Customer Reviews

Mediterranean Light: Delicious Recipes from the World's Healthiest Cuisine

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Many of the recipes in this cookbook are okay, but when I ordered it I failed to notice that it contains a "Forward by Dean Ornish, M.D." That would have been the tip-off.

We all know that too much fat is bad for us, and like many Americans my husband and I eat "light" nowadays--nonfat dairy products; very little beef, lamb or pork; no butter or margerine; skinless chicken and turkey. But much has changed in the dietary world since Shulman's book was first published in 1989. We now know that there are "good" fats as well as bad ones, and that an EXTREMELY low fat diet can be almost as unhealthy as a high-fat one.

If you are vegetarian, this book will probably be useful to you. However, it contains only nine recipes that contain chicken (note that most are not truly "chicken dishes"). Few recipes contain cheese or dairy products of any kind, and most disturbing is her insistance on reducing the olive oil content of most dishes to a miniscule amount. She even includes a recipe for a traditional provencal onion pissaladiere (pizza) which always includes olives: she writes she "left out the olives . . .for the diet version"!

There are many, many excellent mediterranean cookbooks on the market without going to the extreme of Shulman's. Dr. Atkins and Dr. Ornish are at the opposite extremes of the twenty-year- long fat versus carb controversy. Try an alternative mediterranean cookbook and find yourself a satisfying middle ground. I suggest The Mediterranean Diet Cookbook or any of Paula Wolfert's cookbooks. Another, unfortunately out of print, is Mediterranean Cooking the Healthful Way by Marilyn Spieler--my personal favorite. Go ahead: drizzle, don't dump, olive oil on your food and pop a couple of kalamata olives in your mouth. It's okay!

I've lost 50 lbs since I began using the book last July (It's April now). Ms Schulman's book has taught me to cook with less fat and choose foods that are very tasty but with no fat or less fat than I was used to before.

The foods are spicy, but I LOVE spicy. This is a Great book. I've given it to several friends and family members.

I wrote in April of 2000 that I had lost 50 lbs. I've lost another 20 lbs - 70 in all and maintain that loss now for almost 4 years using this cookbook. I have given it to many friends and relatives. It has changed my eating style for the better for life. Every time there's a news story about the best way to eat it mirrors what Ms Shulman teaches in her books. It's no chore eating this way. I love it.

I wrote that review 4 years ago. In July 1999 I weighed 240 lbs. Now February 2007 I weigh 145 lbs. Yes, almost 100 lbs loss. I now have Mexican Light and Provencial Light too and I love all of them. It's still easy to eat this way for life.

I have lots of cookbooks but few are as reliable as this one by Ms. Shulman. The lower-fat hummus recipe alone is worth the price of the book. (Another favorite is the Swiss chard soup.) This book was obviously a labor of love for the author. Thanks!

My rule of thumb is, if you get three recipes that you cook regularly out of a cookbook, and you otherwise enjoy it, it has earned its selling price. Let's see: I use the recipes for hummus, white bean and tuna salad, tabouleh, semolina bread, that thing with chard and fish . . . and there's lots more. The author explains how to do it all from scratch, which is always good to know, but I've saved some time substituting already cooked beans and, when I don't have any I've made myself, I've used commercially produced, fat-reduced chicken stock. Nutritional data is provided for each dish.

I decided it was time to write a review about the marvels of this book when I returned from a weekend of cooking 3 meals a day for my Step-Mother-in-Law (and other in-laws)in a little cabin over a long weekend. They loved everything I made from this book.

The recipes are delicious, easy to fix, and easy to follow. Not only have I had success cooking for the inlaws but my family has also loved every recipe. I have notation after notation that says "great" in the index so I can easily go back and find favorites. So far, there's nothing that says "bad" or "bland" next to a recipe title.

I am loosing weight using these recipes and my family is eating healthier too.

