Instructions: STAPLES WERE NATURAL WHEN FOOD WAS SEEN AS GIFT FROM GOD

A testament to taste

For the Lord, your God is bringing you into a good land . . . a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees, and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey.

Deuteronomy 8: 7-8

Forget the mint jelly for your leg of lamb. This year, why not bring the refreshing flavors of the eastern Mediterranean to your Easter table and let the foods of the Bible inspire your feast?

Its a way to symbolically join hands with spiritual ancestors - shepherds and prophets, farmers and weavers - to celebrate enduring religious and culinary traditions.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, there was an increase in Bible sales from people seeking words of comfort. But even before the attacks, cultural observers such as Christopher deHamel noticed a renewed interest in the Bible and in the religions that claim it as a sacred text. Because of technological advances, there is also more information today about plants and crops of the biblical era, which has sparked a new realm of study known as biblical botany. And, with the popularity of Mediterranean cuisine - particularly recent books on Sephardic cuisine - cooks and authors are exploring biblical food. There is even a biblically based diet, detailed in a recently released book titled What Would Jesus Eat? (see story below).

Cookbook author Kitty Morse, who has written about Sephardic, Moroccan and vegetarian cuisine, became curious about food in the Bible after realizing that Jesus and his friends were reclining while eating the Passover meal - which was exactly the way people in Morses native Morocco dined at every meal.

But what was the dish they shared on that Passover evening? she asked herself. More fundamentally, what constituted the diet of the ancient peoples of Scripture?

We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt . . . the melons, the leeks, the onions, the garlic . . - Numbers 11:5

What Morse learned was that people in the Middle East during biblical times ate a largely vegetarian diet of fruits and vegetables, grains and nuts that grew well in the hot, dry summers and damp, cold winters of the region, along with dairy products, fish and - on special occasions - meat or poultry.

For the Hebrew people and early Christians, food was regarded as a gift from God, to be treated with respect. As such, it could convey ideas about spiritual life and what it meant to belong to a religious community. Prime examples are the Passover Seder and the Christian Eucharist.

Despite the role of food, the Bible contains no real recipes, though it comes close in this list of ingredients for bread from Ezekiel 4:9: . . . take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; and put them into one vessel .

In her book A Biblical Feast, Foods from the Holy Land (Ten Speed Press), Morse details the food and preparation methods of the time, but her recipes are extrapolations from the Old and New Testaments that use current customs.

Throughout the Holy Land, grapes grew in abundance. Melons, cucumbers and fava beans flourished in irrigated gardens. Date palms thrived in desert wadis, oases. And people craved members of the allium family - onions, garlic and leeks.

The olive tree, long-lived and evergreen, was a symbol of fertility, peace and divine blessing to both Jews and Christians. Its fruit, or the oil pressed from it, was found at every meal. The cuisine of North Africa and the Middle East still relies heavily on these foods.

The basic source of protein was milk, mostly from goats, though sheeps milk was considered the tastiest. Since there was no refrigeration, fresh milk often was mixed with mint to keep it from spoiling. Or it was fermented and turned into yogurt or a soft cheese that was salted and mixed with garlic, oil, vinegar and herbs.

The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. - Joel 2:24

For the people of the ancient Middle East, grains were the essential food.

Wheat and its primitive cousins, emmer, spelt, einkorn, as well as barley, grew well in the region. Most often, those grains were used for bread, which was baked on flat, heated stones or in simple clay ovens, similar to methods used today to make Indian naan.

In poor families, the evening meal was the only one of the day. They ate simple dishes such as potages (thick soups), or stews of vegetables, barley and beans, seasoned with salt and herbs. People also enjoyed salads, the lettuce for which was gathered from tall, stalky plants.

The wealthy, with their abundance of servants, started off with a light breakfast of bread, milk and maybe a little butter. Their food was seasoned with luxury imports such as black pepper and cassia cinnamon, and they substituted more expensive east African rice for everyday barley.

You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart. - Psalm 104:14-15

The rich drank wine with their evening meals. It was usually pressed from grapes, in shallow depressions carved in rock, though wine also was made from rimmon (pomegranates), dried figs and dates. Noah is credited in the Bible with planting the first vineyards and perhaps in this way fulfilling his fathers hope that he would bring us relief from our work and the toil of our hands.

Beer was the drink of the poor. Some scholars argue that Jesus turned water into beer, not wine. Beer, made locally or imported from Egypt, would have been brewed by women since bread baking and beer brewing were complementary activities.

With the recipes on this page as a starting point, you can explore the Bibles culinary heritage. Maybe youll even get carried away and invite guests and family members to dine Bible-style: sitting or reclining on the floor, eating from a communal dish with the fingers, leaning against one another, shoulder-to-shoulder, in reflection and celebration.

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