Mediterranean Vegetables

A Cook's ABC of Vegetables And Their Preparation in Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, The Middle East, and North Africa, with More Than 200 Authentic Recipes For The Home Cook
By Clifford A. Wright (Harvard Common Press)

If you give yourself a pat on the back each time you include vegetables in your diet, give yourself an extra pat each time you prepare a recipe from Mediterranean Vegetables: A Cook's ABC of Vegetables And Their Preparation in Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, The Middle East, and North Africa, with More Than 200 Authentic Recipes For The Home Cook. That's because not only will you get the nutritional benefits of vegetables, but the additional punch that's been proven time and again to come from the Mediterranean diet which swims in good-for-you ingredients like olive oil. It's just that type of addition, with the accompanying pungent spices, that should make this book a favorite whether the recipes are good for you or not: those ingredients make the vegetables taste great and it will not take much practice for you to know why people of the Mediterranean eat many times more vegetables than Americans eat.

Who, for instance, wouldn't want green beans in olive oil (from Greece) or green beans with pomegranate (from Syria) at least a few times a week? The former recipe calls for sizzling the beans with onion in the olive oil before adding finely chopped tomatoes, fresh parsley, summer savory and ground cumin seeds. The latter instructs you to cook onion and cinnamon in olive oil before adding tomato paste and then the beans. Then, garlic and coriander are cooked in olive oil and added to the bean stew along with pomegranate molasses and fresh lemon juice.

Author Clifford A. Wright is the right tutor. He won the James Beard Cookbook of the Year Award for his superlative A Mediterranean Feast: The Story of the Birth of the Celebrated Cuisines of the Mediterranean from the Merchants of Venice to the Barbary Corsairs With More Than 500 Recipes (William Morrow). When this man says "authentic," he means "authentic." His books are truly don't-miss, one-of-a-kind treasures.

RECIPE: Sicilian Carrots with Marsala Wine

More Cookbook Reviews