Mediterranean

Mild yet rich tasting, this easy-to-make dish gets a lot of Mediterranean flavor from the Greek seasoning blend and mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses.

Fresh lemon juice, capers, basil, and olive oil provide your palate with a taste from the Greek Isles.

Couscous, a quick-cooking Moroccan staple, gets a Mediterranean makeover with fresh lemon juice, oregano, mint, and feta.

A just-right blend of sweet and tart, this salad is a great accompaniment to Curried Chicken Kebabs with Yogurt Dipping Sauce (page 138) or Pork Chops with Herb Rub (page 196). Spoon the salad onto leaves of butter lettuce or radicchio for an especially attractive presentation.

Caponata is a classic appetizer spread that has the sweet and sour balanced components of many Mediterranean dishes. Here, the eggplant, red pepper, and onions are cooked in the wood-fired oven before being combined with salty capers and toasted pine nuts. It can be added to a pasta salad or used as the filling in an omelet or frittata.

Many dense cakes such as pound cake can be grilled with great success. The grilling lightly toasts the cake and adds depth to the flavor. Here, Joanne Weir shares her favorite Mediterranean version, grilled polenta cake topped with seasonal berries tossed in a fruit sauce. Note: Make the cake a day in advance, and the berry compote several hours in advance so the flavors have time to blend.

Salt-roasting is a traditional Mediterranean technique for cooking fish. The salt crust creates an almost impenetrable barrier that traps the moisture and allows the natural juices of the fish to remain—the salt never penetrates into the food itself. Salt-roasting is a great hybrid of steaming and roasting, and can be used to cook meat, poultry, and vegetables.

Many Mediterranean cuisines wrap fish in leaves for grilling or roasting. This version uses Swiss chard. You can use either the white-stemmed variety or one of the colorful rainbow chards. Use fresh grape or fig leaves for an even more flavorful result.

Lamb, pomegranate, and apricots is a classic Mediterranean combination. Pomegranate molasses, which is sometimes called pomegranate concentrate, is a pantry staple in parts of the Mediterranean. It serves as a meat tenderizer as well as a flavor enhancer. Look for it in specialty foods stores, or online (see Resources). Serve this dish with a rice pilaf or couscous. Note: You will need 16 wooden skewers for this recipe.

If you love ribs, it’s hard to break the habit of the classic barbecue profile of brown sugar, vinegar, and ketchup. Since we can’t easily find lamb ribs in Nashville, we cheat by dressing up pork ribs with Mediterranean herbs, garlic, and mustard. Serve the pork in lamb’s clothing with couscous, rice, garlicky white beans, tomatoes and fresh basil, Greek feta salad, pita bread, or anything inspired by any country that touches the Mediterranean—and anything other than sweet barbecue beans and traditional slaw.

A rather sad and barren bit of sand in a Mediterranean archipelago 17 kilometers off the coast of Trapani and 120 kilometers from the brow of North Africa, the island of Favignana is the last of the tonnare—tuna fishing ports—in Sicilia. And it is Gioachino Cataldo who is il rais—“the king,” in Arab dialect—of the rite of la mattanza— the ritual slaughtering of migrating tuna practiced first by the Phoenicians and later by the Saracens. La mattanza remains the most powerful spiritual ceremony in the life of the islanders, as it has for a thousand years. And from then until now, its writs are these. Fifteen huge wooden, black-varnished, motorless, sail-less boats are tugged out into the formation of a great quadrangle around the muciara—the boat of il rais that sits at the square’s center. Ten kilometers of net are laid in the form of a pouch into which the tuna swim. The great fish migrate from the Atlantic through the Straits of Gibralter to spawn, the Mediterranean being warmer and saltier and, hence, a kinder ambience for reproduction. As the pouch—called the camera della morte, the death chamber—becomes full, il rais gives the command to his fifty-seven soldiers to lift the net. The men bear up the nets by hand, hoisting them and the tuna up to a height at which the fish can be speared and hauled up into the bellies of the boats. The rite remains Arab to its core. Arab are the songs that the tonnaroti—those fishermen who hunt only tuna—sing as they wait for the nets to fill, as are the incantations they chant as they are heaving up the fish and, finally, Arab are the screams the tonnaroti scream as they kill them. We saw them take two hundred tuna in two hours—the fish averaging about seventy kilograms. Those the tonnaroti did not keep for themselves were ferried to Marsala for processing. A black-bearded colossus is Gioachino, his face crinkled by the Mediterranean sun, his enormous hands scraggy as an unsharp blade, of a family who, for twelve generations, has birthed men chosen by the Favignanesi to be il rais. The islanders bequeath the post on merit. The credentials, said Favignana’s mayor, are: courage, skill, strength, dignity, and honor. And it is the king himself who determines the duration of his reign. Gioachino told us he would remain il rais “finchè le mie forze mi sosterranno”—“while my forces remain uninjured.” In these last ninety-eight years, Gioachino is only the eighth rais of Favignana. This is the simple way he cooked tuna for us, the way he thinks it best. He always uses flesh from the female fish—hence, tunnina—for its more delicate savor, he told us. Il rais harvested the capers for the fish in his garden while we sipped at cold moscato.

