The Weeknight Mediterranean Kitchen: 80 Authentic, Healthy Recipes Made Quick and Easy for Everyday Cooking

Unless you're a skilled cook or chef, I wouldn't consider most of these dishes to be suitable for weeknights and don't consider them "quick and easy" as the cover suggests. A lot of these look delicious, and are likely something I might try, the book has some potential merit in terms of potential. However, I'd never try to make these on a weeknight - who makes soups from scratch on a weeknight? Sure, there may be some who can and do, but I'm not one of them. So I gave it three starts because there's potential for some good dishes. I'm not knocking off stars because several dishes call for very expensive lamb and a few dishes call for expensive saffron. I'm not taking away stars because the dishes require possibly difficult to acquire ingredients (not sure yet - haven't tried to find them), though that may pose a problem. My main critique that makes it an okay cookbook has to do with the claim on the cover/in the title and that this doesn't follow through on that at all in most recipes. I'm also a little disappointed that the main dish section isn't larger (who makes appetizers on a weeknight?) and that the sides/veggies aren't part of the main dishes (or paired with them). To prepare the main dish AND a side veggie from this cookbook would be a LOT of work.

Every recipe has a corresponding, gorgeous photo which I love! I made the cover photo meal (minus the parsley) and it was super easy to follow the recipe and the shakshuka was delicious! Even if you don't eat dairy or gluten like myself, these yummy recipes are super easy to tweak to fit your dietary needs. I can't wait to cook more meals from this and to share them with friends!

I loved this cookbook. Even though I keep kosher, there are so many recipes that can be made kosher and many of them are kosher without needing to change ingredients! I want to make so many of these recipes and can’t wait to make them! I highly reccommend you buy this book now!

This is a nice cookbook...not my favorite, but good. There’s a good mix of recipes - the Turkish Lentil Soup is absolutely delicious, the Baked Orzo and Artichokes with Halloumi and Tomatoes is a go-to when I want comfort food, and the Pistachio Pesto is soooooo yummy! And the Beet Infused Couscous is delicious AND visually stunning! The book description indicates there are 80 recipes for everyday cooking, but this includes sauces, beverages, desserts, and appetizer. Realistically, there are recipes for about 45 meals. The recipes are fairly simple to follow, but they aren’t quick. Most of the dishes take less than an hour from start to finish, but if you don’t have tons of experience in the kitchen (like me), you may need to spend a little time looking up how to do things like preparing fresh fennel for braising, or what braising even means!

A helpful overview of items found in a Mediterranean pantry is provided, but the author only minimally explains the ingredients and how they’re used. I’ve had to spend time educating myself on things like whether green lentils can be substituted for red (NOPE...definitely not) and if fresh fennel bulbs are worth the effort to find (YES, totally worth the effort). Lots of the ingredients were new to me, but with a little effort I’ve been able to find everything. TIP: If you have access to a Whole Foods (or somewhere similar), they sell almost any spice, bean, nut, grain or seed you might need in bulk...I literally spent 34 cents for the dried mint that one of the recipes required! Happy cooking!

I just received this new cookbook and it’s clearly the best cookbook I have ever seen. It includes an extensibe amount of yummy recipes from various Mediterranean cultures. I didn’t find a single recipe that I wouldn’t love (or at least like a lot).

Refreshing, flavorful, exciting is how i’d describe this beautiful cookbook! It’s so easy to follow the recipes and I love that there is a photo for every one. I could live off these meals. You won’t get bored with these delicious, healthy and quick to prepare meals. My mouth waters every time I scroll through to pick out what I want. Thank you Samantha Ferraro!

After reading and drooling over this cookbook for days I finally made something from it. The yogurt marinated lamb was absolutely fabulous. I made some extra yogurt sauce and have used it as a dip for veggies, inside a quesadilla, and on rice. It’s addicting. Can’t wait to try some more recipes!

I was given this book as a gift. The recipes seem to have a Jerusalem/Turkey/Middle Eastern slant, with herb blends and sauces like Za'atar and Harissa, and lots of ingredients like feta. The recipes seem complicated with lots of unusual ingredients, and combinations that don't sound very appetizing. I was expecting this cookbook to be more focused on European Mediterranean recipes with more of a focus on lentils, beans, fresh fish, and lots of fresh vegetables. I am a very accomplished cook, and the recipes in this book just seemed too complicated for "weeknight" cooking. I did, however, appreciate the colorful photographs of the finished recipes. I did find a few recipes that seemed fairly easy, but overall, too many complicated, unusual recipes.

I originally checked this cookbook out from the library. My daughter and I spent time paging through, marking recipes to try, as we do with new cookbooks. We usually expect a few duds. Not every cookbook is going to have recipes that we completely love, but WOW! This cookbook has delivered! Every single recipe that we have tried so far is delicious! We renewed the book so many times that we ended up just deciding to purchase our own copy!

These recipes are fantastic for weeknights. It's not a 20 minute meal that turns into an hour and a half of prep-time with too many ingredients. The cooking and prep times are really accurate, which means I can get a delicious dinner on the table quickly for my family. I also don't find myself chasing all over for weird ingredients. Now, having said that, I keep a very well stocked pantry, and I live in a city, so my grocery store has most things, but in general, I have had no trouble throwing these recipes together with delicious results.

And if you're on weight watchers like me? Our favorite recipe is the Za'atar chicken skewers! It's zero points (if you swap thighs for breast), and if you don't feel like grilling, just throw it under the broiler for a great emergency meal that tastes like you spent all day on it!

I'm so glad we found this cookbook. It is fantastic.

Definitely not what the description led me to believe. I'm not of Turkish or Mediterranean decent but I've been to (numerous times) and eaten this style of cuisine for years. Ingrediants are hard if not impossible to find, sure don't have the time most require and im single can't imagine if children are in the house.