The author has for the last 20 years shared her life with a sculptor whose appetite for marble and sedimentary rocks has taken them to Tuscany, Catalonia, Naxos and Apulia. She has written a passionate autobiographical cookbook, Mediterranean through and through and as compelling as a first class novel."
"A cult cooking classic by 'the high priestess of cooking' Patience Gray, filled with unusual recipes, brilliant stories, and hyper-local ingredients and methodologies. Important reading to prepare for a future living well off the land, or just living well in general."--Literary Hub
This singular volume is a pastiche of personalities, customs, landscapes, mythology, recipes and history drawn from veteran food writer Gray's 20 years in the Mediterranean. In prose that demands a leisurely reading (``Pungent the mint trodden underfoot on the way to the orchard''), she discusses societies in which food is ``grown for its own sake, not for profit.'' The recipes are a varied lot. ``Widowed'' potatoes (with tomatoes, grilled almonds, pine kernels and onion), spinach with raisins and pine kernels, and fried chicken in walnut sauce invite a visit to the stove. But date-shell soup, tomato concentrate and a recipe for fox are unlikely to be reproduced in the kitchen. A section entitled ``Some Products of the Pig'' yields such diverse entries as a discussion of how pigs are used on the island of Naxos, an incident from the Odyssey and a recipe for pigs' tongues with pomegranate sauce. A chapter on anarchism whimsically diverges from the main food-centered themes. Simple pen-and-ink sketches offer decorative views of foods and settings. (October)
A cult cooking classic by 'the high priestess of cooking' Patience Gray, filled with unusual recipes, brilliant stories, and hyper-local ingredients and methodologies. Important reading to prepare for a future living well off the land, or just living well in general.--Literary Hub
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