1) Number-one all-time maximum-greatest Mediterranean food and culinary secret: extra-virgin olive oil Is there anything new to say about extra-virgin olive oil? Yes! As smart chefs know, not all extra-virgins are alike. Hand-made Tuscan oil is great but expensive, so cutting-edge cooks look for oils from new areas of old regions: Sicily and Puglia in Italy, the Empordà north of Barcelona in Spain, and the Mani, south of Kalamata in Greece's Peloponnese. Increasingly fine oils are available from Tunisia, Lebanon and other parts of the Med, even from—shhhh!—South Africa and New Zealand! Take a tip from the great chefs of Tuscany, Provence, and Catalonia: Not just a garnish, extra-virgin olive oil is also a great cooking oil; the myth that it's unsuited for frying is, well, a myth, nothing more.

2) Greatest Mediterranean food writer: Elizabeth David Lauded in England for bringing British cooking out of World War II doldrums and into the brilliance of the Mediterranean, Elizabeth David also influenced American cooks, chefs and food writers. In his newsletter Simple Cooking, John Thorne wrote: "[Elizabeth David] treats us as adults, and her writing, even if making no overture of friendship, offers an intimate encounter with an intense, vulnerable, intelligent, admirably honest mind ... the particular nature of her sensibility, an ... asceticism edged with sensuality, is what affects us when we read her, more than any of her recipes, more even than her many fine passages of writing." Her editor, Jill Norman, described her work: "Cookery writing had previously centred on recipe formulae, but Elizabeth described 'the bright vegetables, the basil, the lemons, the apricots, the rice with lamb and currants and pine nuts, the ripe green figs, the white ewe's milk cheeses of Greece, the thick aromatic Turkish coffee, the herb-scented kebabs, the honey and yoghurt for breakfast, the rose-petal jam....'"

3) Prettiest market in the Mediterranean: the Cours Saleya market in Nice wins the award, hands down On display every morning but Mondays, the open-air market just off Place Masséna near the Vieille Ville (Old City) harbors an extraordinarily colorful display of seasonal and (mostly) local produce from plump braids of red garlic to prized ratte potatoes to pyramids of greens, beans, olives, tiny zucchini with their flowers attached, eggplants in 16 or more varieties, peppers, olive oil and honey straight from the producer, you name it—but what lends extra appeal is the artful manner of display—surely the work of designers not mere vendors who learned in art school how to arrange tiny goat cheeses, live chickens and ducks, fragrant bunches of lavender and rosemary, all to maximum impact.

4) Finest rice: arroz bomba from Calasparra in Southeastern Spain Grown organically in the green paddies of the Segura Valley in Murcia province, this round short-grain rice is the crème de la crème for paella and other Spanish rice dishes. What gives Calasparra its special quality is river-based irrigation, with the rice paddies constantly refreshed by the cold, clean waters of the Segura River. Often called arroz bomba, it's the only "controlled denomination"rice in Spain. Low-yielding and difficult to cultivate, it's in demand by chefs for its great flavor and because it doesn't break up easily during cooking.

5) Newest oil to hit avant-garde American restaurants: argan oil Deliciously nutty, richly flavored, with a ruddy orange-gold color, argan oil comes from crushing the roasted nuts of a tree (Argania spinosa) that grows in southwestern Morocco. It looks a little like a spiny olive tree and the fruits too resemble olives, but only the nuts inside are used to make the oil. Like olive oil, argan oil is high in mono- and polyunsaturated fats and in vitamin E, but it's better used as a garnish than as a cooking oil. It's increasingly available from specialty shops like Chefshop.com and Zingerman's Deli. Try blending it with roasted crushed almonds and honey for a traditional spread that also makes a very classy PB&J.

6) Most Mediterranean take on caviar: bottarga/butarekh/avgotarago Bottarga is the most familiar name for this dazzling fish product, though you may also find it in Arabic (butarekh) or in Greek (avgotarago). The roe either of grey mullet from brackish lagoons or of tuna harvested at sea is salted, pressed and dried to make a compact block or cake. Grated or shaved slivers of bottarga garnish Sicilian pasta dishes but its finest use is in the Eastern Med where it's served, like prosciutto, as an antipasto or meze, very thin slices on a plate garnished with fine olive oil, lemon juice, grated black pepper and thin, thin slices of full-grain bread. The grey mullet "haviar"produced by the fishermen's coop of Dalyan in Southwestern Turkey is exceptional, but excellent bottarga from Sicily and Sardinia is more widely available.

7) Most fragrant cooking medium for fish: chermoula You say "Tchermela"and I say "Chermoula,"but however you pronounce it, it's a delightful mix of garlic, hot chiles, cumin, oil and vinegar, sometimes with powdered dried rosebuds and cinnamon added, sometimes with finely minced green coriander (cilantro). Chermoula is used both to marinate whole fish, fillets or steaks, and to mix into cooking juices to boost the flavor of the sauce. It may originate in Morocco, but is widely used throughout North Africa.

