Cooking and eating in the Mediterranean(s)
Introduction: we don’t eat only for nourishment!
Cooking is a constant in all human cultures, both as a skill learnt and as an activity involving one or several eaters. However, some people eat pork while others don’t. Some forbid all products of animal origin while others relish dog soup. Some people eat with knives and forks, sitting at table, while others eat standing or squatting, using chop-sticks or just their fingers. One could go on forever listing these variations in time and space: cooking and food are universal but not uniform: they are immediate ways of identifying different social groups. In other words, we don’t eat no matter what, no matter how, no matter when with no matter who. We cook and we eat according to rules – our values, our imaginations, the social and cultural contexts we live in – even when we want to break those rules.
During the last few years, television has become the incomparable source of how we see our societies and what we think about them. Using MedMem’s archives we don’t study different ways of cooking in the Mediterranean, but rather we explore what is said, both by the public television programme controllers – through their selection of what to show to illustrate “cooking” – and by the programmes themselves. What features jump out from the extracts chosen? An emphasis on tradition, the importance of cooking as a transmitter of identity and the celebration of the Mediterranean way of eating.
Introduction: we don’t eat only...
Cooking and heritage: telly nos...
Cooking and identity: one’s own...
Cooking and health: glory be to...
Conclusion
Short bibliography to go a litt...
Abstract
Cooking is a constant in all human cultures, both as a skill learnt and as an activity involving one or several eaters. However, some people eat pork while others don’t. Some forbid all products of animal origin while others relish dog soup. Some people eat with knives and forks, sitting at table, while others eat standing or squatting, using chop-sticks or just their fingers. ...
Author
Zubillaga Mayalen
Writer.