Take a moment to savor the flavor notes in the symphony that is Mediterranean cuisine: tomato and fennel, couscous and lentils, olives and goat's milk cheese, dates and apricots, pomegranates and figs, saffron and dill.
If that luscious list makes you want to head for Spain, Italy or Tunisia, don't start packing yet. The wonderful, healthful foods of the Mediterranean region are as close as your nearest supermarket.
Take it from an expert, Paula Wolfert, author of numerous cookbooks about the region, including the latest, "Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean."
"It's all here!" Ms. Wolfert says, gesturing around a local grocery store on a recent visit to Baltimore to promote her book. Invited to find the Mediterranean in Maryland, she brings to an ordinary shopping trip a sense of the region's richness, exoticism and variety. Traveling around the store with her is an adventure, akin to prowling the souks, open-air markets and tiny shops of Algeria, Greece and Southern France.
She pauses in the produce aisle, caressing a small, fresh eggplant. "This is the world of eggplant, the Mediterranean. Every shape, size, some just this big" -- holding her fingers a few inches apart -- "some as long as your arm. In Turkey, you can find any shape." She moves on.
"Basil, you know, in most parts of the Mediterranean, people don't eat basil. In North Africa, people think it's for keeping insects out of the house. They put it in their windows. In France and in Italy, and in Turkey, they use it for cooking. But not in Greece, not in the Arab countries, and not in North Africa."
She takes a few more steps, puts her hand on the purple-red bulb of a beet. "Beets, very important," she says, in characteristically staccato style. She is brimming with information and anxious to share it. "In most markets in the Mediterranean, beets are roasted, and sold roasted. The greens are sold separately, and are used for all kinds of stews. You know, some cucumbers in the Mediterranean are so sweet that they're served for dessert."
Fennel she says, is a very important vegetable in the Mediterranean region. She picks up several bulbs and examines their ends. "You would make salads with this. . . . You always want a very wide bulb, a fat bulb, because it's more tender."
She walks on, ticking off the vegetables that would grace a Mediterranean table. Carrots, leeks, garlic, radicchio. "We have different mushrooms, but these can be used instead," she says. "And of course, all the different squashes. We have different peppers, and I think in a funny way, better and more fragrant peppers than you do here, in the North, even though peppers come from Mexico. The peppers of Tunisia, of Macedonia, of southern Turkey, the peppers of Aleppo, of Catalonia . . . these peppers have a fragrance. And it's the soil."
She picks up a slender, light-green pepper. "This is a cubanelle. This is a cooking pepper, and I use this a lot in cooking. It's very similar to mild peppers that you have in Tunisia and Spain. It's a wonderful pepper for frying. If you want to do fried green peppers, like veal and peppers, this is the pepper you use."
"If you can't get something like the delicious sour plums in the Eastern Mediterranean that they use a lot in cooking, you substitute cranberries," she advises. "Cranberries work very well."
It should come as no surprise that Western food works well in Mediterranean cuisine, for many of its staples originated in the New World, including potatoes, tomatoes and chili peppers.
She moves through the store, pouncing on likely items. Flour tortillas that could be used in place of Middle Eastern flat breads. Fresh pastas -- "The whole world is pasta crazy, it's not just Americans." Yogurt, used extensively in the eastern Mediterranean -- "But when they buy yogurt, it's usually drained, so all the water is out of it, and it's very thick."
In front of the milk section, she pauses. In the Mediterranean, she says, "you might have goat's milk as well as sheep's milk" -- and there it is on the shelf: Goat's milk from California. "Isn't that amazing?" she says.
In the gourmet section, she finds a treasure trove.
"Now here's couscous. . . . All couscous is precooked -- all couscous. Couscous has the ability to multiply seven times itself." She holds up a box and shakes it. "This is 2 1/2 cups. One pound is 2 1/2 cups. When people follow these directions, they get about 6 cups couscous. When they steam it, they get about 12 cups. Now what do you think happens to the couscous if you don't steam it? It grows in your stomach. It isn't so hard to steam couscous."
