paste "dissolved in water to make a cooling drink" and stews of meat with vegetables and tomato (such as Spanish
andrajos, French ''
, Italian ciambotta, and Turkish buğu kebabı''), are indeed found all around the Mediterranean.
Seafood including
sea bream and
squid is eaten, often in stews, stuffed, or fried, in Spanish, French, and Italian dishes. Despite this, however, the lands bordering the Mediterranean sea have distinct regional cuisines, from the Maghrebi, Levant, and Ottoman to the Italian, French, and Spanish. Each of those, in turn, has national and provincial variations. File:Mediterranean Cuisines.svg|The major culinary regions of the Mediterranean
Maghrebi s slow-cooking on a
Moroccan street Mediterranean Maghrebi cuisine includes the cuisines of
Algeria,
Libya,
Morocco, and
Tunisia. One of the most characteristic dishes of the region is couscous, a steamed, small-grained wheat semolina, served with a stew. The dish is ancient, mentioned by the Medieval traveller
Ibn Battuta, and found for example also in the
Western Sicilian cuisine, especially in the province of
Trapani, where it was re-introduced after 1600. One stew that may be served with couscous is the
Moroccan tagine, a hearty, somewhat dry dish of meat and vegetables, cooked slowly in a pot (called a tagine) with a tall conical lid. Dishes from the Maghreb region of North Africa are often coloured and flavoured with the hot spice mixtures
harissa and
ras el hanout (containing such spices as cumin, coriander, saffron, cinnamon, cloves, chillies, and paprika). Other characteristic flavourings of the region are preserved lemons and dried apricots and raisins.
Egyptian '' on an
Egyptian street with bread and pickled vegetables Egyptian cuisine has
ancient roots, with evidence that, for example,
cheese has been made in Egypt since at least 3,000 BC. Falafel are small fried croquettes of bean or
chickpea flour, currently also eaten across the Levant and the West, but originating in Egypt's Roman era; they are claimed as theirs by
Coptic Christians.
Duqqa is a dip made of pounded herbs, hazelnuts, and spices, eaten with bread.
Kushari is a
vegan dish of rice, lentils, and pasta, variously garnished; it began as food for the poor, but has become a national dish.
Levantine tabbouleh Levantine cuisine is the cooking of the Levant (Mediterranean coast, east of Egypt). Among the most distinctive foods of this cuisine are traditional small
meze dishes such as
tabbouleh,
hummus, and
baba ghanoush. Tabbouleh is a dish of bulgur cracked wheat with tomatoes, parsley, mint, and onion, dressed with olive oil and lemon juice. Baba ghanoush, sometimes called "poor man's caviar", is a puree of aubergine with olive oil, often mixed with chopped onion, tomato, cumin, garlic, lemon juice, and parsley. The dish is popular across the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa.
Ful medames, originally from Egypt and still a national dish there, consists of
fava beans with oil and cumin; it is popular throughout the Levant. The dish may be ancient: dried beans of
Neolithic age have been found near
Nazareth, Israel.
Ottoman and
Turkish cuisine combine similar elements. Ottoman cuisine has given rise to the cuisines of modern
Turkey, parts of the
Balkans,
Cyprus, and
Greece. A distinctive element is the family of small flaky pastries called
börek. These are popular and widespread across the Eastern Mediterranean region, and date as far back as ancient Roman times.
Börek are made of thin sheets of
filo pastry, filled with mixtures such as meat, caramelised onion and sweet peppers. Another widespread and popular dish is
moussaka, a baked dish of aubergine or potato with various other ingredients: often minced meat and tomatoes, sometimes a layer of
egg custard or
béchamel sauce on top. In its Greek variant, well known outside the region, it includes layers of aubergine and minced meat with custard or béchamel sauce on top, but that version is a relatively recent innovation, introduced by the chef
Nikolaos Tselementes in the 1920s.
Greek Greek cookery makes wide use of vegetables, olive oil, grains, fish, wine, and meat (white and red, including
lamb,
poultry,
rabbit, and
pork). Other important ingredients include olives, cheese, aubergine, courgette, lemon juice, vegetables, herbs, bread, and yoghurt. Some more dishes that can be traced back to ancient Greece are:
lentil soup,
fasolada,
retsina (white or rosé wine flavoured with pine resin), and
pasteli (sesame seeds baked with honey); some to the
Hellenistic and
Roman periods include:
loukaniko (dried pork sausage); and
Byzantium:
feta cheese,
avgotaraho (bottarga), and
paximadhia (rusk).
