Greek food author Meni Valle’s latest cookbook on vegetarian Mediterranean cuisine could not have been released in a more fitting setting on Tuesday.
Launched in the inner-city Hellenic suburb of Richmond by famous French chef Gabriel Gate who exhibited a 50-year-old menu from an acclaimed Parisian restaurant named after the ancient Greek who wrote the world’s first cookbook, the event had plenty of Grecian and European flair.
“I wish I could speak Greek,” Gate told the 60-strong crowd.
But it didn’t matter that he couldn’t.
Gate brought to the launch a 48-year-old menu from the famous L’ArcheStrate French restaurant, 84, rue de Varenne, in Paris, where he had worked as a 21-year-old chef.
Archestratus was an ancient Greek poet and philosopher who is credited with writing the first cookbook in history in 320BC , the humorous didactic poem Hedypatheia.
In launching Valle’s latest book, The Mediterranean Cook – A year of seasonal eating, Gate praised the author’s sixth book and the Mediterranean diet.
“The Mediterranean region is the gastronomic region of the Western World,” Gate said.
“There are three or four ingredients that are extraordinary.”
He said they included olive oil, vegetables, cereals and herbs.
Valle told the audience that it took hard work and a team of people to complete her latest book.
“Obviously, we had some laughs along the way,” she said.
Speaking to Neos Kosmos, Gate said he and Valle had known each other for many years, lived at one stage in the same south-eastern Melbourne suburb of Surrey Hills, their children went to the same school and Valle attended Gate’s cooking classes.
He said Valle was passionate about cooking.
“In Australia, we have a tendency to promote overseas authors,” Gate said.
“We have wonderful Australian authors.
“Meni’s very Mediterranean and most of all Greek.”Valle said a good diet was important and her latest cookbook of vegetarian recipes from Greece and southern Europe offered many healthy dishes.
“The hero should be the vegetable,” she told Neos Kosmos.
But the recipes in the book were also versatile as meat and fish could be added, she said.
The Mediterranean Cook – A year of seasonal eating focuses on 80 vegetarian recipes from southern Europe, including Italy, Spain and even Turkey, and includes many from Valle’s ancestral home of Greece.
It was launched at the Winning family’s 118-year-old Australian family business that sells premium kitchen and laundry goods, at Winning Appliances, in Swan St, Richmond, on Tuesday 5 March.
The Mediterranean Cook – A year of seasonal eating is published by Smith Street Books.