The Mediterranean Kitchen

A first issue assembles itself around a question. For Issue 01 the question is the Mediterranean — what five plants, all hillside Lamiaceae or close cousins, have to do with a cuisine that reaches from Naples to Beirut, from Marseille to Athens. Basil for the mortar, rosemary for the lamb, thyme for the stew, oregano for the pizza, sage for the brown butter. Five plants, one sun, and a hundred different cuisines that learned to read them.

The herbs picked for this issue all share a habitat: limestone soil, salt-spray air, dry summer, and Mediterranean winter rain. The chemistry that makes them what they are — phenols and terpenes optimized for hot, dry, lean conditions — also makes them survive long cooking, dry well, and travel without losing themselves. They are, in short, the herbs that the Mediterranean kitchen built around because they were already there.

Issue 02 will cross the Levant — to za’atar, sumac, and the kitchens that took the Mediterranean spine and rebuilt it eastward.