8) Most popular non-Mediterranean fish: salt cod/baccalà/bacalao It's not Mediterranean at all, but dried, salted Atlantic cod is widely used and such an esteemed tradition that it deserves inclusion as a Mediterranean food. Underappreciated in America, salt cod is best purchased as a whole fish or a whole boned side; for top quality, check out Greek or Italian fish mongers, or order through Browne Trading, which makes its own. There are dozens of traditional recipes, but a favorite is Venetian mantecato or its close cousin Provencale brandade. In both cases, soaked-out cod is pounded in a mortar with plenty of olive oil and garlic; in Venice, where parsley flecks the puree with green, it's piled on fried crostini and served at 11 a.m. with a glass of prosecco.

9) Best little snack from Friuli: frico (pron. FREE-koh) To call this simply a cheese crisp from Friuli, the mountainous region of Northeastern Italian, is to miss something. Food writer and Friulano-by-adoption Fred Plotkin calls frico "the most delicious and addictive snack"to have with a glass of wine—and it is, especially if the wine in question is one of the great Friuli whites like native-born Ribolla Gialla or Tocai. Frico is not at all difficult to make so long as you have access to a well-aged chunk of the region's Montasio cheese (increasingly available in this country) which is simply grated, then toast in a well-seasoned frying pan to make something like a crepe but crisp, golden, and crunchy—and addictive, for sure.

10) Best fish: red mullet The best fish? What do you mean? Tuna? Swordfish? Wild bass? Anchovies? No, none of the above. In fact, when questioned, almost every chef from Barcelona to Beirut and back admits that his or her all-time favorite is the red mullet (Mullus barbatus or M. surmuletus)—in French it's rouget, in Arabic sultan ibrahim, in Spanish salmonetes, in Italian triglia, and in Greek and Turkish barbouni. The smaller the better for this silvery-crimson prize, which is most often cooked whole, even without gutting, said to impart a unique essence to the delicate flavor of the fish. Grilling or frying is the usual cooking technique and the fish is frequently marinated first, possibly in the chermoula (see #62) to which the juice of bitter oranges has been added.

11) Most alcoholic aperitif: arak/raki/pastis/ouzo Arak in Lebanon, raki (RAH-kuh) in Turkey, ouzo or tsíporo in Greece, pastis in Provence, are all related in how they're made and consumed. Distilled from the fermented residues of wine-making, the high-octane brew, ranging as high as 90 proof, is flavored with a variety of herbs including star anise, mint, fennel, angelica, cardamom, black pepper, even a certain permissible type of absinthe, but what distinguishes it above all is a strong flavor of licorice and the fact that when mixed with water it turns cloudy white. Most often served with meze (see #11), it is intended as an aperitif but often, especially in the Eastern Med, ends up accompanying the entire meal.

12) Best assembly of appetizers: meze/mezedes The service of small dishes to with an aperitif of wine or arak (see #10 above), is a ritual throughout the Eastern Med. Greek food writer Aglaia Kremesi describes it as "various kinds of cold and hot foods: green and black olives; feta ... drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with oregano; raw, cured or simply cooked seafood ... pickled vegetables and spreads; garlicky dips; intensely flavored rice-and-herb-filled grape leaves; and vegetable or meat stews."Meze are different from tapas (see #7) because dishes are served all together instead of one by one, and they're consumed at table sitting down instead of standing at the bar. In Washington, D.C., chef Jose Andres's Zaytinya, 701 Ninth Street NW, is a triumph of meze.

13) Most elegant dish on the meze table: kibbe nayeh Lebanese steak tartare is made from very lean meat from a leg of lamb, with all tendons and fat removed, finely minced with onions, fresh herbs (mint, basil, parsley) and salt. Traditionally it's made by pounding the meat in a stone mortar until it is a smooth, almost creamy-looking paté, but modern Lebanese cooks often use an electric grinder or even a food processor. Spices—black pepper, allspice, cinnamon, cumin—are also added, and often a handful of bulgur (burghul) is kneaded in. It's served garnished with slivered scallions, pine nuts and a dribble of olive oil, along with romaine leaves and/or wedges of toasted pita bread to scoop it up.

14) Second best assembly of appetizers: tapas The Spanish tradition of small dishes is often misinterpreted in the U.S. Strictly bar food in their Spanish homeland, tapas are rarely served at home and almost never at table in a restaurant. Instead, they're for consuming while standing up at the bar, with a slightly chilled fino sherry, maybe a glass of Manzanilla, or even some of Spain's excellent beer—but the point is, unless you're disabled, you're almost always standing. To tapear is a delightful custom, to amble with a group of friends from bar to bar throughout the course of an evening, sampling the specialties of each place in situ. Seville is famous for tapas, but travelers will find elegant selections in the north too, in San Sebastian and Bilbao especially.

15) Best tapa: toasted Spanish almonds There are tapas as complex as any three-star chef's pièce de résistance, but for our money nothing beats the simplicity of a tall, narrow glass of fino sherry, lightly chilled but not frosty, and a handful of plump Spanish almonds toasted in olive oil until they're golden-brown and sprinkled with a crunch of sea salt. The nutty flavor of the fino goes so brilliantly with the sweetness of Spanish almonds that the combination deserves to be lauded in bars all over America just as it is in Spain.

16) Best new idea: octopus carpaccio Beef carpaccio came and went as the height of culinary fashion in U.S. Med-style restaurants, but octopus carpaccio is just starting to come into its own. To make it, Sara Jenkins, chef at 50 Carmine in New York, steams the octopus, then bundles it together to make a sausage, wraps it tightly in plastic wrap, and freezes it so it can later be sliced paper-thin and fanned on the plate. It's dressed simply with olive oil, lemon juice and either piment d'Espelette or Aleppo pepper.