Lakerda (pickled fish),
mizithra cheese and desserts such as
diples,
koulourakia,
moustokouloura, and
melomakarono also date back to the Byzantine period, while the variety of different
pitas probably dates back to ancient times. Much of Greek cuisine is part of the larger tradition of Ottoman cuisine, the names of the dishes revealing Arabic, Persian, or Turkish roots: moussaka,
tzatziki,
yuvarlakia,
keftes, and so on. Many dishes' names probably entered the Greek vocabulary during Ottoman times, or earlier in contact with the Persians and the Arabs. However, some dishes may be pre-Ottoman, only taking Turkish names later; the historians of food John Ash and
Andrew Dalby, for example, speculate that grape-leaf
dolmadhes were made by the early Byzantine period, while
Alan Davidson traces
trahana to the ancient Greek
tragos and
skordalia to the ancient Athenian
skorothalmi.
Balkan David barely mentioned the non-Greek
Balkans, stating only that yoghurt and moussaka are widespread in the region.
Italian '', a typical
Italian dish of pasta with clams Mediterranean
Italian cuisine includes much of Italy outside the
north and the mountainous inland regions. It is a diverse cuisine, but among its best-known and most characteristic foods are pizza in
Neapolitan and
Sicilian styles, pasta dishes such as
spaghetti, and
risotto. Anna Gosetti della Salda's book of Italian regional cookery lists 37 risotto recipes, 18 of them from the Veneto. Variations among Veneto risottos can include chicken, eels, quails, or clams. Pizza is a piece of bread
dough rolled out thin, with a topping which varies from place to place, but is generally much simpler than those in the English-speaking world. Although the toppings in Italian pizzas may be, depending on the order, unquantifiable, in the most rigorous tradition of
Neapolitan cuisine there are only two variants:
Margherita and
marinara. Spaghetti dishes also vary. It may be eaten as David says "simply with olive oil and garlic", without cheese, or with a sauce of "very red and ripe peeled tomatoes", cooked briefly and flavoured with garlic and either basil or parsley.
French bouillabaisse, with the fish served separately after the soup Mediterranean
French cuisine includes the cooking styles of
Provence,
Occitania, and the island of
Corsica. Distinctive dishes that make use of local ingredients include
bouillabaisse and
salade niçoise. Salade niçoise is a colourful
salad of tomatoes,
tuna, hard-boiled eggs,
Niçoise olives, and
anchovies, dressed with a
vinaigrette.
Spanish paella with red peppers and
mussels Spain's varied Mediterranean cuisines include the cooking of
Andalusia,
Murcia,
Catalonia,
Valencia, and the
Balearic islands.
Paella is a characteristic Spanish dish, originally from
Valencia, radiating early on to Catalonia and Murcia along Spain's Mediterranean coast. It comes in many versions, and may contain a mixture of chicken, pork, rabbit, or
shellfish, sautéed in olive oil in a large shallow pan, with vegetables, and typically
round-grain rice (often of the local
albufera,
arròs bomba,
sénia varieties or similar) cooked to absorb the water and coloured with saffron. The dish may be varied with
artichoke hearts,
peas, sweet peppers,
lima beans,
string beans, or sausages. Catalan cuisine has developed over centuries since ancient times in a cultural context distinct from that of other parts of Spain. It arose from the cooking of the Romans who occupied Iberia for nearly 700 years, until the latter part of the 5th century. Catalan cooking is a sophisticated cuisine with its own methods and recipes, and was influenced by Moorish, French, and Italian cookery. It shares with other Mediterranean cuisines ingredients such as bread and wine, fresh herbs and fruit, olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, peppers, onions, fish and shellfish, rice, pasta, sausages, lentils, chickpeas, and nuts including hazelnuts, almonds, and pine nuts.
Portuguese: partly Mediterranean '' Portugal lies on the
Atlantic, not the Mediterranean, but it is in the Mediterranean basin, characterised by olive groves and over much of the country a Mediterranean climate. However, Portugal's Atlantic coast is significantly wetter. Its cuisine too is partly Mediterranean, with the usual trio of bread, wine, and olive oil, but also partly Atlantic, with a tradition of fishing and many seafood dishes such as seafood rice (
arroz de Marisco), clams, squid (
lulas grelhadas), and
bacalhau, imported salted cod. There are, equally, many meat dishes, using chicken, pork, and rabbit. Other major ingredients are onions, garlic, sweet peppers (
pimentão), and
chouriço sausage.
Piri-piri, a sauce made with chili peppers, garlic and oil, is popular. Portuguese vegetables include the tomatoes common in Mediterranean cuisine, but also kale, carrots, and broad beans. Sweet dishes include
pastéis de nata, custard tarts with cinnamon. The country produces red wines such as
Alentejo. == Anise spirits ==