Paula Wolfert has written nine cookbooks over a span of 30 years. She fell in love with French and Mediterranean cuisine and translated those recipes to print with unsurpassed success. I believe this book is #4 in order of publication dates: 1988 or a mere 30 years ago. The “world” in World of Food is still the Mediterranean. The recipes are hers, her friends, and the gems she discovered on her many journeys on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea. She’s as comfortable in Morocco as in Marseilles.
The chapters reflect the basic elements of any Mediterranean meal:
- First Courses: salads, fish dishes, cold meats, and terrines
- Rice, Pasta and Couscous: dishes from Sicily, France, Spain plus some of her favorite food, couscous
- Soups: fish, Macedonian white bean, and three from South-West France
- Fish: white-fleshed, swordfish and tuna, salmon, mussels and shrimp and squid, stews, and bouillabaisse
- Poultry and Game: chicken tagines, turkey, duck, three foie gras, two rapid and one hare
- Meat: lamb shanks and tagines; beef stews; steak and veal; pork roasts and chops, cassoulet
- Vegetables: autumn, winter, spring, summer and potato
- Desserts: roulade, cake, Greek sweets, fruit fresh and in tards and in flan, plus quince sorbet
The book has that stark, direct style of something from three decades ago. There are no photos. The pages are oversized and dark: there are lots and lots of words. Paula is famous for detail. Using these recipes, you need to breath deeply and display patience. The recipe steps are numbered, typically 3-4 sentences, and written with care. Do this, don’t do that, prepare this step a day in advance if you wish.
This is a book where you really, really want to read the recipe through before grabbing your knife or your ingredients. But, that intellectual prep work will pay handsome rewards.
The individual recipes? Well, here are five reasons to have this book close at hand:
Gypsy-Style Small Fish with Currants: smelt in a sauce pf parsley, scallion, wine, fennel seed, clover, coriander, green pepper, red peppers, pepper flakes, tomato, and currants
Tagine of Mussels with Coriander and Spices: garlic, coriander, parsley, cumin, paprika, cayenne, tomato paste and vinegar
Chicken Artichoke, Eggplant and Potato Pie: comfort food indeed
Marinated Pork Chops with Peppered Pears: pork marinade of carrots, onions, celery, shallot, garlic, peppercorns, juniper berries and brandy
Catalan Eggplant with Cheese and Honey: scooped out eggplant, blended with Gruyere and Parmesan, and the puree stuffed back into the eggplant shells
In November, I’m going to post here Paula’s A Recipe for Turkey. If you want a different and most sophisticated Thanksgiving recipe, then perhaps this is it. The bird itself is stuffed with sautéed mushrooms, prosciutto, walnuts and white sausage, then roasted in a large pan alongside stuffed onions. The stuffing for the bird has 14 ingredients, for the onions a mere 12. It’s an all-day cooking experience.
Every recipe in this book is an experience and you need that experience at least once in your life. World of Food is a classic book, one to savor as you read it, one to savor as the dishes alight on your table.