We look to paintings, sculptures, cathedrals and temples for the greatest examples of human creativity and vision, but we should also look to the endangered foods in this book, whether a cultivated red grain of rice from south-western China, a rare cheese from the Accursed Mountains of Albania, or a piece of cake baked in western Syria; each of these foods is the product of invention and imagination and the wisdom of generations of unknown cooks and farmers. This
