lamb roasted or stewed and shared abundantly among family and friends, along with buttery sweet cakes, often made in Easter symbols like the lamb and the dove.

This profusion of meat, butter, sugar, and eggs is typical of Easter celebrations throughout the Mediterranean. It is a way of eating that is not, of course, to everyone’s taste and certainly not particularly healthful if it were to become an everyday affair. But it’s worth remembering that a rich and meat-laden diet is not the stuff of everyday consumption. It’s a feast, and a feast by its very nature is a very special occasion.

ABOUT CHICKEN

Like most Italian farmers, my Tuscan neighbors raise their own chickens and rabbits. The chickens run free in the farmyard, their diet supplemented only by cracked corn raised on the farm; the rabbits are in hutches, fed from herbaceous grasses gathered in huge bunches from the fields each day. The meat of these animals is incomparable, full of savor and juice and texture.

Our modern, commercially raised chickens are the tomatoes of the animal world—overbred, overmedicated, mass produced, tasteless, and with a mushy texture that adds nothing to soups or stews.

Seek out sources of good, naturally raised, preferably free-range birds, which, fortunately, are becoming more available—and less expensive as they do so. If you can’t find free-running birds, insist on birds that have been fed pure, nonmedicated feed. They don’t need that garbage in their diet, and neither do you.