Peppers

Appears in
Food of the Sun: A Fresh Look at Mediterranean Cooking

By Alastair Little and Richard Whittington

Published 1995

  • About
Mediterranean food is defined by so many things. It is indisputably of the sun, and vegetables have always played a central role. Olive oil is an absolute in the mix and, for all who live around the coast, fish takes pre-eminence over meat. Garlic is a prevalent flavouring agent and herbs, like parsley and coriander, feature almost in the sense of vegetables and certainly as salad elements in their own right. We know at once what is being implied in culinary terms when somebody uses the word Mediterranean as an adjective, but it is a suggestion of something rather than an absolute definition - a generalization rather than a specification. Thus, with the possible exception of the truly ubiquitous olive, you cannot isolate a single ingredient and ascribe to it uniquely Mediterranean properties. For a start, many natural foods like tomatoes did not originate from this part of the world, yet the idea of Mediterranean food without them would be unthinkable.