Ines Zahraoui is a Tunisian home cook and the co-founder of The Mediterranean Recipe, which she runs with her friend Rachel Mazza in the United States. She was born and raised in Mahdia, a coastal town in Tunisia, where everyday cooking was built on olive oil, seafood, semolina and whatever the market had that morning. She later lived in France, where she studied literature and picked up the French side of her cooking, and her kitchen took on a Moroccan accent after marrying her husband, Abdel Ali, whose family taught her the spice work — ras el hanout, preserved lemon, slow-cooked tagines — that runs through much of the site.She has been cooking and developing recipes since 2020. She is not a professionally trained chef: she teaches French for a living and cooks for her family, which is why the recipes here are written for home kitchens and ordinary home equipment rather than restaurant ones.Ines writes and tests the recipes published under her byline in her own kitchen in Tunisia. Nutrition figures on the site are calculated with the WP Recipe Maker nutrition calculator and are estimates rather than lab-verified values.
How to make food genuinely black, blood-red and deep green without dye — black tahini, squid ink, beetroot, peppers, and red cabbage that changes colour.
A block of feta wrapped in phyllo bandages, baked until molten and drizzled with hot honey. Four ingredients and the most photographed thing on the table.