She rejoices over finds of kalamata olives, pine nuts, almond paste, marzipan, grape leaves, tahini, roasted red peppers, wild rice and barley. She likes the plethora of grain and pilaf mixes, but laments the absence of bulgur. "Bulgur wheat is used in Cyprus, in Northern Greece, all over the Levant, the Arab countries, and in Turkey to make pilaf. They don't make pilaf with rice, rice is not indigenous. They have to import rice. Bulgur is what they grow."
She's delighted by the pasta selection. "This is fabulous. Look, orzo, you can toast that and you mix in a little bit of bulgur and you make yourself a wonderful pilaf. I don't know why people don't eat more bulgur pilafs. They're so good, and they're so easy to make, and they're just as quick as rice. And you can't fail."
At the well-stocked meat and poultry counters, she bypasses beef and chicken. "For most of the Mediterranean, meat means lamb. Now it's true that you can use beef for lots of dishes. Some people don't like lamb."
However, in her own cooking, she says, "I've pushed meat off the center of the plate. I'm much more interested in meat as a flavoring, and eating more vegetables and grains. There's only so much food you can put in your mouth. And with the USDA
suggesting you eat five servings of fruit and vegetables a day, you better push meat off the center of the plate."
Anyone who lives on the water should be able to get good seafood, she notes, as do the people of the Mediterranean region. But, she says, "I don't think you can make bouillabaisse in America." Fish stew yes, but not bouillabaisse. "You need heads and tails and things."
In a section stocked with cooking implements, she pounces on one. "I'll teach you a wonderful trick. See this?" It's an ordinary, four-sided grater. "In most countries in the Mediterranean, when they want to peel, seed and chop a tomato, do you think they bring a big pot of water to the boil? No way, that costs a lot of fuel.
"They cut the tomato in half, pick out the seeds, take a tomato half in their hand and go like this" -- she demonstrates, pressing an imaginary tomato down the large-hole side of the grater -- "until there's nothing left but the skin in your hand. They do the same thing when they want to start a recipe off with onions, because they want the onions to dissolve, along with the spices. This is a very Mediterranean thing." She laughs at how marvelous, and how obvious, this simple kitchen trick is. "In fact," she says, "when I did that once in Menlo Park, Calif., the whole audience burst into applause. They had never thought of that!" She shakes her head. "And neither had I. . . . We have a lot to learn from the Mediterranean. Not everything, but a lot."
For home cooks anxious to explore the world of Mediterranean cuisine, here is a recipe from Ms. Wolfert's latest book, "The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean" (HarperCollins, $30). She Asuggests serving the fish with a rice pilaf and sauteed spinach.
Poached Fish in Tomato Sauce
Serves 2
2 6-ounce white-fleshed fish fillets
sea salt
1 large onion
1 large rib celery
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
pinch of Near East or Aleppo pepper, or cayenne
1 ripe tomato, halved crosswise, seeded, and rubbed on a box grater to make 1/4 cup pulp (discard the skin)
1/2 cup water
pinch of salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
chopped fresh parsley for garnish
Rinse the fish, pat dry with paper towels, and sprinkle with sea salt. Let stand 1 hour.
Meanwhile, peel and thinly slice the onion, celery and garlic and gently steam with olive oil in skillet 2 to 3 minutes. Add the cumin and red pepper and cook, stirring, 1 minute longer. Add the tomato and water and bring to a boil. Add a pinch of salt and black pepper to taste and cook, stirring, 1 minute.
Fold each fillet in half and slip into the simmering sauce. Cover and cook over medium-low heat 5 to 8 minutes, or until the fish is done (the time varies with the thickness of the fillet). Transfer the fish to a shallow serving dish. Boil the pan juices to reduce to a napping consistency. Pour over the fish and let stand until ready to serve. Serve warm with parsley sprinkled on top.