Meri Rafetto
Mediterranean Diet Cookbook For Dummies®
Mediterranean Diet Cookbook For Dummies®, 2nd Edition
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017949379
ISBN 978-1-119-40443-9 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-40444-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-40445-3 (ebk)
Introduction
Imagine the Mediterranean Sea, where the water and the land are big parts of life. Picture people eating fresh foods and relaxing with friends and family. That image is the essence of the traditional Mediterranean diet. In other words, the Mediterranean diet is part of certain lifestyle habits, including diet, physical activity, stress management, and fun, used in various regions of the Mediterranean coast. Research has shown that people who live in these areas have less heart disease and better longevity. Throughout this book, you uncover more about the details of these habits and how they affect your health and well-being. You can dive in and use all these concepts as a way of life or adopt a few of the strategies that work for you.
No matter what inspired you to pick up this second edition of Mediterranean Diet Cookbook For Dummies, we know that changing habits isn’t always easy. These particular life strategies can be challenging because they all focus on one main trend – slowing down – that’s at odds with many people’s busy lifestyles. Our goal in this book is to show you that implementing a Mediterranean diet and lifestyle can be simple and flavorful. You don’t have to follow a strict dietary plan or omit any foods; in fact, the Mediterranean diet is more about adding than taking away. This book is here to help you make small changes so you can find more balance in your life.
If you’re curious about using the Mediterranean style of cooking in your life, Mediterranean Diet Cookbook For Dummies, 2nd Edition, is the perfect book for you. In the following pages, you can find historical information about the region, the balance of foods the people there eat, the health benefits of this style of eating, and more than 160 recipes full of delicious flavor. You also find some cooking tips and meal-planning tools to help make your transition simple.
You can use this book as a resource, and you don’t have to read it from cover to cover. Instead, you can find that perfect recipe you’ve been looking for or head straight to the chapter on meal planning (that’d be Chapter 4) to get examples of how to pull meals together easily. You find everything you need to begin making changes toward a Mediterranean style of life.
Like with all cookbooks, we recommend that you read all the way through each recipe before you start making it. That way, you can account for any necessary refrigeration time, marinating time, and so on and for any special tools, such as a stick blender, that the recipe may require.
Here are a few other guidelines to keep in mind about the recipes in this book:
❯❯ All butter is unsalted unless otherwise stated. Margarine isn’t a suitable substitute for butter.
❯❯ All eggs are large.
❯❯ All onions are yellow unless otherwise specified.
❯❯ All pepper is freshly ground black pepper unless otherwise specified.
❯❯ All salt is kosher.
❯❯ All dry ingredient measurements are level.
❯❯ All temperatures are Fahrenheit (see the appendix to convert Fahrenheit temperatures to Celsius).
❯❯ All lemon and lime juice is freshly squeezed.
❯❯ All sugar is white granulated sugar unless otherwise noted.
❯❯ All flour is all-purpose white flour unless otherwise noted.
❯❯ All Greek yogurt is full-fat yogurt.
❯❯ When a recipe says to steam a vegetable, the amount of water you need to use in your pot or steamer depends on your steaming method, so we don’t include the water in the ingredients list. As a general rule, if you’re using a basket in a pot, the water level should be just below the basket.
Although most of the recipes in this book require relatively few ingredients, we include a few classics that have longer ingredient lists; a culinary tour of the Mediterranean just wouldn’t be complete without these dishes. Don’t be intimidated by the longer lists of ingredients. They may look overwhelming, but the recipes themselves are still pretty simple.
Finally, we include the following basic conventions throughout the rest of the book:
❯❯ For the purposes of this book, a Mediterranean lifestyle and dietary pattern focuses on the traditional habits seen at least 50 years ago in Crete, Greece, and, southern Italy.
❯❯ Text in shaded sidebars or marked with a Technical Stuff icon is nonessential. We encourage you to read the information anyway, but you can skip it without missing anything crucial to the point at hand.
