Great book to have in your kitchen.

In this book, Marc Fosh, the Michelin-starred chef behind Palma de Mallorca's Restaurant Marc Fosh, takes us on a tour of the bountiful produce of the Mediterranean and shows us how to harness its flavours in new and exciting ways. Organised into 18 chapters by key ingredient; covering everything from tomatoes, garlic, almonds and olive oil to octopus, chorizo, saffron and truffles, the book is a love letter to the Mediterranean and its food. The recipes include new twists on classic dishes, such as Yellow Gazpacho with Smoked Salmon and Avocado or Saffron, Raspberry and Orange Blossom Crème Catalan, as well as less familiar fare, including Herb-roasted Guineafowl with Couscous Salad and Sobrassada and Honey Croquettes with Almond Aioli.

I've been cooking Mediterranean food for a very long time, so when I saw this book I thought "eh been there done that", but this book definitely proved me wrong. I would recommend this to anyone looking to learn how to cook delish Mediterranean food.

This is a gorgeous book with the passionate viewpoint of Mallorcan cuisine and its place within the Mediterranean. The photography is stunning and highlights the simplicity of the ingredients that come together as more than the sum of their parts. The recipes here are sophisticated and definitely not for beginner home cooks. This book is for people who have a comfort level with the ingredients and a well stocked kitchen to go along with their knife skills.

Spotlight on Mallorcan Cuisine

Marc Fosh is a British ex-pat chef who has lived in Mallorca for a number of years. In this cookbook, he shares some of his favorite Mediterranean cuisine, which, as you might imagine, has a strong Mallorcan flavor. Interestingly, he has chosen to organize the cookbook by his 18 favorite ingredients, like almonds, lamb, olive oil, and peaches. So if you're hoping for a simple cookbook that you can just flip to a meal type like breakfast or an ingredient category like beans, you won't find that here. I found it interesting that in the ingredient list, he gives weight measures in imperial and metric as well as the standard US volume measurements like cups and spoons. Everybody should be satisfied with that, although it does make the ingredient line look a little cluttered. Every recipe has a photograph, and they are beautiful and really give you a sense of the recipe. The recipes sounded tasty yet different from the standard recipes we see in Mediterranean-themed cookbooks. I think this might be the only Mediterranean cookbook I've seen that is based around Mallorcan cuisine; we usually see Spain and Italy featured as the Mediterranean culinary heavyweights. So, I found it fun to explore another culture through food. Because this is a chef cookbook, some recipes called for ingredients that aren't easily sourced locally for most of us, like bee pollen; some recipes are a little complicated, too. The author does show some pictures of Mallorca as well, which I thought added to the cookbook experience. If you enjoy Mediterranean cooking but are looking for a book that is a little different, you may very well enjoy this cookbook.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy of this book


Reading through this book I definitely realized My palate is more old Mediterranean rather than modern. Although the photos of the dishes spook great the recipes don’t sound too difficult definitely not recipes I would make ( I may perhaps try some of them in a restaurant )

Modern Mediterranean by Marc Fosh is full of color and flavor. The recipes are easy to follow. Can't wait to make more and more of these recepies.

The books looks interesting and the recipes sound tasty. I love spending my vacations in Mallorca and its food is also close to my heart so I had to check this recipe books out. It reminded me of those magical Summer days when I was enjoying the island’s specialties. Some recipes are a bit difficult to make but the others are straight forward. Looking forward to cooking something from this book.

I received a copy of this book for fair and honest review. I love cookbooks. Everytime time I read one I learn something new that I have to try and make to see if tastes a good a the picture in the book make them look. In reading this book I did learn that they use a lot almonds in their cooking. I have never really eaten almonds in a lot of savory dishes. I do want to try to make the cinnamon-brandy caramel sauce. I think that just sounds delightful. I did enjoy that they had both metric and standard measurements for the recipes. That really helped me out a lot. I can't wait to try more from this book.

Delicious recipes, takes me back to Mediterranean trips. There are not many books that cover this type of cuisine but this book is written and easy to follow.

Mediterranean is my favorite food type. The rating might change after I cook something from it, but until then:

✓s: The recipes certainly sound good, plenty of the recipes intrigued me enough to bookmark them to possibly make later*, the pictures were beautiful, the recipe to picture ration was okay-ish, there wasn't too much "here's a random, barely related story that meanders on and on about that time you saw a tree at dusk with my family except my aunt instead of giving you the actual recipe you came for", the instructions didn't look too complicated, there were plenty of recipes that were naturally dairy-free and/or looked like they wouldn't be hard to alter.**

✘s: No nutritional facts, the recipe to picture ration was just okay-ish not great

🍽️: Just a few recipes I bookmarked: the Mediterranean herb salt, roasted pears in almond crumbs with cinnamon brandy caramel sauce, coloured garlic dip, stuffed aubergines, lemon chicken with marjoram and artichokes

tl;dr: Like a 3.5, pending actual recipes cooked? I recommended it for my library, at least.

