The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean: 215 Healthy, Vibrant, and Inspired Recipes
The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean refers both Paula Wolfert's love of great food and the pioneering spirit that has inspired her to travel across the globe many times over in search of the world's best recipes. In all of her remarkable books, she delves with tireless enthusiasm into her research and writing, ensuring each recipe's authenticity and accessibility. In The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean, she brings readers and cooks into the kitchens that produce the healthy home cooking that is the trademark of such lands as Macedonian, Turkey, Syria, and the countries on the Black Sea. Wolfert's food dazzles the palate. Her book begins with recipes for sauces and dips, including two walnut and pomegranate sauces; soups include Anatolian Sour Soup and Macedonian "Green Cream." Meat, poultry, and fish dishes include eleven varities of kibbeh, Duck with Quinces, and Skewered Swordfish. Her sumptuous recipes for vegetables and grains--stuffed eggplants, pilafs, and pomegranate-flavored vegetables, to name a few--reflect the bounty and healthful eating patterns of the Eastern Mediterranean. Wolfert's Middle Eastern grain salads are healthy and rich with flavor. Paula travels into the kitchens of native cooks to ensure that her recipes are as genuine as they are delicious. She takes us into the home of a friend in the Republic of Georgia, whose mother teaches Wolfert how to prepare Chicken Tabaka; to a mountain village in northern Greece where, with a sister food writer, she searches for fine cheese to complete a savory pie; and to a farm in Turkey, where the country's best bread baker tells her secrets of baking unleavened flat griddle bread. These delicious, authentic recipes focus on the healthy eating patterns for which the Eastern Mediterranean is increasingly being recognized. Wolfert's recipes are as delightful to read as they are to use. Armchair cooks and travelers will be moved by the descriptive geography and resonate personal stories Paula Wolfert relates along with her fabulous dishes. Wolfert's expertise is renowned among food lovers, amateur and professional, and her joy of discovering new ways to prepare food is infectious to her many devoted readers.
Paula Wolfert is one of the first food writers to acknowledge the importance of Mediterranean cuisine. During a five-year journey that encompassed parts of the Balkans, Turkey, Syria and Greece, she collected a myriad of recipes from native cooks that are easily adaptable to American kitchens. The diet of the region depends upon grains, legumes, vegetables and nuts--perfect for the health conscious--and lends itself to recipes such as pumpkin kibbeh stuffed with spinach, chick peas and walnuts and nettle cheese pie. Wolfert is careful to provide special advice to ensure smooth preparation. The book won both the 1995 Julia Child Cookbook Award in the International Category, and the 1995 James Beard Award in the International Category.
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The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean: 215 Healthy, Vibrant, and Inspired Recipes Reviews
Buy the book. Her recipes are not always easy, but they always produce great food. Ever since I first purchased her cookbook, Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, I have been a fan of Paula Wolfert.
I found the plethora of kibbeh recipes exciting and it was a real thrill to have them work on my first attempt. My all time favorite recipe, and worth the price of the cookbook alone, is the "Split Tummies" which are softened eggplant stuffed with a lamb/spice /pinenut mixture (I often use turkey) baked over a bed of vegetables. I adore this cookbook and never tire of reading the recipes and fascinating intros to each. Paula Wolfert does an amazing job a painting a picture of the foodyou can almost taste it even before you walk into the kitchen. At the height of summer, when the garden is bursting with peppers, tomatoes, greens and eggplant, this cookbook is a joy. Unlike many of the reviewers, I don't find the ingredient lists 'esoteric' (this may simply be b/c I spend way too much time ordering spices from Penzeys and visiting Indian groceries), but I have also had great success when when skipping or substituting ingredients.
Love the Macedonian chickpeas, eggplants and tomatoes on page 252, which is easy to make and will make an impression for family and friends. Ironically it was a negative review or slam, about the authors many (50) Kibbeh recipes that perked my interest and made me want the book. The book is big and the variety of recipes is vast, with some of my favorites that call for chickpeas, or roasted peppers, fish or chicken. It's awesome. Am a huge fan of pilaf and love her recipes. So when I got the cookbook within a couple days of ordering it I went straight to the kibbeh section and had to smile, because it is so interesting because it reminded me of a favorite Italian cookbook with a lot of recipes for different meat balls, or a cookbook I have that has dozens of different types of hamburger recipes. What a wonderful cookbook for the serious cook who is interested in new recipes, other cultures and healthy food with a nice mix of history of a given recipe or dish.
