Mediterranean: The Beautiful Cookbook

by Joyce Goldstein, Ayla Algar, Peter Johnson

From the author of The Mediterranean Kitchen comes this sublime gastronomic tour through the cultures and cuisines of Southern Europe, North Africa, and the Near East. From Jordanian meat pie to North African couscous, the traditional and the exotic are fully explored. 250 recipes. 240 photos.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Reference

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Mikel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The pictures are lovely and the culinary histories of each country are nice. There appear to be many good recipes but it's hard to cover such a wide variety of county's cuisines well. Again, the author repeatedly praises the contributions of the one group over every other. He repeatedly down plays the native ingredients as well as dismissing the important changes the addition of ingredients from the New World (the Americas) had on Mediterranean cuisine. I find that very frustrating, and if I were a native of some of these countries I would find some of his comments/descriptions offensive.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my favourite type of book where you take a whole region together
as for being educational, I'd give it a much higher score

but I think if you got a fave Italian, Greek, Spanish cookbook or three
the real thing to get the book is for the coffeetable aspect
or just seeing how the other lesser known parts of the Med fit into the picture

none of the recipes really stand out
merely bland and traditional

---

the recipes are so numerous
run to the comments section

so you'll see my six-part review below


[oddly, I had the toughest time ever reviewing Joyce's other book on mediterranean food and I felt queasy about it too. Yet aside from that, all of her other books are very very good]

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have not tried much from this one, but the others in the series are great. However be mindful that these are very traditional receipes and have not been scaled down for time.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cooked from some of the recipes of Spain last night. The stuffed mushrooms and sangria were excellent. The savory meatballs and shrimp with garlic were really good also.