17) Most refreshing drink: Moroccan mint tea All over North Africa, mint tea is served—after a meal, as a mid-afternoon pick-me-up or a late-night let-me-down, and in every carpet shop in every souq from Rabat to Cairo and back. Still, Moroccan mint tea, experts say, has an ineffable quality that makes it better than all others. Moroccan chef and food writer Fatema Hal describes it as a simple brew: Chinese gunpowder tea and lots of fresh mint, as much as you can cram into the tea pot, with five little cubes of sugar. Let the tea steep, then pour out a glass and return it to the pot. Do this again twice more and the tea is ready to serve—always in a small tumbler, never in a cup.

18) Most obscure varieties of well-known vegetables: heirloom Med tomatoes What's better known than tomatoes, especially heirloom varieties? Our markets are filled with Brandywines and Green Zebras, but we would do well to recognize the importance of the true San Marzano, which grows only on the volcanic soil around Vesuvius, or deeply ridged costoluto tomatoes from the Ligurian hinterland, or little pomodori a pennula that hang in clusters upside down and last the winter in Puglia, or glorious anidri tomatoes that grow in an almost waterless environment on the island of Santorini and are as intensely flavored as cherries. In fact, every region of the Mediterranean has a traditional tomato, known to growers and cooks and seldom exported. Only to be appreciated in the terroir in which they grow, these varieties simply cannot be reproduced elsewhere. Don't believe me? Go, taste, and you'll see.

19) Most influential Mediterranean organization: Slow Food In 1986, when McDonald's was about to open its Golden Arches on the historic Piazza di Spagna in Rome, Italian journalist Carlo Petrini decided the time for action had come. In the 15 years since that date, Slow Food, the organization he founded, has burgeoned from a local protest movement to an international association of some 80,000 members on five continents. Slow Food's goal is "to protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of modern fast food."To that end, the organization sponsors a wide variety of efforts, from tastings of local raw-milk cheeses to the biennial Salone del Gusto, held in Turin, Italy, where artisanal food producers from all over the world come together to celebrate diversity, quality and sustainability.

20) Newest Mediterranean market: Souk el Tayeb, Beirut Souk el Tayeb, the first-ever real farmers market in Beirut, brings together from all over that small country producers of organic and natural foods: traditional vegetables like much-loved eggplant, greens, tomatoes, and okra; artisanal breads including both village-style flatbreads and European loaves; mouneh (pantry) products, jams, preserves, pickles, rose-water and orange-blossom water; dairy products, yogurt and cheeses; village eggs and free-range chickens; honey from the mountains—"all the best of our land,"in the words of market organizer Kamal Mouzawek. "Tayeb means tasty,"he explained, "but also good and alive."In a city that has come alive again after the destruction of the 1980's civil war, that's good news. The market takes place Saturday mornings in the parking lot across from the Sofil Centre and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Achrafieh, a district of Beirut.

21) Finest red pepper sauce: salsa romesco Of the five sauces of Catalan tradition, says Spanish food authority Janet Mendel, Romesco "is unique to Catalonia, in particular, Tarragona. It is named for a type of dried sweet red pepper called the romesco, a plum-shaped pepper with crinkly skin. Traditionally the sauce was confected by grinding the peppers with garlic and nuts in a marble mortar."That's still the best way to get the right texture for this elegant sauce, which includes fried bread, fried almonds or hazelnuts, and fried whole garlic cloves. Like a mayonnaise, it is served with grilled seafood or stirred into a seafood stew, and Mendel notes it can be thinned and used as a dressing for salads.

22) Best dried beans: fava beans, lentils, and many, many more Mediterranean cooks make a cult of dried beans. Most traditional are lentils (especially tiny ones from Le Puy in France or Castelluccio in Italy) and chickpeas (garbanzos), for hearty soups and salads as well as pasta sauces. Pureed chickpeas are the heart of Lebanese hummus (meaning "chickpea"in Arabic). One of the oldest beans is cicerchia (Lathyrus sativus), while dried favas are staples in the Eastern Med and Southern Italy (cooks love the way peeled dried favas melt into a puree to dress with olive oil). But New World beans are important too—think of gigantes from the Roumeli in Greece, or red-streaked Tolosa beans and black beans from San Sebastian in Spain, as well as small round Tuscan zolfini, and tiny rice beans (fagioli di riso) from Umbria.

23) Most labor-intensive use of almonds: almond paste (marzapan) Almonds may be the oldest domesticated tree in the Mediterranean—mentioned in the Bible, they were loved by ancient Greeks and Romans. But it took sugar to develop that great confectionery, almond paste, also called marzapan, nothing but a pounded mixture of almonds and sugar, sometimes with a little egg white blended in (the best almond paste has a few intensely bitter almonds added to spark the flavor). Almond paste, called pasta reale in Sicily, is as pliable as clay and can be formed in dozens of shapes, especially the gorgeous Easter lambs and miniature fruits called frutti della Martorana made by Sicily's great mistress of almond paste Maria Grammatico in the medieval hill town of Erice.