While I’m not a fusion person, I do often find myself melding different cultures into a single dish. This chicken dish is a great example, drawing paprika and sherry from Spain, and dates, saffron, and couscous from Morocco. In place of Morrocan couscous in this dish I use fregola sarda, Sardinia’s answer to traditional couscous. Fregola sarda is made from hand-rolled balls of coarsely ground semolina. Although often called “Italian couscous,” its larger size and slightly toasted flavor distinguish it from its North African counterpart. It lends the dish a nutty flavor and chewy texture, and is the perfect accompaniment to soak up all the spiced broth and fragrant saffron onions. The final addition of sliced dates and fresh herbs gives this Mediterranean tagine a sweet finish.

This dish takes me back to Pantelleria, a tiny volcanic island in the Mediterranean, situated between North Africa and Sicily. Undeveloped and relatively untouched by the modern world, the island is famous for two things: the caper bushes that dominate the dry, brush-covered hillsides of the rocky coast, and resident Giorgio Armani. My husband and I spent a magical week in that salt-drenched haven, eating grilled, freshly caught tuna; bowls of couscous; and salads of tomatoes, potatoes, and capers. The grilled tuna and the combination of tomatoes and potatoes in this dish are a tribute to those leisurely days on Pantelleria. And though rouille isn’t part of their Moorish-meets-Italian culinary lexicon, I’m sure the Pantellerians would love this saffron-tinted, spicy pepper mayonnaise.

My very first chef position was at a twenty-eight-seat restaurant called Alloro, located in Boston’s very Italian North End. At that point in my career, my cooking experience was rooted mostly in French cuisine, but the owner didn’t seem to mind. When I asked him if I had to cook strictly Italian food, his answer was, “No, no, no! Cook whatever you want. We’ll just give it an Italian name.” The French bistro classic salmon with beluga lentils and red wine butter was abbreviated to “Salmone” on the menu, and other quasi-French dishes were likewise masked under short Italian names. The pasta dishes I made at Alloro also strayed from Italian tradition. For my version of the classic spaghetti alle vongole, I added generous amounts of onion, fennel, and olive oil, and sprinkled breadcrumbs toasted with thyme on top. I also finished the sauce with a spot of butter (the French influence again), which thickened and enriched it. In theory, I’m sure my version of spaghetti with clams would outrage purists in both the Italian and the French camps, but one bite ought to be enough to convince them they have lots to learn from each other. Though you might not think of it as such, the water in which you cook pasta is a valuable ingredient, in virtually any pasta recipe. Do your noodles seem a little dry once you’ve tossed them in the sauce? Rather than correcting the problem with stock (which can alter the flavor balance) or oil (which can add greasiness), add a little pasta water instead. Not only will it moisten the dish, but the starch in it (left from the cooking of the pasta) will also help bind the sauce to the noodles. Try it out; it works.

This classic recipe is a good way to highlight this nourishing green vegetable. The rich flavor of pine nuts and sweetness of raisins are surprising yet compatible in tandem with the spinach.

This flavorful warm salad can be made any time of year, its seasonal personality lent by either rosemary (for cooler months) or basil (for warmer weather). It’s a fairly substantial salad, so it’s good served with a straightforward protein dish like Tempeh Fries (page 78), Cornmeal-Crusted Seitan (page 63), or BBQ-Flavored Skillet Tofu (page 62).

A hot day, a big bunch of basil, and some great local tomatoes—all these came together a few summers ago to inspire a Mediterranean-flavored twist for tofu. This is a splendid main dish for warm summer evenings.

Pies and tarts filled with Swiss chard, pine nuts, and raisins are common in southern France and Italy, where they may be served for dessert, sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar or toasted almonds. Goat cheese and anchovies make this galette decidedly savory, while the crust departs from the standard with wholesome oats and whole-wheat flour.

This is a refreshing salad that gets a kick from garlic croutons and a creamy tang from the yogurt vinaigrette. It’s a simple Mediterranean classic that you will find served all along the coast from North Africa to Spain in the summer months, and is a great companion to The Greek balls (page 10).