Disclaimer: Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for the free ARC, with no incentive or coercion on your parts.

*I suffer from a major case of my "to make recipes" threatens in the millions while I make the same 10 things over and over again.
** I'm allergic to animal dairy, so I look for this, but I try not to let it affect my overall review and rating of the book, unless it specifically claims it's easy to modify.

Lush, delicious recipes that are easy to make and come out fantastic. What more can you need?

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

I love Mediterranean food. While I'm not well-versed in cooking it, it's one of my favorite cuisines when I go out to eat, so I'm always eager to review a Mediterranean cookbook. That's how I ended up diving into this book blind without realizing that the author is a Michelin-star chef! It's a real beauty of a cookbook, from stunning pictures of Mallorca to close-ups of the main ingredients around which he builds his recipes. In the text, he makes a case for why Mallorca and Mediterranean food are so special, and it's brimming with imagery that makes me want to hop on a plane tomorrow and settle down in his island paradise.

As Mallorca is part of Spain, the recipes are mostly Spanish, which is not a cuisine I usually equate with the Mediterranean. Don't seek out this book if you're looking for a recipe for falafel, as you won't find it here. What you will find are thoughtful, creative, and sophisticated recipes for dishes such as Crispy Sobrasada Croquettes with Honey and Manchego, Roasted Rack of Lamb in a Feta, Olive, and Rosemary Crust, and Fresh Mussel Escabeche. The cookbook is divided into sections based on ingredients that are essential to Mallorcan cuisine, almost like a celebration of each ingredient. It differs in that way from cookbooks that are usually divided by course.

The recipes here are really chef-caliber, and Marc Fosh doesn't dumb it down for the home cook at all. I appreciate that, but at the same time, some of the recipes, particularly the desserts are quite involved. However, if you master them, you can turn out dishes that would fit right in at a Michelin-star establishment, and one day I hope to conquer them all. This is a cookbook best devoured by "foodies", or at least somewhat adventurous eaters.

While it's an excellently done cookbook and clearly a labor of love for Chef Fosh, I'm not convinced it would be a regular on my bookshelf, purely because the recipes often contain ingredients that are hard to find or prohibitively expensive in my neck of the woods and the recipes are more involved than I would like for a weeknight, but it is a great source of cooking inspiration nonetheless.

Overall Rating: 4/5 stars

Michelin-starred chef Marc Fosh's Modern Mediterranean takes us on a visual culinary journey that stimulates the senses. Fosh organizes this cookbook into 18 different sections that focus on an ingredient central to Mediterranean cookery, such as tomatoes and olive oil. My favorite aspects of Fosh's book were his stunning photography of not only the dishes, but different regions of the Mediterranean. This cookbook is described as a love letter to the Mediterranean and its food and I could not agree more. My favorite recipes were the Honey Croquettes with Almond Aioli and the Herb-roasted Guineafowl with Couscous Salad and Sobrassada. Though the book uses techniques and ingredients that may seem intimidating to the novice home cook, I did find the recipes and Fosh's technique easy enough to follow.

We now know that the Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest and tastiest in the world. The menus in Marc Fosh’s restaurant in Mallorca are based on a simple philosophy: food tastes best when it’s made from local, organic and seasonal ingredients. Modern Mediterranean reflects this ethos whilst reinventing traditional, Mediterranean recipes with a modern touch, preserving the colours, freshness, flavours and textures of the region. His cookbook invites you to recreate the flavours of the Mediterranean using eighteen of his favourite ingredients as a starting point.
When choosing a cookbook, I look first at the ingredients in the recipes because from that I can usually tell which will turn out well, at least for my particular tastes. Over the years I have often chosen quite complicated recipes, which have become family favourites, but these days I’m keen to add some quick and easy recipes to my collection. And where simplicity is key, the ingredients really must be of top quality. However, having said that, I’m prepared to make some condiments from scratch, such as ras el hanout, preserved lemons or harissa because I know that these will make the world of difference to a dish, are worth the extra effort and will keep for future use.
Some of the recipes that caught my eye include: MARINATED SEA BASS with ROASTED PEPPER and PRESERVED LEMON SALAD; MONKFISH TAILS with MUSSELS, SAFFRON, CIDER and LEEKS; PEACH and SAFFRON CHUTNEY; SALAD OF IBERIAN HAM with GRILLED PEACHES, HAZELNUTS and GOATS’ CHEESE DRESSING; MALLORCAN RED PEPPER TART; HAKE in a LEMONCORIANDER CRUST with RED PEPPER AIOLI.
What else appealed to me about this cookbook were the anecdotes and little snippets of information about the ingredients and recipes. These also influence my decision on whether to give the dish a try. My overall impression is a cookbook packed with recipes of sunshine and al fresco dining.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Nourish for the opportunity to read and review Modern Mediterranean by Marc Fosh.

