While many of the newest Mediterranean cookbooks use storytelling and location photography to contextualize recipes within a specific culture, these titles focus on making the region’s cuisine accessible for weeknight cooking. Authors share pared-down versions of traditional recipes and ideas for infusing Mediterranean flavors into dishes from other cultures.
Dinner Tonight
Home cook Berg, whose most recent cookbook is the all-day collection Meliz’s Kitchen, draws on her Turkish Cypriot heritage in her latest, which aims to help readers quickly get dinner on the table without sacrificing flavor. Recipes include a one-pot tomato orzo with halloumi, sheet-pan spiced köfte and crunchy potatoes, and a “cheat’s” version of pide that folds the Turkish flatbread into pockets. Throughout, Berg suggests substitute ingredients for those avoiding gluten or meat.
The Feel Good Foodie Cookbook
To her 4.5 million Instagram followers, Jawad is the Feel Good Foodie, sharing recipes like the baked feta pasta that went viral in 2021. In her debut cookbook, Jawad, who is Lebanese and grew up in Sierra Leone and Dearborn, Mich., offers shortcuts for making Mediterranean and Mediterranean-inflected recipes in less than 30 minutes of active cooking time. Her shawarma recipe, for instance, uses a heavy-bottomed skillet to brown the marinated chicken instead of traditional spit-cooking, while broccoli and cheese bulgur bites mix the Middle Eastern grain with a Midwestern flavor profile.
Greekish
PW gave Hayden’s previous cookbook, Nistisima, a starred review, lauding it as an “exceptional collection of plant-based recipes mainly inspired by her Greek roots.” In her latest, she turns her attention to simplified recipes that use Mediterranean ingredients like halloumi, honey, and tahini to pack in flavor. While some of the dishes, such as baklava French toast, are mash-ups, she also outlines traditional Greek recipes like biftekia and chips, baking oregano- and mint-spiced beef burgers on a sheet pan with lemon potatoes.
Taste of Home Mediterranean Favorites
In this collection, the editors at Taste of Home bring together more than 240 recipes that riff on cuisines across the Mediterranean region. A take on Greek chicken souvlaki turns grilled kebabs, usually eaten right off the skewer, into a sandwich with pita and store-bought tzatziki; golden raisins accent a Moroccan-inspired salmon; and a vegetable tian evokes Provence. Five-ingredient dishes and 30-minute recipes feature throughout.
Read more from our cookbooks feature:
Cookbooks for the Real Mediterranean Diet
New cookbooks illuminate the roles culture and geography play in the region’s cuisine.
