page_title: Mediterranean cuisine
section_title: Portuguese: partly Mediterranean
hierarchical_section_title: Mediterranean cuisine / Cooking / Portuguese: partly Mediterranean
caption_attribution_description: English: Pastéis de nata (egg tarts) from Margaret's Cafe e Nata, Macau.
context_page_description: Mediterranean cuisine is the foods and methods of preparation by people of the Mediterranean Basin region. The idea of a Mediterranean cuisine originates with the cookery writer Elizabeth David's book, A Book of Mediterranean Food and was amplified by other writers working in English. Many writers define the three core elements of the cuisine as the olive, wheat, and the grape, yielding olive oil, bread and pasta, and wine; other writers emphasize the diversity of the region's foods and deny that it is a useful concept. A common definition of the geographical area covered follows the distribution of the olive tree.
  The region spans a wide variety of cultures with distinct cuisines, in particular the Maghrebi, Egyptian, Levantine, Ottoman, Greek, Italian, Provençal, and Spanish, though some authors include additional cuisines. Portuguese cuisine, in particular, is partly Mediterranean in character.
context_section_description: Portugal lies on the Atlantic, not the Mediterranean, but its southern half, including the Alentejo and Algarve regions, is in the Mediterranean basin, characterised by olive groves and a Mediterranean climate. Its cuisine too is partly Mediterranean, with the usual trio of bread, wine, and olive oil, but also partly Atlantic, with a tradition of fishing and many seafood dishes such as spicy seafood rice (arroz de Marisco), clams, squid (lulas grelhadas), and bacalhau, imported salted cod. There are, equally, many meat dishes, using chicken, pork, and rabbit. Other major ingredients are onions, garlic, bay leaves, paprika, cloves, and chorizo sausage. Portuguese vegetables include the tomatoes common in Mediterranean cuisine, but also kale, carrots, and broad beans. Sweet dishes include pastéis de nata, custard tarts with cinnamon. The Alentejo produces red wines.
caption: Pasteis de Nata
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