Introduction

‘The food of the north tastes too much of the fat of the pig fat of the pig!

Take me south again, to the olive trees and oil me with the lymph of silvery trees oil me with the lymph of trees not with the fat of the pig.’

D. H. Lawrence

When we think of the Mediterranean, we might picture a market early on-a hot morning. The awnings of stalls and shops, cool arcades, the archwayed openings of the shops in a souk. Cooked-food sellers fry rice cakes or felafel, Water drips on to slices of fresh coconut, there’s the red grin of water-melon slices, and the pale vast slabs of halva in foil are cut to show swirlings of chocolate or green pistachio nuts. Sack after sack of dried beans show unfamiliar shapes and colours. How can you choose from so many kinds of olive? Or identify the bundles of dried herbs? There will be smells, too: lamb turning on the spit, parmesan cheese, salami, the sea smell of the freshest fish you have ever seen, pink and black, gold, red and white. Then we probably remember small tavernas with a veranda pushing almost into the sea, or the ouzo in a café on the main square at midnight. For us it is a rich and rare experience of light.