Product Description

Mediterranean vegetarian food is one of the healthiest and most delicious in the world. Based on simple, home-style cooking, this mouth-watering collection of over 200 dishes truly evokes the spirit of the region and makes it easy to reap the benefits of eating a Mediterranean diet. Based on fresh produce and readily-available ingredients, the recipes range form starters and salads to a wide variety of healthy main courses, rice, pasta and desserts, as well as all kinds of delicious ways to prepare vegetables. This book includes traditional fare from every country around the Mediterranean, such as potato and spinach croquettes from Albania, Catalan split pea soup, Sardinian aubergine ravioli, Provencal onion quiche, Tunisian couscous with sweet and hot peppers, and Dalmatian cream caramel. The recipes are simple and easy to prepare, with plenty of room for improvisation and flexibility. Much more than simply a cookery book, "Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking" is also a guide to this beautiful and diverse region, outlining the cultural and historical foundations of culinary specialities and traditions. Food writer Paola Gavin reveals how the pleasures of cooking and eating the Mediterranean way will be treasured by cooks and food-lovers alike.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63535 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
"'A delightful, delicious dance through the Mediterranean. Full of accessible recipes, fine flavours and sunshine.' - Matthew Fort"

About the Author
Paola Gavin is author of the classic cookbooks - French Vegetarian Cooking and Italian Vegetarian Cooking. She spent many years living and travelling abroad, especially in the U.S.A, Canada, Greece, France and Italy, where she first became interested in food and cooking. She has written food articles for a variety of newspapers both in England and the U.S.A, including The Guardian. She currently lives in London with her three daughters.

Customer Reviews

Simple, fresh ingredients well-prepared
Really, really love this book! As well as the Mediterranean countries you'd expect it also draws from the cuisine of lesser-known places such as Croatia and Northern Africa, and the introduction includes a few pages on the food traditions of each country. Every recipe not only sounds delicious but is often incredibly simple to make; most of them are very vegetable-based. Flicking through the recipes you start to understand the secret of Mediterranean food - simple, fresh ingredients well-prepared. And it is so unbelievably satisfying to cook this way - making the most of what you have and ending up with a delicious and very nutritious meal. And the Mediterranean diet is very well-suited to a vegetarian regime as meat has often been scarce in these countries while vegetables and pulses have been abundant; these well-balanced dishes are no poor substitute for a meat equivalent but what people have been working away at and happily eating for centuries! There are lots of fantastic desserts too - this is a cookbook you can really live by every day rather than a coffe-table novelty.
The only complaints I have are that: a) There are no illustrations of the food anywhere (although, to be fair, you can often tell what it is supposed to look like just by reading the ingredients when it is a vegetable dish), and b) Quite annoying this one - as it is an American book, you have to wade through confusing imperial measurements and 'cups' of things, as well as 'eggplants' and 'zucchinis' etc., so it's best if you have a scale with imperial on, or a conversion guide.

Got it's first use on the day I recieved it
This is a great place to start with mediterranean cookery. The recipes are easy to follow and sound delicious. The food is put into a social and historical context too. I immediately spotted the recipe for drunken figs (substituting dried figs for fresh and port for brandy) to make for a party I was attending the day I got the book. They were delicious and went down very well with my friends. You will be well rewarded by this book - it has prompted me to buy Paola Gavin's other cookbooks too.

Healthy, easy, well researched. Love this book!
Note that the version (2007) does in fact use the English metric system. (The 2005 edition was for US and so uses imperial measurements.)

This is an incredible book. A basic for any cook - novice or gourmet. Endlessly tasty recipes.