24) Second most labor-intensive use of almonds: almond milk Finely ground and pounded almonds are soaked in water for a period of time, then strained to make almond milk, a favorite to be used in Lenten preparations during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Modern chefs have revived the practice: Alfonso Iaccarino at Ristorante Don Alfonso on the Sorrentino peninsula south of Naples makes a spectacular risotto with almond milk garnished with some of the tiny, sweet shrimp that are caught off the end of the peninsula, in the lee of the Isle of Capri.

25) Oldest Mediterranean market: the Aleppo Souq Aleppo in north Syria, 60 miles from the coast, is one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in the Mediterranean basin. The vast warren of vaulted markets, including souq ad-Dra (the grain marekt), souq al-Abasi (the pistachio market), and souq al-Bahramiya (the food market), has been in business since Roman times if not earlier. Up to the nineteenth century, it was an important trading power and the vital link between the Mediterranean and the caravan routes to the East. Today, Aleppo has lost that importance but it's still a fascinating food bazaar, complete with restaurants great and small, serving delicious dishes like fatteh, the rich combination of meat, yogurt and chickpeas that's a traditional Friday lunch.

26) Most astounding street food: Sicilian pane co'la meusa A person could be excused for feeling slightly queasy at the thought of Palermo's famous sandwich of hot innards, but a person so excused would be missing a lot of really delicious food. Made, in the words of Sicilian food writer Mary Taylor Simeti, with "soft buns known as guasteddi filled with sauteed beef spleen, either schietto (nubile) if all by itself, or maritatu when wedded to fresh ricotta and grated caciocavallo cheese."That, she says, is how Garibaldi himself ate pane co'la meusa at the Antica Focacceria di San Francesco which still does a land-office business in a historic part of Palermo.

27) The best Mediterranean seafood stew: bourride It's a hard choice under any circumstances, with a range from Greek kakavia to the great bouillabaisse of Marseilles to Catalonia's suquet to chorba bil hout from Sfax in Tunisia, but our vote goes to bourride from the south of France, mostly because of the great dollop of aïoli that gets plopped on the top of each portion of this rich, creamy, garlicky, fishy paradigm. And the best bourride? That can only come from the fishing port of Sète, west of Marseilles, and any one of a dozen or more little restaurants crowded around the harbor canals.

28) Most unusual ham: culatello "Culatello di Zibello"is the correct name for this soft, sweet, aromatic ham, made from a boneless wedge carved out of the upper haunch of the pig—preferably, but not necessarily, a moro romagnolo, a heritage breed of black pig. Culatello is rubbed with salt, pepper, garlic, and white wine, and tied in a tight net of twine that, as the ham loses moisture and decreases in size, loosens and drapes like a thick spiderweb on the outside of the meat. Traditionally, it's cured in dank basements in the Bassa Parmense, the right bank of the Po between Parma and Piacenza, a region where cotton-thick winter fogs and hot summer humidity add a special sweetness to the meat.

29) Finest ham: jamon iberico Unquestionably, the finest ham in the world is dark red, almost mahogany-colored jamón iberico, jamón de bellota, or jamón pata negra (it is called all these) from Southwestern Spain, which results from a combination of a unique breed of swine, the Iberian black pig, with the methods used to raise the animals (free-range in the oak forests of Extremadura and elsewhere, where they graze on acorns, roots and grubs), plus a long, slow curing process that converts the hog's hindquarters into these extraordinarily savory hams with a taste that is both rich and dry, as nutty as Spanish almonds or Spanish sherry, sweet and salty at the same time, a flavor that is almost indescribably mouth-filling and deeply satisfying. Jamon iberico is not available in the United States.

30) Most delicious confections: rose-petal jam from the island of Crete, rose water from Lebanon and Syria The Damascene or Damascus rose, with its double blossoms of deep, magenta-pink petals and its profound scent (not just the flowers, but apparently leaves and stems as well), is what perfumes both these aromatic delights. Rose water (ma'al-Ward) is made by distilling the fragrant petals; once widely used in Western European confectionery, nowadays its use is restricted to the Eastern Mediterranean. Rose-petal jam, on the other hand, is easily made from any source of deeply fragrant unsprayed roses. For a recipe, look in Ayla Algar's Classical Turkish Cooking or Diane Kochilas's Glorious Foods of Greece.

31) Most distinguished Provençal culinary mentor: Lulu Peyraud Doyenne of the prestigious Domaine Tempier in Bandol, impeccable hostess, indefatigable spirit of the kitchen, Lulu Peyraud, with her earthy humor, her impeccable sense of what is right in the kitchen and on the table, and her gracefully flirtatious manner, seems like a creation of Colette. But she is real and, although much older and fragile now, she has inspired a whole generation of American cooks, writers and wine-lovers, at home and in France alike—everyone from Alice Waters to Kermit Lynch to Richard Olney has been transformed by Lulu's deft touch, her insightful knowledge of food, wine, the products of the garden, the earth and the sea. For more about Madame Peyraud, look for Olney's fine book, Lulu's Provençal Table.