The recipes in Modern Mediterranean are delicious and well written. The only thing that I didn't like about this is that not all of the ingredients would be easy to get if you live in a small town. Not impossible, but not the easiest.

It is also definitely a necessity to read through the recipes before you buy the ingredients to see what tools you will need.

Other than that, this food is delicious and, if you have been looking for an excellent book on how to make Mediterranean food, I don't think you could do better than this one.

Mediterranean food has enjoyed popularity of late, and so Mark Fosh’s cookbook, Modern Mediterranean: Sun-drenched recipes from Mallorca and beyond is a timely cookbook for anyone who loves the food and wants to make it at home. This cookbook has a different format than most cookbooks in that it is divided into Fosh’s favorite Mediterranean ingredients with recipes using them, such as Almonds, Garlic, Chorizo, Peppers, Rice, Squid – to name a few. Fosh obviously knows his stuff, since his restaurant of the same name earned a Michelin star in 2014.

The recipes in this book are mostly typical of Spain, and will be unfamiliar to many. However, even though unfamiliar, they are mouthwatering and there are several worth trying. In the Red Prawns section there is an excellent recipe for Crispy Fried Prawns with Aioli which is is easy and delicious. The Spicy Chicken and Harissa with Smoked Chorizo from the Chorizo section is luscious (although I substituted chicken breasts for the thighs), as well as a recipe for Poor man's Potatoes with Chorizo. Fosh also includes an excellent recipe for Harissa. The cookbook includes fabulous – outside of the box – desserts such as a Chocolate and Lavender Tart and a White Chocolate Soup with Caramelised Figs. In the ever-growing queue are Grilled Asparagus with Orange Dressing and Romesco Sauce, Pork Loin braised in Milk, and Saffron-Crusted Baked Cod with Pea and Lemongrass Soup. There are enough interesting recipes to keep Mediterranean food lovers cooking for months.

The photographs will make most want to drop everything and cook. The instructions are succinct and easy to follow. This is a beautiful cookbook.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

3 out of 5

**OMG! I cannot believe that these reviews haven't been done! I am so sorry they are so late!!!**

I suffer from a medical condition that makes it really hard for me to lost weight. The Modern Mediterranean diet is prefect as it promotes healthy eating without feeling that you are going without tasty food. A great recipe book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Marc Fosh for allowing me to review Modern Mediterranean. This book was easy to follow, gorgeous, and provided me with amazing recipes.

I’ve waited a while to review this book; in the introduction Mark Fish says “ Keep it fresh, keep it seasonal and make it easy” so I needed to wait for summer when my vegetable garden would be at it’s best and I could try the recipes with the freshest ingredients

It was worth the wait! I tried the Grilled Asparagus with Orange Dressing and Romanesco Sauce; the vibrant colours looked stunning and the oranges made a lovely fresh dressing. The Mallorcan Style Stuffed Aubergines looked and tasted great. I made them a second time without the pork mince for a vegetarian guest, and they were very well received. The Rosemary and Fennel Seed Glazed Duck had a superb glaze which gave just the right touch of sweetness to complement the duck. The Spicy Chicken and Harissa Ragout was tasty, though the yoghurt curdled when stirred in at the end; it would be better served on the side.

The book encourages and inspires the cook to use fresh and seasonal ingredients and on the whole the recipes are easy and quick to make. I liked the division of the chapters into ingredients – it was great when there were, for example, loads of gorgeous tomatoes, to look the chapter on tomatoes for inspiration.
The ingredients are given in imperial, metric and volume so the book is accessible to readers all over the world. Some local ingredients, like Sobrasada – soft and spicy cured sausage – would not be easy to find out of the Mediterranean region, but he does suggest alternatives.

This was one of those recipe books that was a pleasure to read; I marked a few recipes to make, and enjoyed them, so went back to discover there were a whole lot more I wanted to try. That’s a sign of a book I would definitely keep on my bookshelf!