25 Paula Wolfert Recipes with Big Mediterranean Flavor
Paula Wolfert's 40-year food-writing career began with 1973's Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco. With a total of nine cookbooks under her belt, Wolfert's work explores the culinary traditions of southern France, Morocco, and the Mediterranean at large; indeed, she is often regarded as the "queen of Mediterranean cooking" and has earned numerous awards from the IACP, James Beard Foundation, and more. These 25 recipes showcase the warm flavors Wolfert made familiar, each dish a lesson in authentic ingredients and techniques of the region. Don't miss her stellar potato gnocchi, pot-roasted eggplant, cumin-scented lamb stew, and many other Mediterranean essentials.
Pot-Roasted Eggplant with Tomatoes and Cumin
? Quentin Bacon
Paula Wolfert visited the kitchens of Dar Yacout, where the cooks still use charcoal fires to make dishes like lush and smoky roasted eggplant salad.
Toulouse-Style Cassoulet
Although there are innumerable versions of cassoulet, most are based on a stew of white beans and various forms of pork. The dish gets its name from the pot it's traditionally baked in, the cassole, which is often shaped like a wide inverted cone to ensure the greatest amount of luscious crust. This version includes duck confit and French garlic sausages, a specialty of Toulouse.
Vegetables in the Style of Laguiole
This is Paula’s brilliantly approachable take on one of the most iconic restaurant dishes ever invented, the gargouillou of chef Michel Bras of Laguiole, France. Paula introduced Bras to the United States in an article she wrote about him in 1987. Like all her favorite chefs, he elevates the humble peasant foods of his region. Don’t let the long list of vegetables intimidate you. In fact, Paula wrote, “There is no precise way to execute the following recipe; the fun is playing around with it.”
Potato Gnocchi
You can dress up perfect gnocchi in as many ways as you can sauce pasta, garnishing them with an unheated pesto sauce as the Ligurians do, or tossing them with foaming butter and slivered sage leaves as the Piedmontese do. You can mix them with a chunky tomato sauce or smother them in a wild boar ragù. Paula Wolfert finds that a little olive oil added to the dough makes for a silkier consistency, but it is optional.
Ground Lamb and Shallot Kofta Kebabs with Pomegranate Molasses
Burhan Cagdas makes ground meat kofta kebabs from hand-chopped lamb mixed with diced lamb-tail fat. In place of the fat, Paula Wolfert uses crème fra?che, which keeps the meat rich-tasting and meltingly tender.
Flaugnarde with Pears
F&W published the recipe for this not-too-sweet fruit pancake to celebrate the publication of the 2005 edition of Paula Wolfert's 1983 classic, The Cooking of Southwest France. Flaugnarde is a sibling of the more familiar, baked fruit dessert called clafoutis. It's just as good for brunch as it is for dessert, served puffed and hot, right out of the oven.
Tangier Street Bread (Kalinté)
This "bread" is Tangier's version of socca, the chickpea flour–based pancake of Nice, France, but it's much thicker and more custardy, like flan. Moroccans eat it by the slice on the street, sprinkled with cumin or smeared with harissa, but it's also delicious spread with cold salads, like Fresh Tomato and Caper Salad.
Fresh Tomato and Caper Salad
When guests sit down to the dinner table, Moroccan hosts often set out small salads to eat with bread or on their own. Paula Wolfert found this salad in Essaouira, along the Atlantic coast. She says it's rare to see capers in Moroccan salads, even though the country is one of the world's leading suppliers.
Thrace-Style Spicy Mussels
Award-winning cookbook author Paula Wolfert's mussels are first steamed with butter, cinnamon, and white wine, then seasoned with pepper and lemon juice and tossed in an herbed chile-tomato broth swirled with feta cheese.
Moroccan Lamb Stew with Noodles
Paula Wolfert learned a chicken dish called chaariya medfouna from a private cook named Karima. "Chaariya means noodles," Wolfert says. "Medfoun means a surprise or something hidden." In Paula's adaptation, the steamed noodles cover tender chunks of lamb spiced with cumin.
Swordfish in Creamy Tomato Sauce
Any thick, beefy fish will work with this dish, such as sea bass, bluefish, tuna, or of course, swordfish. It's cooked at a low temperature in an aromatic broth spiked with tomato, garlic, and oregano, allowing it to absorb the rich flavors while still remaining moist and succulent.
