A Book of Mediterranean Food

by David, Elizabeth; Dickson Wright, Clarissa

• ISBN13: 9781590170038
• ISBN10: 1590170032
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-04-30
• Publisher: NYRB Classics

Summary

Long acknowledged as the inspiration for such modern masters as Julia Child and Claudia Roden,A Book of Mediterranean Foodis Elizabeth David's passionate mixture of recipes, culinary lore, and frank talk. In bleak postwar Great Britain, when basics were rationed and fresh food a fantasy, David set about to cheer herself --and her audience-- up with dishes from the south of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and the Middle East. Some are sumptuous, many are simple, most are sublime.

Author Biography

Elizabeth David (1913-1992) was brought up in an outwardly idyllic seventeenth-century Sussex farmhouse, Wootton Manor, and her interest in cooking may well have been a response to the less-than-stellar meals on offer there. During World War II she lived in France, Italy, Greece, and Egypt (where she worked for the Ministry of Information), and spent much of her time researching and cooking local fare. On her return to London in 1946, David began to write cooking articles, and in 1949 the publisher John Lehmann offered her a hundred-pound advance for A Book of Mediterranean Food. When it came out the following year, it proved a revelation to Anglo-Saxon appetites. Summer Cooking (1955, also published by NYRB Classics) consolidated her position as the foremost food writer of her day. David continued to be a student of her art throughout her life. Always an innovative force, she even persuaded Le Creuset to extend its range of cookware colors by pointing at a pack of Gauloises. “That’s the blue I want,” she said. Elizabeth David was awarded a CBE, made a Chevalier de l’Ordre de Mérite Agricole, and—the honor that pleased her most—elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Clarissa Dickson Wright is best known as half of TV’s Two Fat Ladies duo and cowrote that series’ cookbooks. Her other books include The Haggis: A Little History (1996) and Food: What We Eat and How We Eat (1999).

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
Introduction	xv
Acknowledgements	1	(1)
Preface to the 1955 Edition	2	(1)
Preface to the 1965 Edition	3	(1)
Introduction to the 1988 Edition	4	(10)
Table of Equivalent Gas and Electric Oven Temperatures	14	(1)
Table of Equivalent American Measurements	14	(1)
Soups	15	(14)
Eggs and Luncheon Dishes	29	(18)
Snails	44	(3)
Fish	47	(24)
Shell Fish	50	(6)
Sea and Freshwater Fish	56	(10)
Octopus and Cuttlefish	66	(5)
Meat	71	(20)
Veal	74	(2)
Lamb and Mutton	76	(5)
Beef	81	(3)
Pork	84	(3)
Kid	87	(1)
Boar	88	(3)
Substantial Dishes	91	(16)
Poultry and Game	107	(18)
Hare and Rabbit	116	(9)
Vegetables	125	(14)
Cold Food and Salads	139	(18)
Note on Hors d'Œuvre	148	(9)
A Few Sweets	157	(16)
Jams and Preserves	173	(6)
Sauces	179	(14)
Index	193