32) Most satisfying market food: leblebi Served at streetside stalls all over the medina of Tunis, the old hilltop town that curves above the modern city, leblebi is the beloved breakfast of working-class Tunisians and, indeed, anyone who relishes a good feed. Basically a chickpea potage or thick soup flavored with cumin, garlic and intensely hot harissa, it's made special by an elaborate selection of garnishes to be added by each imbiber—a spoonful of capers, a sprinkle of chopped scallions, a dollop of olive oil, thinly sliced pink pickled turnip, chopped hardboiled eggs, flakes of canned tuna and/or a final spritz of lemon juice all contribute enormously to the satisfaction of this dish.

33) Finest kind of salt: Mediterranean sea salt The Mediterranean is a very salty sea, much more so than the Atlantic or Pacific, and the combination of sea water and intense sunshine for much of the year makes it an ideal place for salt production. Mediterranean sea salt, whether it comes from Gozo among the Maltese islands, from Trapani on the west coast of Sicily, from the vast lagoon of Aigues Mortes in the Camargues, or from the Balearic islands of Spain, is distinguished by a brilliant white color, crackly, crunchy texture, and distinctive content of health-giving magnesium. It is very different—and to my mind, much more appealing—than the grey salt (sel gris) produced on the Atlantic coast.

34) Best food for eating outside: paella Yes, paella—the most misunderstood dish in the entire Mediterranean repertoire. Ever since home cooks were encouraged to throw everything but the kitchen sink into a stew with rice of undistinguished origin, paella has been scorned by fine chefs. But it's a great dish, deserving of rehabilitation. The finest paella, Valencianos say, is cooked only by men, only for the midday meal, and almost always outside over an open fire of vine cuttings and orange wood from nearby groves. The most traditional paella has chicken, rabbit and snails, along with big beans called gigantes, but a paella de mariscos is not to be turned down, especially at any of the restaurants along the Albufera lagoon south of Valencia where the best rice for paella is said to come from.

35) Quickest fix for Eastern Med dishes: pomegranate syrup from Lebanon Sometimes called "pomegranate molasses,"this is known in its homeland as dibs el-roumann. Very tart with an underlying sweetness, it's the juice of ripe pomegranates, reduced to a thick dark syrup. In the Middle East it's used in various preparations, from the bread salad called fattoush to a basting sauce for a simple roast chicken (see Lebanese Cuisine by Anissa Helou). "It is worth experimenting with,"Helou says, "as it adds a subtle sweet and sour flavor to fried vegetables, sauces and stuffings."

36) Most unusual cheese: buffalo-milk mozzarella Unusual for a number of reasons, beginning with the source of its milk, the prehistoric-looking, sad-eyed water buffalo (not to be confused with U.S. bison) of coastal regions north and south of Naples, mozzarella is also uncommon because it's a pasta filata or "stretched curd"cheese, made by kneading cheese curds in hot water (or whey from the cheese-making) to a smooth, close texture with the feel, one critic put it, "of expensive silk."The best mozzarella di buffala should be eaten within a day or two of production, making it all but impossible for U.S. consumers to taste the topmost quality. Still, with rapid air transport, we are getting better mozzarella than ever before and there is rumored to be a buffalo farm in Vermont soon to be in production.

37) Most useful preserved fish: salt-packed anchovies Fresh anchovies are a delight, but hard to find in markets outside the Mediterranean, where they're often eaten raw or lightly marinated in oil and lemon juice. Salted anchovies have an entirely different flavor since, as with most salt-preserving, chemical changes give the flesh a rounder, more lactic and mouth-filling flavor. The process is simple enough: Freshly harvested anchovies are plunged into a heavy salt brine, then their heads are snapped off and guts pulled out. Once sorted, they're layered thickly with salt in big 20-pound tins in which, two to three months later, they go to market. Rinsed quickly under running water, stripped of their bones and filleted, then marinated in olive oil with a spritz of lemon, they make a delicious appetizer, with good bread and unsalted butter, for slightly adventurous diners.

38) Essential to the Med pantry: salt-packed capers They grow wild all over the Med on stony, inhospitable land close to the sea. Their beautiful mauve flowers with yellow pistils blossom in June but since the part most often preserved is the immature bud, every lovely caper flower represents a missed opportunity. The best capers are from Greece, southern Spain, and the islands of Salina and Pantelleria off Sicily. Harvested, dried buds are packed in salt to preserve them. Although they are sometimes preserved in vinegar or brine, the flavor of salted capers (thoroughly rinsed before using) is decidedly superior. Caper berries, the fruit that forms after the flowers have gone by, on the other hand are preserved in brine or vinegar; spectacular looking, they lack the flavor intensity of small buds.

39) Most unusual cooking method: Syro-Lebanese shawarma Sometimes known in the U.S. as a "gyro,"this curious vertical spit is a superb way to roast thin layers of veal or lamb, interleaved with equally thin layers of the animal's fat, stacked two or three feet tall on the spit, which turns slowly in front of a glowing heat source (in Damascus, it once was a constantly refreshed pile of charcoal; nowadays it's an electric-fired grid). To fill the demand for shawarma sandwiches, the cook slices down the pile. As fresh meat is revealed, it too is cooked by the heat. But the secret is in a marinade of cardamom, mastic, cinnamon, nutmeg, bayleaves, pepper, garlic, lemon and onions. It's the acme of street food in Beirut.