The person who bitterly wrote that this book has "millions of kibbeh recipes." actually did a favor to me. Kibbeh is the national dish of Lebanon and a staple of Middle Eastern Cuisine. My frustration is over. A really nice treat to all. His or her derogatory statement triggered my purchase: I finally found the book I was looking for.This book made it to the list of winners of Julia Child's Awards, and it is by far the best guide to prepare dishes like Kibbeh or kibbi I have found. My kibbehs turned out GREAT for the first time. Not a big deal to me. The "exotic" spices can be purchased online, just like the book.
The main edge I would give to Child's book is that it succeeds in bringing a more limited topic into a bit clearer focus.Wolfert does not cover the entire Eastern Mediterranean, and her book gains from the focus she put on the four areas she covers. When other authors gloss over this last subject, it is like they are ignoring the presence of the 800 pound gorilla in the room.There may be people who will not get their money's worth out of this book. Wolfert is an excellent writer, or, she has a really crackerjack crew of editors at Harper Collins to tighten up her prose.Second, it is probably one of the very best cookbooks for natives of this region transplanted to the United States. While Elizabeth David's book on Mediterranean cuisine maintains an important place in the literature of Mediterranean cuisine and Claudia Roden's book on the food of the Middle East improves the depth of coverage over David, Wolfert's book tops both of them in depth of coverage and may rival David's book for insights into the culinary wellsprings of the region.Outside of writing on the Mediterranean and the Middle East, I find Wolfert's book to rival those of Diana Kennedy on Mexico and even match the quality, if not the seminal influence of Julia Child's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking'. Like Kennedy and unlike David and Roden, Wolfert maintains the touch of the scholar in her writing in citing connections to local sources and native language documents. It easily lands on my short list of best cookbooks dedicated to a specific regional cuisine. It's geographic range is eclectic and it may not replace books specializing in Greek or Turkish or Lebanese cuisines, but it's approach to food writing is a great model for others. Both have adapted dishes from Wolfert's canon.For my money, this is easily one of the top ten (10) cookbooks available in English.
If speed is your thing, go to Rachael Ray or a general cookbook author like Mark Bittman. The Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel)While Georgia does not border on the Mediterranean, Wolfert finds that the cuisine here is very similar to the other three regions she has chosen, which makes sense since Georgia borders on Turkey and probably shares much of the same agriculture as northern Greece.Wolfert shares with Kennedy a love of her subject, which matches or surpasses that of even native writers. Turkey (Anatolia). Like Wolfert's most recent book on slow cooking recipes, these recipes are all rather long and clearly benefit from long cooking times. There are books on the cuisine of Turkey and Greece, but I suspect books on the food of Georgia are pretty uncommon.Third, it is a great book for non-natives who happen to have developed a taste for this food.Fourth, this is a superior source of recipes for vegetarian dishes and for ways of substituting bulgar wheat for rice in various dishes. Georgia (bordering on the Black Sea, south of the Caucasus). The book is also a great source of yogurt recipes, including directions on making it at home.Fifth, the book takes special note of recipes, which are suitable as Meze dishes.Sixth, the book gives more coverage to breakfast and lunch and to the food appropriate to Ramadan.
These are:Northern Greece (Macedonia and Thrace). Paula gives us practically every aspect of her search of local, authentic recipes from stories about her local contacts through thoughts about how to adapt authentic recipes to American kitchens to reflections on those features which distinguish great cuisines, as she does when discussing pilafs, where she says "For me, any cuisine that makes plain starches so beguiling is a cuisine of great sophistication." The accuracy of this statement hits home immediately since I just got finished reviewing a book on Tuscan food which manages to make stale bread, dried beans, and corn mush into interesting food.That this is a great book still requires some qualification to identify the audience for which it is best suited.First, it is an essential volume in the library of cookbook collectors and food scholars. This is the fourth Paula Wolfert book I have reviewed and I find it better than the first three, even better than her important first book on Moroccan cuisine. For the cookbook reader and collector, I also offer the opinion that Ms.
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