The eastern Mediterranean is the Lascaux, the Bethlehem, the Cooperstown of food. It was here that animals were domesticated and crops were planted for the first time. As a result, the concept of villages and kitchens and written recipes evolved and spread throughout the known world. Turkey, Greece, Egypt, and their neighbors developed their own unique culinary traditions, but cross-pollination and the basin's communal ingredients (lamb, mint, sumac, sesame seeds, chickpeas, lentils, bulgur, olives, pomegranate, pistachios, yogurt, eggplant) united these disparate cooking styles into the cuisine we know today as "Mediterranean." And although the region's gastronomical evolution has been going on for 8,000 or 9,000 years,... More >>>