40) Most medieval place in the Mediterranean: the Fez medina (Morocco) The narrow, crowded streets of Fez, within its seven miles of walls, have scarcely changed since the turn of the first millennium, when souqs were first established here in the foothills of the Atlas mountains. No other city in the Mediterranean world gives such an impression of life in the Middle Ages. The press of humanity is staggering. Every street corner boasts a primitive soup kitchen, often no more than a pot simmering over a charcoal brazier. Slightly more upscale establishments provide tables and stools for diners who bend over bowls of sustaining harira, the thick morning bean soup of Morocco. Along with skewers of grilled meat and sausages, or deep-fried sfenji beignets, or trays of karantitah, a savory chickpea custard, this must be the original fast food.

41) Newest must-have ingredient: fennel pollen from Tuscany Wild fennel, a tall stiff weed in the Umbellifera family, is ubiquitous along roadsides throughout the Med (and also in California). Its seeds have long been used to flavor Tuscan sausages and spice mixtures, but Tuscan country cooks also use the aromatic flowers with their pollen, which they gather in late summer and early autumn at the moment when the flowers have dried on the branch and the seed itself has yet to form. Collected and put to dry further in paper bags, this fiori di finocchio or polline di finocchio lends an inimitable flavor, round, warm and with a pleasant hint of licorice, to many meat dishes, especially pork, but also braised duck and rabbit, roasted or fried.

42) Finest kind of yogurt: Kanlicar yogurt On the Asian side of the Bosphoros in Istanbul, across from the mosque, is the little waterside village of Kanlicar, which you can reach by water taxi across the broad reach from the European side. Here, in a dairy bar, is reputed by all who have tried it to be the best yogurt in the world. Nothing but yogurt is served here, and plain yogurt at that. With a characteristic sweet tang and a hint of barnyard in the aftertaste, it is thick, almost chewy, yet deeply refreshing. This is what is eaten for breakfast all over the Eastern Med; it's also a sauce for grilled meat, a soup base, and, with a dollop of honey, an exquisite dessert.

43) Best seafood restaurant: Trattoria Sympaty (or Simpathy, or Sympathy) It has the unprepossessing look of a hole-in-the-wall where the fish could be as old as the oil in the fryolator, but this crowded little two-story restaurant, at the western, non-fashionable edge of Mondello, the beach resort outside Palermo in Sicily, serves what has to be the most sparkling fish and seafood anywhere in the Mediterranean. That's saying a lot, but the spaghetti con vongole veraci, a standard Italian seafood restaurant offering, is transforming, and the seasonal (late spring) tuna and swordfish selections are dazzling. It's closed Fridays (of all days!) but otherwise open lunch and dinner and easy to find, along the Mondello seafront: Via Piano Gallo, 18; tel 091.454.470.

44) Oddest green vegetable: mouloukhiyeh Although mouloukhiyeh (sometimes written m'lookhiyeh) and the addictively delicious stew of the same name—made with layers of toasted Arab bread, poached chicken breast, the steamed greens, and a sauce of chopped cilantro and spring onions in mild vinegar—are Egyptian natives, the dish is beloved throughout the Middle East. Anissa Helou recounts tales of having m'lookhiyeh for lunch at the chic beachfront Saint-Georges Hotel in pre-war Beirut. In the U.S., you're more likely to find dried or frozen mouloukhiyeh in Middle Eastern markets, rather than fresh. You'll find a recipe for m'lookhiyeh in Helou's Lebanese Cuisine.

45) Most expensive Mediterranean ingredient: white truffles The season is late autumn into early winter and, while the Piemonte region of Northwest Italy is famous for its tartufi bianchi, it is not the only place they grow. Umbria in Central Italy produces high quality truffles in profusion—the Urbani company exports them all over the world. But they are also found in the Crete Senese, the hills below Siena, and in the Mugello, north of Florence. The mystique of truffle hunting is part of their charm—the dogs, the secret rendezvous, the nighttime wanderings of the trifulao or truffle hunter—but their greatest appeal comes from the deeply seductive, unmistakable yet elusive fragrance. Never cooked, they are served raw, thinly shaved, over pasta, risotto or certain very specific meat dishes. And they are worth their weight in gold. Literally.

46) Most intriguing sour note: sumac The dried dark-red berries of Rhus coriaria (called staghorn sumac in the U.S. and not to be confused with poison sumac, an entirely different species) are sun-dried then ground and sifted to a fine or coarse powder. Sprinkled on fattoush (Lebanese bread salad) or mixed liberally with sliced onions to make a relish for Turkish kebabs, it adds a pleasantly tart, not quite lemony flavor. It's also used in the aromatic mixture called za'atar.

48) Middle Eastern essential: za'atar This gets confusing because za'atar can mean many things. Sometimes it indicates thyme, the same herb used widely throughout European cooking. More confusingly, za'atar is also often translated as winter savory, and sometimes as the Biblical herb hyssop. But here it gets even more confusing because za'atar also indicates a blend of aromatics much favored in the cuisines of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Palestine. The blend includes the herb za'atar, as well as sumac and sesame seeds, either raw or toasted. Sometimes toasted melon or squash seeds take the place of sesame. Whatever its constituents, this deliciously fragrant blend adds great appeal to a breakfast steamed or boiled egg, and, mixed to a paste with olive oil, it is spread on toasted Arab flatbread for a morning snack.

