Books tend to take me to places where I might never, ever go in real life. Such as Soviet Russia at the height of the Cold War. Or even places I could never visit, as much as I might want to. Or even not want to!
Think a banquet in Apicius‘s ancient Rome or the deck of Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés’s ship, the Caravel. Because of Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s 1568 tome, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, I once spent days immersed in another reality.
Cookbooks also transport me to times and places I can only dream of, hope for.
You’ve probably heard people exclaim, “I read cookbooks like novels!”
Often, I would suspect. And I am one of those readers. You might be, too.
There’s nothing more soothing on a gray, rainy, bad-news day than settling into a comfortable spot, pulling a colorful quilt over my legs, and opening a book like Patience Gray’s Honey from a Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, The Cyclades and Apulia.
When I recently pulled Gray’s book off one of my many bookshelves, I glanced at the books next to it. Four other books there on the Mediterranean and the cuisine of the region.*
Arabella Boxer, Mediterranean Cookbook (1981)
Elizabeth David, A Book of Mediterranean Food (1956)
Alan Davidson, Mediterranean Seafood: A Comprehensive Guide with Recipes (1972) [3rd edition, 2002]
Clifford Wright, A Mediterranean Feast (1999)
The Mediterranean covers 965,300 square miles, and borders twenty-four very diverse countries:
Lebanon, Syria, France, Israel, Italy, Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Morocco, Turkey, Croatia, Tunisia, Malta, Slovenia, Albania, Libya, Monaco, Spain, Gibraltar, Palestine, Montenegro, Akrotiri & Dhekelia, and Bosnia & Herzegovina.
And as I gazed at a map, I realized that the Black Sea is part of the Mediterranean Sea, as are three others: the Ionian Sea, the Aegean Sea, and the Sea of Crete.
And so I turned to a jewel of a book on my shelves to gaze at photographs of places I now know I will never see, never smell the salty ocean air, nor walk through a plaza where colorful domes of Orthodoxy loom above me. Caroline Eden’s Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes Through Darkness and Light opens to a map showing yet another sea, the Sea of Azov. Such a mysterious part of the world, of strategic importance, and very much in the news today.
So, while the basic kitchen ingredients appear in markets in many of these places, their preparation and flavors approach the infinite! Mediterranean cuisine is far too complex a topic to cover in one book, although Clifford Wright deserves the accolades he won for trying: the James Beard Cookbook of the Year award and the James Beard Award for Best Writing on Food in 2000.
Depending upon location and culture, the Mediterranean pantry varies but generally consists mostly of olive oil, fruits, vegetables, legumes, herbs, grains, seafood, cheese, and yogurt. Red meat and sweets play a minor role. The following graphic serves as a rough-but-visual guide:
*A confession: I shelve my books by subject, like the librarian I trained to be. But it stops there. No Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress classification for me. Not even alphabetical by the author. I remind myself of a library patron who comes in and says, “Well, I remember the book had a blue cover. And there was a cat on the cover, too,” all the while standing there with an expectant look on their face, as if by magic the book will appear in the librarian’s hand.
CYNTHIA D. BERTELSEN 
Yes, that book about Julia and her friends (Provence 1970?) was a gem. I also had to curtail certain foods lately. I really don’t like to eat raw food much, to be honest.
Yes ,Yes!! I read cookbooks not just for the recipes but for the stories, ingredients, side notes, connections to other stories and books. I hunted for a recipe such as a basic soup one and explore my library of cookbooks collected for about 25 years now. Last year I had to edit this group but my daughter who is a sous chef took several; now I can borrow them back at times. This last Sunday she made chicken verde; we had a lively discussion about chiles and tomatillos. I had been on a no raw fruit or vegetables diet in 2023/part of 2024 per my MD. I searched for ways to make dishes that I could eat and not just tolerate. I missed ‘crunchy’ texture for sure! Now things are better but I still like blended soups of vegetables. I just finished reading a book about Julia Childs in 1970 finally leaving behind Simone Beck. It was a running commentary in my opinion of what all the people in the book ate between shopping, cooking, site seeing and getting on each other’s nerves [very catty dialogue]. MFK is in it plus James Beard..more to review and revisit. Thank you, Dianne
Yes, I am getting that way more and more! I seem to be better at remembering covers and not titles. Thank you for sharing!
When I was in the library, I used to laugh (covertly of course) at the patron who would describe a book’s cover and expect you to find it. Now, when I am trying to remember a book, I find myself thinking about the cover and the spine. ‘What goes round comes round.’