Alan Davidson (food writer)

From ArticleWorld

Alan Davidson (1924-2003) is best known for his classic Mediterranean Seafood and deep understanding of Lao and Thai cuisine, and around the time of his death, for his 20-year-long project, the 900-page Oxford Companion to Food. A diplomat with the British Foreign Service, Davidson served in, collected recipes from, and wrote about Laos, Tunisia, Egypt, Thailand, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Portugal, among others. Davidson's writing is characterized by a warm, inclusive, wry, and constantly curious eye, and his essays and books touch upon the entire complex of food-related and eating subjects in different cultures, from biology to Thai funeral rituals. Davidson wrote about the complexity and variety of non-Western foods, and about the nitty-gritty, history, and lore of food, and exotic spices.

Davidson's first book, Mediterranean Seafood, came about when, posted in Tunisia he could not find a cookbook for the scores of local fish new to him. So he compiled one instead, together with ichthyologist Giorgio Bini, then the leading authority on Mediterranean fish, and called it Seafish Of Tunisia And The Central Mediterranean. How this book was published and its repercussions is the stuff of food writing lore. A mimeographed manuscript found its way to the already veteran English food writer Elizabeth David, who pushed for its publication, thereby creating an instant, encyclopedic classic, and igniting friendship between two food giants.

Davidson's other books include Traditional Recipes of Laos, Fish Recipes of South East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood and the comic novel Something Quite Big.