49) Most elemental food: the bread of Altamura The best bread in Italy, Italians agree, comes from Altamura, a bustling medieval hill town in the heartland of Southeastern Puglia. Made from creamy yellow, slightly gritty durum wheat (semolina) grown on the upland plains surrounding the town, baked daily in enormous wood-fired ovens, the bread comes in great, dense, crusty wheels that weigh as much as 15 kilos (33 pounds) each. The bread similar to that of Altamura is made in other parts of Italy, where it's called pane pugliese, but it never reaches the acme of perfection that it does here in this ancient heartland of hard durum wheat.

50) Most regal food of the Mediterranean: Ottoman Palace cuisine The opulence of the Ottoman court at Istanbul was celebrated throughout its long history, particularly in terms of the variety and elaborate complexity of dishes prepared in the huge domed kitchens of Topkapi Palace where up to 1,500 people were employed at any one time. Little of that tradition remains today but there are many individual dishes, like hunkar begendi, "morsels of lamb served on a bed of smoked eggplant cream,"that are said to come from the sultan's court. The name translates literally as "the sultan approved,"and the sultan in question is said to have been the irascible and arbitrary Murad IV. For a recipe, try Aylar Algar's Classical Turkish Cooking.

51) Most popular Arab street snack: falafel Israelis claim them as their national "dish"but in fact falafel (pron. fah-LAH-ful), deep-fried round balls or patties of mashed chickpeas and fava beans, an ancient and wildly popular food throughout the Middle East, are a good deal older than Israel. Indeed, you'll find them in bazaars and bus stops, in market shops and country crossroads, wherever you go from the north of Syria to southern Egypt and back again, served as quick and pretty healthy snacks, topped with garlicky sesame-paste tahini, either on their own or piled into a half-round of Arab flat bread. Flavored with garlic, cilantro, cumin and ground coriander, often with a healthy addition of ground hot red chiles, they are as addictive as potato chips.

52) Important revival of tradition: transhumance The semi-nomadic lifestyle followed by shepherds who moved flocks from highland summer pastures to winter grazing on the plains, often traveling great distances between the two, transhumance was practiced on a large scale in Southern Italy, in Provence, and in Spain, a country whose history is wrapped up in the practice. It's still practiced on a small scale throughout the east—in Greece, Turkey, Syria and Lebanon, and it has been revived in Spain through the efforts of Jesús Garzón and the Asociación Trashumancia y Naturaleza. The sheep, originally valued for their wool, are more esteemed nowadays for the quality of their milk, which has effected a revival of high-quality Spanish cheeses.

53) Mediterranean original: aged sherry vinegar Great vinegars begin with great wines, and aged vinagre de jerez, sherry wine vinegar, is no exception. A unique product that recalls, on the nose and the palate, fine aged olorosos and amontillados, it is used like an exceptional balsamico to garnish everything from cold soups (especially gazpacho, from sherry's Andalucian home) to rich cheeses. It's a favorite of Spain's great three-star chefs, including Juan Mari Arzak (who actually learned to use it at Troisgros in France) who makes a vinaigrette with sherry vinegar and the juice of black truffles. Arzak even uses sherry vinegar in sweet dishes—in caramel, for instance, for a welcome touch of acidity.

54) Most over-used non-ingredient: white truffle oil American chefs have taken to this spurious invention with alarming alacrity. True, it's cheaper than white truffles themselves, which cost a good deal more, ounce for ounce, than gold; and it's available all year 'round, while white truffles have a rigorous, government-controlled season from roughly late October through early January. But most white truffle oil has precious little to do with white truffles, apart from the fragment in the bottom of the bottle—a genuine piece of white truffle that has been pasteurized so it won't contaminate the oil and incidentally won't give it any flavor either. Where does the flavor come from? A proprietary secret, I'm told, which means it's concocted in a laboratory, most likely in Switzerland.

55) Mediterranean tradition: artisanal pasta Speaking of pasta, we're mostly speaking of Italy. There are traditional pastas in Spain and Greece, but Italy is pasta heaven, with two hand-made, home-made pasta types: Northern, egg-based pasta, made with the equivalent of all-purpose flour; and southern, made with hard durum wheat (semolina), mostly without eggs. Then there's commercial pasta, an equally honorable tradition. By law, commercial pasta must be made with durum wheat flour, generally higher in protein than all-purpose flour, but most of it is extruded through Teflon-coated dyes and quickly dried at high temperatures. The best commercial pasta, however, is shaped with old-fashioned bronze dyes and dried slowly over a longer period of time. Italians say this conserves better the flavor of the wheat at the same time that rougher textures allow the surface of the pasta to "marry"more thoroughly with its sauce.

56) Most dramatic harvest: the Matanza (in Sicily) or Almadraba (in Spain)The bluefin tuna harvest in the Mediterranean is ancient—some historians trace it to the Phoenicians about 12 centuries ago. Called "pig of the sea"for its versatility on the table, tuna was salted, pickled and turned into almost as many sausage products as pork itself. Today the harvest is almost extinct, in part because Mediterranean are being overfished by giant factory ships from non-Med countries. The traditional harvest, using a series of net traps into which the big fish swim, ending up in the "camera di morte"or death chamber, where they are harpooned, is also dying out, although it can still be seen on the Sicilian island of Favignana and in the Atlantic immediately outside the Strait of Gibraltar. A bloody and dramatic spectacle, it's staged these days primarily for tourists, although still with the animation of ancient ritual.

