The fabulous Mediterranean cuisine of Aesop's tales

To speak of Aesop is to cite a wisdom that has not aged, despite its 27 centuries. It is to mention the solidity of man's principles through perfect portraits of his character and the fascinating variations of his behavior. So solid are these principles that they have survived, like Homer and Virgil, the creativity of their interpreters and translators, among them a certain Jean de La Fontaine. And so, at the turn of yet another century, journalist, short story writer, and photographer Pedro Ernesto de Luna decided to give his own interpretation to the morals and stories of the Greek fabulist, instigated by his granddaughter's curiosity, his revealed vocation as a researcher, and the frugality and freshness of the themes of each of the fables selected in The Fabulous Mediterranean Cuisine from Aesop's Tales, all worthy of lively dinner-table debates. The service for this dinner, Mediterranean as befits Aesop, is served by Piero Cagnin, Venetian by birth, Brazilian by sophistication, who maintained absolute fidelity to techniques and ingredients that, little did he suspect, only Alain Ducasse had known how to describe in his Cuisine de l'essenciel. The connection between the simplicity of the tales and the lightness of the recipes is woven into a remarkable argument about Aesop's Mediterranean cuisine, which Pedro de Luna developed with historical precision and which precedes the chapter on Tales and Recipes. In his arguments, which reach the refinement of explaining, following Aesop's maritime paths, the origin of terms and palates that brought Mediterranean flavors into fashion, he turned over Theban tombs, investigated Babylonian temples and interpreted the sayings of Bibles and Qurans. In short, two authors and their stories of high morality transform themselves into this journey through the fabulous Mediterranean cuisine of Aesop's tales, which will stir the fabulous minds of young fabulists or the fabulist verve of fabulous cooks.