Pan-Roasted Cauliflower with Pine Nuts and Raisins
? Kana Okada
The late Armenian cookbook author Arto der Haroutunian, who taught Paula Wolfert this dish, caramelized cauliflower on the stove before baking it with eastern Mediterranean flavorings: chopped tomatoes, plumped raisins, and Marash red pepper flakes. You can use any cazuela or flameware pot, but Wolfert likes the unglazed black La Chamba roasting pan from Colombia, which she says imparts sweetness to the dish.
Eggplant and Lentil Stew with Pomegranate Molasses
To keep the textures and flavors of the vegetables distinct, the eggplant is layered in a pot with tomatoes, lentils, chopped onions, and garlic, then cooked slowly, covered, without stirring. The stew is best when made ahead and allowed to mellow for at least a few hours.
Pork and Wild Mushroom Daube
The Proven?al stews called daubes are cooked in wide-bellied, narrow-necked earthenware pots (daubières). The lids are specifically designed to trap moisture during cooking. Dutch ovens or bean pots are perfect stand-ins for a daubière.
Chicken in Red Wine Vinegar
For Paula Wolfert, this rustic Lyonnais dish is comfort food. Slow cooking transforms red wine vinegar, tomato, shallots, garlic, and a touch of honey into a perfectly balanced sauce for chicken.
Classic Pistou
Pistou is an olive oil-based basil sauce from the south of France that closely resembles Ligurian pesto. There's only one way to make true pistou — by hand. Tear the basil leaves into pieces first, then grind the leaves against the side of a mortar with a pestle to puree them into a silky, creamy sauce. Like its Italian twin, pistou can also be served as an accompaniment to grilled meats, poultry, fish, and vegetables.
Semolina Pancakes
Every morning, cafés in Marrakech serve these crêpes, called begrhir, drizzled with honey or spread with apricot jam. Cooking the crêpes on only one side leaves a lacy network of tiny holes, perfect for catching the sweet toppings; the fine semolina provides a lovely sandy texture. Paula Wolfert adapted this recipe from one in the book La Patisserie Marocaine by Rachida Amhaouche.
Slow-Cooked Duck with Green Olives and Herbes de Provence
This is the most forgiving and delicious duck recipe you’ll ever find. By slow-cooking duck with aromatics until it’s as tasty and tender as confit, then broiling it until the skin is shatter-crisp, Paula Wolfert manages to play to all of the bird’s strengths.
Spiced Butternut Squash Soup
Aged goat cheese is a key ingredient in this creamy soup from the Rif Mountains in northern Morocco. Paula Wolfert uses Midnight Moon by Cypress Grove, but goat Gouda also works well. The recipe for the spice blend makes more than you need, but any extra is excellent tossed with roasted vegetables.
Ajvar
Proust had madeleines; Paula Wolfert has eggplants. Her love of nightshades was seeded in her childhood, and this is her best guess at her grandmother’s recipe for a Balkan eggplant spread she often made when Paula was growing up. Tangy and only faintly garlicky, it’s an ideal accompaniment to just about anything.
Golden Raisin Dessert Couscous
This simple, cinnamon-scented treat comes together with just six ingredients and couldn't be easier to prepare. It's wonderful served either warm or cool.
Vinegar-Poached Sturgeon with Thyme-Butter Sauce
Here, sturgeon is poached in an aromatic mixture of red wine vinegar, herbs, and shallot, then pan-seared and served on a bed of tender baked zucchini with a buttery caper sauce made from the reduced poaching liquid.
Pasta with Smothered Broccoli Rabe and Olives
Many Mediterranean cooks use clay pots to cook foods without added liquid. In Sicily, the method is called affogato and the pot is an earthenware tegame. In Paula Wolfert's adaptation of a specialty she enjoyed many years ago at the Ristorante Circolo Uliveto, in the Sicilian town of Trecastagni, she substitutes an easier-to-find cazuela for the tegame. She uses it to cook coarsely chopped broccoli rabe (ideally the young, leafy kind) with grated pecorino cheese, briny olives, and meaty anchovies, then folds the mixture into boiled pasta and bakes it.
Kuski Fawar (Couscous with Greens)
Since this type of couscous tends to be slightly dry, you may want to serve it the traditional way, with glasses of buttermilk.
Sweet Cherry Clafoutis
Most chefs in France's Limousin region say that this creamy cake tastes best made with unpitted cherries. If this is too rustic for you, pit the cherries, roll them in sugar and freeze them; the frozen sugar grains seal the fruit, so juice doesn't stain the batter. Purists insist on local black cherries, but you can use any bold-flavored fruit, like apricots or plums.
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