57) Mediterranean tradition: chestnut flour In the mountain forests where it has grown from time immemorial, the chestnut was long known as the bread tree, primarily because in periods of famine—all too frequent in previous centuries—chestnuts and their flour were what kept the majority of countryfolk alive. Harvested in the autumn, they were set aside to roast on the family hearth. Many were dried, often over smoky fires, lending a delicious flavor boost, then ground to make a flour which was used for a type of polenta or as an extender in bread dough. In Liguria, chestnut and wheat flour are mixed together 50/50 to make pasta, which is then served with the region's favorite, pesto.

58) Mediterranean essential: dried red chile peppers Not every Mediterranean cook is a friend to the bite of red chiles, but in many regions they are truly essential. The hot sauces of North Africa, red chile pastes of the Middle East, smokey ground brick-red pimenton from La Vera in Spain, the rounded warmth of piment d'Espelette from the Pyrenees, the coarsely ground chiles from Gaziantep and Aleppo in the East, and the whole dried chiles that cooks from Basilicata deep fry for a crunchy garnish to meat dishes—all would be impossible without red chile peppers from the New World. American cooks are especially lucky because we can draw on all these traditions and experiment with all this panoply of flavors and intensities.

59) Most surprising pepper: Fresh green pimientos de Padron These small finger-length peppers aren't really Mediterranean at all, since they come from Galicia in northwestern Spain, but they're on restaurant menus all over Spain these days and it's rumored they're even grown in a Galician community in New Jersey. Their flavor is intense but not really hot, hard to describe but addictive. Food writer Calvin Trillin has consumed a fair share: "I'm thinking about how the very peppers I'm observing are going to taste in a few hours, after they've been fried in olive oil and sprinkled with coarse salt, and my distress at having to wait those few hours is such that I have to nip over to the market-café across the street and buck myself up with some fresh churros dipped in café con leche."

60) Best canned red peppers: pimientos de Piquillo (pee KEE yo) Canned peppers aren't usually part of the chef's larder, but pimientos de piquillo are different, especially ones from Lodosa in Spain's Navarre region, which are of exceptional quality. The long, pointed red peppers are roasted, peeled and preserved as whole peppers in cans or jars. The fleshy, meaty peppers are delicious on their own, or paired with anchovies, chopped garlic and extra-virgin olive oil. They're also great little containers for a paté of salt cod or tuna, mashed with oil and capers—a perfect addition to a tray of tapas.

61) Mediterranean tradition: farro It's not spelt, though it's often confused with that lesser grain. Farro is Triticum dicoccum, a member of the durum wheat family, and translates as emmer wheat. It's one of the earliest domesticated wheats and, surprisingly, still grown and harvested in remote mountain regions of Tuscany and Umbria. Improved threshing methods make it easier to rid farro of its tough and indigestible outer pellicule, making it newly fashionable with chefs in Italy and in the U.S. It's a deliciously wheaty grain, usually cooked as a whole wheat berry to make something called farrotto—risotto made with farro instead of rice—although the flour can be, and is, made into pasta.

62) Off the beaten path Italian culinary mentor: Paola di Mauro She hasn't written a book, although articles have been written about her. She doesn't own a restaurant, although she knows all the great restaurateurs of Italy. She has no chefly training, although she's a fine instinctive home cook with a rare hand for the distinguishing touch. Yet Paola di Mauro has influenced many, many American chefs and restaurateurs, from Piero Selvaggio of Santa Monica's Valentino et al. to Mario Batalli of just about everywhere. Warmly welcoming, generous in spirit, patient in her teaching, Paola di Mauro, who lives in the midst of her Colle Picchioni vineyards outside Rome, is a veritable godmother to modern Italian cooking in America.

63) Misunderstood tradition: aceto balsamico tradizionale Surprisingly, the true, more-costly-than-gold product, carefully labeled aceto balsamico tradizionale di Modena, or ditto di Reggio, depending on which of these two towns in the Po Valley is the origin of the bottle in question, is not a vinegar at all. That is, it doesn't begin with wine but with freshly pressed grape must, which is filtered and, before it begins to ferment, cooked for 24 hours to concentrate its sugars. Then it's added to the largest of a series of at least five barrels, after which it's transferred, year after year, through a diminishing number of barrels called a batteria, a battery. The result is a dense, syrupy, highly flavored liquid that is doled out drop by drop as a condiment to accompany everything from Parmigiano cheese to strawberries. It is not used in salad dressing.

64) Most healthful Mediterranean food: wild greens Stinging nettles, wild fennel, all the greens of the chicory family, spiny wild cardoons, bitter hyacinth bulbs, tender young poppy greens, wild hop shoots, pencil-thin wild asparagus, purslane, even, on the island of Crete, wild asphodel—wild, foraged provender has been a staple of the Mediterranean diet for millennia, providing a welcome source of vitamins and health-giving antioxidants, especially in winter when gardens are relatively bare. Greens like these and others are stewed with beans, mixed into a vegetable soup, sauteed and made into frittatas or tortillas. U.S. cooks should be very careful when sourcing wild greens—those alongside heavily traveled roads should be avoided, as well as anything from lawns since many lawns are treated with frighteningly poisonous chemicals.