We love Mediterranean food, but what actually is it? There are no less than three continents and twenty-two countries that touch the Mediterranean sea. Each of those countries have distinctive cultures and are proud of their unique cuisines, but what is it about Mediterranean food that unifies, unites, and brings it all together?

Let’s start with ingredients. There is no ingredient that brings these varied cuisines together more than the olive, and more specifically, the sumptuous and delicious olive oil that can be pressed from the fruits of the olea europea tree. Olive oil is the primary fat used for cooking, and it is used liberally and generously for frying, braising, roasting, in cakes and breads, for dressing salads, and emulsified in soups and sauces. Almost all Mediterranean dishes benefit from a fresh drizzle of extra virgin oil just before serving. We like to use it liberally in our cooking. Thankfully, olive oil also happens to be very good for us, good for your bones and skin, as well as your heart and mind, without the saturated element of other fats, and is one of the primary reasons that the people of the Mediterranean are renowned for their long and healthy life expectancies.

The other defining ingredients could be said to be vines of grapes, and sheaths of wheat, and the wines and the breads that come from them. But then we would be forgetting lemons and oranges, peaches and melons, rich, ripe, red tomatoes, juicy figs and jewelled pomegranates, wild herbs, giant pine nuts, almonds by the handful, seductive saffron, and of course the garlic. Perhaps it is not a particular ingredient, but more the abundance of nature’s bounty in these lands where the sun shines for 300 days of the year. Here, there is an appreciation and a respect for that abundance. Freshness and quality are celebrated by enthusiastic market traders that proudly pile their stalls high with edible delights, hawked to equally enthusiastic crowds of buyers for whom caring about quality and provenance is in their bones, handed down through the generations.

Those market stalls are also often piled high with shimmering, glimmering heaps of fresh fish. From sardines and anchovies, to tuna and turbot, squid, cuttlefish and octopus, fish is as significant a source of protein as beans, poultry and meat. Mediterranean cultures have long traded in and on the seas and fishing has always been at the heart of industry. But the proximity to the Mediterranean sea gives a flavour that goes beyond the seafood. This is a gentle sea that brings a cooling breeze in the summer and keeps the lands warm in the winter, supporting the temperate climate. The word Mediterranean comes from Latin and means “the sea in the middle of the lands”, although it was also known as ‘the great sea’ by the Romans in the time of their empire, ‘our sea’ by the ancient Greeks, and ‘the white sea’ by the Ottomans. This area is known as one of the world’s cradles of civilisation, from the founding of the world’s first walled city of Jericho in 9000 BC through the many empires that have spread around its edges, from the Egyptians, to the Greeks, the Romans, the Ottomans and the Moors.

Mediterranean food has a recurring simplicity, although it is not simple. For example, take flour and water, perhaps a little egg, mix it together and boil it. Pasta. Yes, and no. The flour must be right, the proportions too, the dough kneaded properly, rolled and worked, and shaped. Simplistic food must be done well, for in the delicate balance of simplicity, good food has nowhere to hide. What is more important is to share a care of eating real food; food that has not been messed around with, overly processed, or wrapped in plastic.

The final element is pleasure. Mediterranean food is eaten around the table with friends and family. People take their time, this is not about efficiency, it is about joy. Lunch should take hours, not minutes, and with it comes both health and happiness. Speak to a Mediterranean person about food or with food, and see their eyes light up. There are so many flavours to be enjoyed in this life, and what gives us life, the good life? What we eat.

What is Mediterranean food?

Recipe - Ajo Blanco with Frozen Grapes