From the land to the table

Food, in the Mediterranean is more than just nutrients. They summon. While they fulfil a nutritional role, they mainly satisfy pleasure. They express.

The landscape is the cultural perception of the area and signifies both the environmental reality of each place as well as the sediment and mark of the entropic processes that have occurred. The sea, elusive and ephemeral landscape, “without” marks, apparent factual and mythical protagonist of the great Mediterranean history, often refer to the land to find the descriptive signs of this area. An area in which the plasticity between man and environment has been extraordinary. The significant overlap between the Mediterranean binomial and the territory occupied by the Roman Empire, can illustrate this fact. Scenery that by the intensity and the historical implementation of its dynamics is a paradigm of transformation and change and at the same time testifies to the fertile tension between environmental conditions and human expectations.

Social factors are determinant to explain any landscape. The Mediterranean is a reflection of a history of agro-forestry, livestock and fisheries of a dozen of centuries that begin to take shape in the Fertile Crescent, in its extreme West. Those almost incredible agricultural achievements in almost impossible territories, announced the future modelling of the territory of the entire basin, into a characteristic, exceptional and unique landscape. A landscape that is as fragile as stubborn, as austere as generous, sensitive and functionally almost always at the limit of its possibilities.

This physical and cultural space is harder to explain and define than to feel and understand, the Mediterranean has also settled over millennia its own set of eating habits, which are recognizable and describable and that bring the distinct and unique landscapes and cultures to the table. The Mediterranean landscape reflects the table, and the table reflects the landscape.

The legendary Mediterranean trilogy -wheat, wines and olives8- is still valid, in a classically dry landscape that adopted these crops that have, in turn, characterized it, settling and intelligently distributed themselves in the rugged mountainous Mediterranean terrain combined with orchards, and remnants of secondary forests. Together, they make up the typical Mediterranean agro-forestry and livestock mosaic, in which is featured, as a distinct Mediterranean identity, terracing with dry stone walls, skill, and intelligence and combined effort to transform often impractical horizontal slopes into farmland. The ingenuity to manage water and irrigate the landscape is another of their capitals.

The Mediterranean relates to a perfection landscape, agriculture and culture. It does so with togetherness and diversity, with generality and peculiarities. Jean Mayer9 asserts that “geographical accidents, climate and historical events that have led the Mediterranean basin to produce a selection of food and cooking methods…” Since Antiquity, food and the sacred have gone hand in hand, as the table and literature or physical activity. It is not a mere coincidence that a maximum such as mens sana in corpore sano emerged in our Mediterranean, or Demeter, goddess of Agricultures, nutritive mother, made humans out of grain, different from animals. Farming as well as the cultivation of the soul, – the cultura animi -, are daughters of the same ancient Greek root10, which in summary, expresses a lifestyle, the diaita, our Mediterranean Diet. From the same root, in this case Latin, originates knowledge and flavour, it is not coincidental but is significant. Nor is it a coincidence that the olive – like the laurel- crowned glory in the stadiums or the words speak and eat had the same hieroglyphic writing in Ancient Egyptian. The words of Plutarch11 illustrated this relationship with simple perfection “We do not sit at the table to eat, but to eat together”. In the Mediterranean, food items are not mere nutrients. They summon. While they do play a nutritive role, the satisfy pleasure. They express.

8 Without being the oldest possible, we cite a reference to illustrate the deep historical roots of this triad of food in the Mediterranean. In segunod millennium, the Egyptians described lands Ullaza in these terms: “wine flowed like water” and the wheat was more abundant in the terraces of mountain sand to the sea. ” According to the Bible (1 Kings, 5, 25) King Solomon sent 9,000 liters per year of “olive oil pressed” the king of Troy Hiram I. The olive tree symbolic of excellence in the Mediterranean, the Koran speaks well (Sourate XXIV 35): “This calls prende oil blessed tree, the olive tree is not that neither East nor of the West, whose oil seems to ignite without him touch fire. ”
9Jean Mayer Ph.D. University of Harvard, in Preface, How to Eat Well and Stay Well. The Mediterranean Way, A&M Keys, Mediterranean Diet Foundation, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Eds., 2006.
10From Lat.. Colere, cultuvar, tilling, caring. Der agriculture. Mod “intellectual culture” culture animi Knowing from Lat. Sapere, “having intelligence be understood,” propte. “Liking, exercise taste,” having this or that flavour” J. Corominas op, cit.
11 Plutarch (46-120)