(almond biscuits) are reminiscent of the buñyols and rosquillas that are found across the border in Spain. Le soufflé Roussillonais is a peach soufflé flavoured with eau-de-vie. Black nougat is a speciality of Perpignan. The only cheese made in the Roussillon is lait caillé (fresh curds) and fromage frais.
Corsica is the most mountainous island in the Mediterranean. The rugged gorges, deep ravines, dense forests of pine and chestnut trees and fantastic beaches have earned it the name of L’Île de Beauté. Much of the island is covered with macchia, shrubland that is fragrant with myrtle, broom, lavender, sorrel, borage, pennyroyal, sage, thyme, marjoram and many other aromatic plants that are found only in Corsica.
Like Sardinia, Sicily, Malta and the Balearic Islands, Corsica has been inhabited since the Stone Age. The first wave of settlers were the Ligurians in the seventh millennium B.C. They were followed by the Torreans, Greeks, Etruscans, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Saracens, Pisans, Genoese and the French. Even the British ruled Corsica for two brief years at the end of the eighteenth century. All these invasions and occupations have given Corsicans a strong sense of identity and family honour. There is a Corsican saying: ‘So corsu, ne se fienu’, which means ‘I’m Corsican, and I’m proud of it.’
Corsican food is simple country fare. Soups are substantial – la suppa, a vegetable soup that is similar to the Italian minestra, usually includes onions, tomatoes, potatoes, broad beans and cabbage. Minestra incu i ceci di Jovi Santu, a chickpea and pasta soup, is usually served on Good Friday. Chestnut flour is widely used in cooking. Chestnuts were first introduced by the Genoese in the fourteenth century. When the Genoese began to levy high taxes on wheat, the rebellious Corsicans refused to grow it and used chestnut flour instead. Today chestnut flour is used to make brilluli (a kind of porridge), nicci (pancakes) and pisticchine (a chestnut galette). It is also used in various desserts such as flan à la farine de chataigne, a kind of cream caramel thickened with chestnut flour, and la torta castagnina, which is a rustic walnut cake.
Several cheeses are made in Corsica: Bleu de Corse, a ewe’s milk cheese that ressembles Roquefort, various goat’s cheeses, and brocciu – a fresh goat’s cheese made with ewe’s milk that is similar to Italian ricotta and les brousses of Provence. Brocciu is also made demi-sec and sec. Fresh brocciu appears in many Corsican dishes, as stuffings for omelettes, ravioli and cannelloni, and in sweet and savoury fritters. It is also used in numerous desserts such as fiadone (a cheesecake flavoured with lemon rind and eau-de-vie), l’imbrucciati (cheese-filled puff pastries) and strenna (a brocciu cheese tart that is made in Vico on New Year’s Day). Brocciu sec, or dried brocciu, is mainly used, like Italian Parmesan, for flavouring soups and pasta. Other pastries of note are i canestri, ring-shaped pastries that are traditionally made for Easter, merzapani (almond macaroons) and fugazzi, a sweet bread flavoured with pastis and white wine, which is made in Bonifacio on Good Friday.
Light acquires a transcendental quality, it is not the light of the Mediterranean alone, it is something more, something unfathomable, something holy. Here the light penetrates directly to the soul. Opens the doors and heart, makes one naked, exposed, isolated in a metaphysical bliss which makes everything clear without being known.
– Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi
You should see the landscape of Greece. It would break your heart.
– Lawrence Durrell, Spirit of Place: Letters and Essays in Travel
Greece
Greece is a land where East meets West, where the past is seamlessly interwoven with the present, where myth and legend are fused with history. It is a land of extraordinary beauty – with dazzling light, dusty red earth, clear blue sea, whitewashed villages wooded hills and rugged mountains. Greece has over 1400 islands, but only 169 are inhabited.
The state of Greece as we know it today is not very old. Half of Epirus, Macedonia, Thrace, Crete and most of the Aegean Islands were only united with Greece after the Balkan Wars in 1913. Before then, Greece was ruled by the Ottoman Turks, Franks, Venetians, Catalans, Genoese, Byzantines and the Romans.
Greece as a country has not existed for 2,000 years, yet the spirit of Greece – its language and its strong sense of identity – have survived throughout its long history of invasions and occupations. Around 7000 B.C. early farming communities developed in Macedonia and the fertile plain of Thessaly, where they grew barley and wheat, and kept sheep and goats. In the Bronze Age (c. 3000–1400 B.C.), the Minoan civilization in Crete was the most advanced in Europe. The Minoans were a great maritime power, trading olive oil, wine and honey around the Mediterranean. On the mainland, the Mycenean civilization thrived until 1100 B.C., when the Dorians swept down from the north and plunged Greece into a Dark Age that lasted more than three centuries. Over the following 300 years city-states or polis evolved, the most powerful of which was Athens. This was the beginning of Greece’s Golden Age, when she produced more men of genius – in philosophy, politics, geometry and the arts – than at any other time in history.
The diet of classical Greece was based on cereals, olive oil, legumes and wine. The main staple was maza – a grain-paste or cake similar to the Roman puls but made with wholegrain barley flour. Wheat flour was used to make bread – according to Athenaeus more than seventy-two varieties of leavened and unleavened bread were made. Legumes and seeds were highly prized for their nutritional value. Chickpeas, lentils, broad beans and vetch were boiled and made into etnos, a kind of porridge. Ancient Greeks were fond of onions and garlic and ate a variety of dark green leafy vegetables such as lettuce, watercress, purslane, orache and turnip tops. They also ate plenty of cheese, almonds and walnuts as well as a variety of fresh and dried fruit – especially figs, grapes, apples, pears, melons, quinces and pomegranates. Meals were washed down with wine, often thinned with water, or kykeon – barley water flavoured with mint. The poorest peasants drank diluted vinegar instead of wine.
Meat and fish were luxuries in Ancient Greece. Meat was mainly associated with sacrificial practices as an offering to the Gods, and only small quantities were eaten after the ceremonial rites had taken place. Garos, the fermented fish sauce called garum by the Romans, was originally made in Corinth.
Greece was under Byzantine rule for over 1,000 years, from classical times to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. The Byzantines encouraged a wider use of vegetables and spices and a liking for sweet pastries. This was mainly a result of Christianity and the Greek Orthodox Church being adopted as the official religion, which increased the number of Holy days in the calendar year when the eating of meat was prohibited – including Pentecost, the forty days of abstinence for Lent, and the forty days following November 15 for Christmas. Meat was also never eaten on Wednesdays and Fridays, which is why there are so many traditional pies and stuffed vegetables in Greece that are made without meat. Special pastries were made to celebrate each holy day (as they were in most Mediterranean countries) such as tahinopita (a sweet tahini cake) for Lent, tsourekia (braided buns flavoured with aniseed) for Easter, Christopsomo (a Christmas bread decorated with walnuts and sesame seeds) and vasilopita (a sweet yeasted bread that is made on New Year’s Day). Vasilopita is named after St. Basil of Caesarea – one of the three Hierarchs of the Greek Orthodox Church.
The Ottoman Turks, who ruled Greece for nearly 400 years, were another important influence on Greek cooking. Many dishes in Greece today have names that derive from Turkish: domates (stuffed