Some favorite recipes: Spinach with Chickpeas, Green bean and Garlic soup, and Tuna and Italian bean salad. Her broiled eggplant with garlic and rosemary turned my husband into a eggplant eater after a lifelong aversion to it.

Sometimes finding a good cookbook is a question of compatibility and style. I find her directions very easy to follow and so far everything I've tried has been a hit. I'm an inexperienced breadmaker, but the breads I've tried have all come out terrific. The proof of the pudding, however, is that when I made Provencal chicken my teenaged daughter bit into a piece of chicken and went "Mmmmm!" My husband and I looked at each other in disbelief since she has not liked anything I've cooked for what seems like forever. For me, this is the most powerful endorsement possible. This is a great cookbook!

This was the only cookbook I took with me on an extended trip to Greece, and in some respects it was a good choice. I found tons of recipes here for the types of wonderful ingredients I found in the open-air markets there, and many of the dishes were excellent--the pizza dough alone is worth taking a look at Mediterranean Light for, not to mention the Turkish style cornbread. Many of the dishes, however, have proved disappointing in practice. Her Moroccan-style shrimp with cumin overwhelmed the delicate shrimp with too-heavy spicing, a real let-down after all the fussing with shrimp-shell stock this recipe required. Other dishes required too much fussing for very simple results--notably a chicken soup requiring three days of preparation! Others required such shortcuts or compromises that they were guaranteed disappointments; instead of stewing a chicken with vegetables and seasonings for her avgolemeno, Shulman dumps some eggs and lemon into a pre-cooked broth. The good dishes here, like a lovely low-fat hummus which I make regularly, are very good indeed; but the reader should be aware that many recipes in this collection will not live up to their promise on the page.

I don't see how seafood, hummous, tzatziki, baba ghanoush and lentils make a book low-fat. The fact is, this book celebrates Mediterranean cuisine, and much of that cuisine is already low-fat. If you love cooking from this region, you will love this book. The recipes are simple, delicious, mostly easy, and even if when I just read the book for ideas, it inspires me.

It is true that the author modified some recipes to bring them into line with her healthy eating ethos. If you get the willies or heartburn from intake of mucho lard, this works wonderfully. I find the recipes delicious. They are packed with super-food ingredients, full of vitamins and minerals that will make you feel energetic, and not with hydrogenated fats or other proven culprits in heart disease, adult-onset diabetes, or cancer. As I understand it, the point of lowering intake of saturated fat is not necessarily to lose weight -- but to make your life long and healthy / enjoyable. I don't want to get diabetes or heart disease if I can prevent it. Both run in my family -- but for me, so far, at age 40, so good.

Before I continue on this paean, I'd better mention that I have never met the author nor her family or friends, I am not associated with her in any way -- and actually, I'm not a health nut -- just a normal mom trying to cook whole foods for our family. When this book taught me how to efficiently clean shellfish, coaxing them to open and so forth, instead of skipping that step like so many other cookbooks (which leads to sandy mussel broth unless you remember the process!), I knew it was a winner.

The recipes are simple, and true to the region. If you have visited the countries whose cuisine Martha Rose Shulman celebrates, you will recognize the authenticity of ingredients and combinations set forth here. Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt and more -- all have classic and newer representatives on these pages. You'll find minted yogurt salad (which I know as 'tzatziki'), lentils, chickpeas, eggplant, even pizza and pasta -- in the index.

Unlike another commenter, I found no great surfeit of garlic. The amounts prescribed seemed quite normal for the regions addressed. But then, perhaps I am used to garlic: it lowers cholesterol, so I use it in cooking for my husband.

If you long for the foods you once enjoyed near the Mediterranean, try this book. If you love seafood and vegetables, and aren't afraid to try seasoning with lemon juice and yogurt, coriander, or cloves, try this book. If you long for beef, cream and mascarpone, try another book.

Don't miss the hummus recipe! It's a lower fat, better tasting version of the usual Middle Eastern fare--imagine that! I think that recipe alone is worth the price of the book!