5 Ingredients Mediterranean: Simple Incredible Food

Book Preface

This book was somewhat unplanned. I didn’t think I’d ever write another 5 Ingredients, but I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked to do so, especially by my wife, Jools. She told me to stop thinking about anything else: ‘It’s where people are at, when our lives are so incredibly busy – it’s the book all the parents at school talk about.’

Now I’ve never really been one to revisit old territory and repeat a scenario, but it’s a sign of the times. People cook very differently today in comparison to 50 or even 25 years ago when I first started – there’s just so much more we have to fit into our busy lives, and the way tech has grown around us, it has both given and taken time away. Plus, it’s human nature to find the most efficient way to gain back time, but fill it with something else! And so, with this in mind, I’ve written you another 5 Ingredients cookbook with the added va-va-voom of basing it on my lifelong experiences travelling around the Mediterranean – one of the most loved and respected diets in the world, where simplicity, love, passion, care and dedication to taste and big flavour are at its heart.

When I write a solution-based book like this, I always have you, the reader, at the forefront of my mind, with the aim of holding your hand and guiding you to make everyday cooking super-exciting, but with minimal fuss. In a quest to keep things fresh and inspiring, the TV show that accompanies this book takes us to some incredible places around the Mediterranean, full of such diverse culture and truly extraordinary flavours. And, as you turn the pages that follow, I hope you get a real sense of the countries, cities and islands that I’ve been to, both recently and also throughout my travels over the last 25 years. The Med is a beautiful and diverse area, consisting of at least 22 countries (although other countries swear they are part of it), and different as they all are, they have the sea and all its wonders in common. So, I’ve really tried to scatter these recipes to as many parts as I can with the experiences I’ve had. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but I really hope you’re going to love these recipes – they’re a real celebration of hero Mediterranean ingredients, flavours and combinations.

Cooking delicious big-flavour food with just 5 ingredients requires you to be clever, thrifty and resourceful, and that’s my job here – to diplomatically translate some of the essence of different cuisines and bring them back home, through the reality of your local supermarket, into your house, and ultimately on to your family table and into their rumbling tummies. In effect, that means using common sense with regard to what’s readily available, which is why you’ll find plenty of ingredient hacks and flavour bombs throughout these recipes to give you more bang for your buck.

Believe it or not, we’ve never cooked less than we do right now. The food industry is geared towards convenience, and with most of us leading busy lives, we understandably lap it up. So this is not just a cookbook to be trusted and useful to you, it’s also one of my efforts to keep cooking alive in an accessible and relevant way. Within the culture of food, the saying ‘Use it or lose it’ is true, and I think we’re all better off as humans if we keep cooking, and keep connected to our ingredients and farmers, and know how to nourish ourselves with delicious meals in good times and bad. Not to mention that warm feeling we get when we cook for someone we love, knowing what’s gone into it.

My main intention with these recipes is to empower you with simple, easy and delicious food, but without copious amounts of ingredients, long shopping lists or a whole load of washing-up. It’s perfect for beginner cooks, but if it’s anything like the last book, many advanced cooks will love it too, because regardless of their talent for cooking, they too are time-poor and juggling a thousand things just to get through the week.

I’ve purposefully kept the layout of the book super-clean, and the recipes as short and to the point as possible, each with a visual ingredients key, so that you can easily get cracking. This book is not one for nostalgia, it’s about providing a whole rainbow of simple meal solutions and deliciousness, and getting it to your table with minimal fuss. I’ve done my best to do the thinking and heavy-lifting for you – I hope it helps you out, I hope you love the recipes as much as I do, and most of all, I hope it transports you to the beyond-beautiful Mediterranean, 5-ingredients style. Big Love,