Flavours of the Riviera: Discovering the Real Mediterranean Cooking of France and Italy Book

The true food of the Riviera predates the arrival of the yachts and Michelin-starred cuisine. This mountainous crescent of Mediterranean shore, spanning the border between what are now France and Italy, has for much of its history been subject to terrible poverty. Its fertility is low; and the Mediterranean has never been a really abundant supplier of fish. As Colman Andrews observes, the indigenous traditional cuisine, particularly in the mountains, "is based on ingenuity, conservation and reuse". The situation was somewhat better on the coast, notably in the great ports of Nice and Genoa, where maritime trade brought a range of imported ingredients to spice up (in some cases literally) the frugal cuisine. Flavours of the Riviera is a quite exceptionally interesting exploration of the food of this area, born, it would seem, out of a passionate concern to record these highly distinctive foodways before, their inevitable erosion. What many of these recipes share is a quite fantastic ingenuity in stretching sparse ingredients. Vegetables are stuffed, or extended in gratins with breadcrumbs, or otherwise bulked out--culminating in the extraordinary Cappon Magro, an elaborate construction of cooked vegetables and hard-tack biscuits. The Riviera has its great soups, including Minestrone, apparently the only correct vehicle for Pesto (itself seemingly the only correct use for basil). The Genoese claim to have invented Ravioli: that's as may be, but the pasta dishes here are remarkable, as are the breads. A final turn into the mountainous back-country reveals dishes based on game, mushrooms and chestnuts. Colman Andrews seems to have been everywhere and met everyone concerned in any way with traditional food in the region; he has immersed himself in its history; and he writes passionately and with a fine eye for detail and anecdote. --Robin DavidsonRead More