Introduction

Much of the charm of traditional Mediterranean food comes from its largely peasant origins, a simplicity that has been seized upon as an antidote to the complexity of haute cuisine. Ever since Elizabeth David excited austere post-war Britain with her alluring story ‘of sea and sun and olive trees’, the ingredients and cooking of the countries around The Middle Sea — as it was called in ancient times — have enthralled Northern Europeans. The food of the sun is vibrant, heat-tinged and forceful. It uses ingredients which are of a climate that both differentiates and defines them: the freshest grilled fish, intensely flavoured ripe tomatoes, warm basil, hot chillies, limpid green oil of first-pressed olives, elements of a diet now thought to be the healthiest in the world. Once these were foreign ingredients and difficult to obtain, but now year-round availability has moved them within the everyday reach of the supermarket shopper. This is cooking where marinated meats and fish are frequently plainly seared over charcoal. Salads are simple, redolent of the pungent herbs of unwatered and harsher landscapes. It is a world where the use of ovens is limited.