Authentic Flavors from a Mediterranean Kitchen
Fresh, vibrant, and nutrient-packed Mediterranean salads recipes made with ingredients like tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, feta, chickpeas, and olive oil. Perfect as a side or a full meal.
Close your eyes and picture a sun-scorched courtyard in Chania, Crete. It is a Tuesday in late August. The cicadas are deafening. My yiayia — all four foot ten of her, wrapped in her flour-dusted apron — is lugging a wide terracotta bowl out to the stone table under the ancient olive tree. The bowl … Read more
I can still hear the screen door slapping shut behind me as I ran into my yiayia’s kitchen in Chania, bare feet on cool tile, drawn by the rhythmic thud of her knife against the wooden board. She’d be standing at the counter with a massive head of cabbage, shredding it into ribbons so thin … Read more
I’ll just say it: the first time I made a dukkah-crusted salmon & herbed couscous bowl, I burned the dukkah so badly that my smoke alarm went off and my neighbor Greg (lovely man, questionable taste in lawn ornaments) knocked on my door to check if I was alive. That was October 2023. Seventeen batches … Read more
Can we talk about how underrated fattoush salad is outside of the Middle East? I’ve been making this vibrant, crunchy, tangy Lebanese bread salad for years, and every single time I serve it to someone who’s never tried it, the reaction is the same: eyes wide, fork going back in immediately, followed by “What IS … Read more
Let me take you to a Saturday in July — Chania, Crete, 1998. My father has just hauled his boat up onto the stone quay. His forearms are dark from the sun, his hands smell of salt and the sea. My yiayia is already at the outdoor grill, placing chicken thighs she has been marinating … Read more
Can we talk about how hard it is to find a salad that’s genuinely satisfying, takes almost zero effort, and tastes like something you’d eat on a sun-drenched terrace in the Aegean? I feel you. I spent years watching California salad bars pile on sad iceberg lettuce and calling it “Mediterranean” — and it drove … Read more
Can we talk about how poke bowls somehow managed to be the one trend that actually deserves the hype? I was skeptical at first — I’m a Mediterranean girl through and through — but the moment I started riffing on the concept with my favorite ingredients, a Mediterranean Tuna Poke Bowl happened. And everything changed. … Read more
This salad pairs just-cooked shrimp with avocado, cucumber and tomato in a lemon and olive oil dressing. Shrimp firm up at around 120°F and turn rubbery quickly after that, so they come off the heat as soon as they curve into a loose C rather than a tight O. Twenty-five minutes. The Story Behind This … Read more
This classic tabbouleh recipe is the freshest, most vibrantly green bowl you will put on your summer table. It is not a side dish that quietly sits in the corner — it is the centrepiece, the palate cleanser, the conversation starter. Every bite should snap with lemon, shine with extra-virgin olive oil, and smell like a herb garden after rain.
There is a particular shade of dark green that appears only in two places in my memory: the kale terraces that climb the hillsides above Chania in late autumn, and my yiayia’s hands after she finished rubbing a fresh bunch of it with olive oil and sea salt. She did not call it massage. She … Read more