Egyptian lentils with rice and pasta (Koshari). Black peas with fresh dill, olive oil and orange slices are one of my all-time favorite Mediterranean diet recipes. What can you do wrong with fresh dill, fresh parsley, green onions, orange slices, and 1 cup of extra virgin olive oil? Cacciatore, which means “hunter” in Italian, is one of the classic recipes of the Mediterranean diet. Hunters ate this simple dish after a successful day in the woods.
Originally, it was eaten without tomatoes, because tomatoes were brought to Italy from the New World. In Crete, we use olive oil for everything, even for baking sweets (Mediterranean diet recipes traditionally use olive oil for baking). This apple pie with cinnamon and walnuts has been baked for special occasions in my family for generations. The Mediterranean diet is a way of eating that emphasizes plant-based foods and healthy fats.
You focus on general eating patterns instead of following strict formulas or calculations. Many writers define the three central elements of cooking as olives, wheat and grapes, which produce olive oil, bread and pasta, and wine; other writers deny that the diverse foods of the Mediterranean basin constitute a cuisine at all. A common definition of the geographical area covered, proposed by David, follows the distribution of the olive tree. The Spanish tortilla, like many of my favorite Mediterranean dishes, is simple and has only a few ingredients. All the pyramids of the Mediterranean diet encourage you to eat mostly vegetables, fruits, whole grains and extra virgin olive oil, while limiting red meat and sweets.
From Gibraltar to the Bosphorus, through the Rhone Valley, through the large seaports of Marseille, Barcelona and Genoa, through Tunisia and Alexandria, covering all the islands of the Mediterranean, Corsica, Sicily, Sardinia, Crete, the Cyclades and Cyprus (where Byzantine influence is beginning to be felt), to the Greek mainland and the highly contested territories of Syria, Lebanon, Constantinople and Izmir. Juicy cod is wonderful with a touch of smoke from the grill, and a quick and easy herb sauce (a Mediterranean touch to the fresh sauce) adds the spicy and refreshing flavors of lemon, parsley, mint and garlic with the tender, crunchy, nutty touch of pistachios. Grapes are mainly cultivated to make wine and vinegar as basic components of the Mediterranean diet, as well as to be dried as raisins or eaten as table grapes. Various authors have defined the scope of Mediterranean cuisine by its geography or by its main ingredients. Mediterranean Italian cuisine includes much of Italy outside the north and the mountainous regions of the interior.
They are popular and widespread throughout the Eastern Mediterranean region, and date back to the time of ancient Rome. The rules for the preparation and consumption of food are common in the lands bordering the Mediterranean. The 1984 Gastronomic Guide to Italy states that, around 1975, under the impetus of one of those new nutritional guidelines that all too often influence good cuisine, Americans discovered the so-called Mediterranean diet. My version has the cannellini beans, chicken and corn you'd expect, but cherrmoula, a North African herb sauce with lemon, gives it an intense and strong Mediterranean flavor. Mediterranean cuisine encompasses the ways in which these and other ingredients, including meat, are treated in the kitchen, regardless of whether they are healthy or not.
Therefore, it is limited to a more or less narrow area around the Mediterranean Sea, except in the Maghreb and the Iberian Peninsula, where it is more widely distributed, and in the islands of the Mediterranean, where it is widespread.