Book Review: "Mediterranean Summer"

Any city cook who is on vacation -- or only wishing you were -- should read Mediterranean Summer by David Shalleck (Broadway Books, hardcover, $23.95).  Written with his college friend, writer Erol Munuz, Shalleck spent about 5 years working his way through restaurant kitchens in Italy, ending up as a personal chef to wealthy owners of a 124-foot luxurious sailing yacht, Serenity. 

His story is of two journeys:  his personal quest to become a true chef, as well as a summer yachting season spent sailing France's Cote d'Azur and Italy's Costa Bella when he was challenged by the yacht's owners to buy the best local ingredients, favor fish and shellfish, skip the pastas and never repeat a single dish or menu.

The tale begins with some candidly told professional stumbles and humiliations as he moves from New York and London restaurant kitchens to the south of France and finally through a series of humbling internships in some of Italy's best kitchens.  Under the supervision of some of the food world's greats (including Alice Waters, Faith Willinger, and Nadia Santini of the MIchelin three-star Dal Pescatore) Shalleck seems prone to being simultaneously respected and booted-in-the-rear to achieve his potential.  But he's all on his own when the yacht's fabulously wealthy owners hire him -- without a kitchen audition -- to be their sole cook for a three-month sailing season. 

The Markets, The Cooking, The Surprises

Shalleck's task:  buy all the provisions, plan and cook the meals for the owners, their guests, a few parties, and the 7-man crew.  The challenge to never repeat a meal seemed the least of his hurdles.  Some of the others included a confining galley, unpredictable food sources (every harbor was a surprise), conflict among a crew of big personalities, and the biggest question mark for any boat -- the weather.

The book is well written -- we can see the tiny coastal towns and come to know the owners il Dottore and la Signora and the crew.  With the Mediterranean as a backdrop, home cooks can vicariously tag along on Shalleck's market visits as he buys fresh vegetables, bread, patés,sweets, and especially fish and shellfish.   His clear voice also lets you get inside his head as he sizes up what's available and then how he can put these amazing ingredients together.  He reminds us of what is probably the most essential lesson for any home cook:  it is the ingredients that determine what we cook and eat and what we must search for is "the best a place has to offer at that moment."  His emphasis.

Happily, he resists turning his journey into merely a cookbook with travel notes,  but throughout he offers detailed descriptions of how and why he cooks as he does, including basics on core Italian technique.  The book also includes details of what he stashed as the yacht's pantry -- a list that any home cook prone to Mediterranean cuisine would be smart to duplicate even in a small city kitchen.

There are maps so you can follow the route of Serenity as it sails from the French Riviera, along Italy's western coast, to Amalfi, Positano and Capri, across the Tyrrhenian Sea to Sardinia, then Corsica and finally, back to Saint-Tropez for an end-of-season regatta.  Without falling into any trap of voyeurism, Shalleck and Munuz capture the glamour of the social scenes in these fabled locations.   It made me want so very much to be there, but I would have been happy to have been seeing it all, like Shalleck did, through the galley porthole.

A Memoir with Recipes 

There's a prize at the end of the adventure:  26 recipes from his summer repertoire.  We might not be able to buy our fish dockside at Positano, but we can pretend we're there while making Shalleck's recipe for "Baked Snapper with Tomatoes and Olives," or "Halibut in Crazy Water" (Acqua Pazza).

Above all, this is a story of a man who loves to cook and what he gained from an adventure of a lifetime.  By its end, I predict you will, like me, be cheering him on and celebrating his personal and Mediterranean triumphs.   So even if your summer is city-bound, just turn up the air conditioning, buy some fish to cook for dinner, and read this book as you pretend to have your own Mediterranean Summer.  

 

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