jamie oliver mediterranean cookbook review

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We tested Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook and here’s our honest review

From italian pasta to moroccan tagines, the tv chef has taken his 5 ingredients series across the mediterranean. lauren taylor takes it for a spin, article bookmarked.

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A fter the huge success of Jamie Oliver ’s 2017 cookbook , 5 Ingredients , it was only a matter of time before the TV chef published another iteration. This time taking influence far and wide across the Mediterranean – from Italian pasta to Moroccan tagines.

According to wife Jools, the original 5 Ingredients is “the book all the parents at school talk about”, so Oliver felt compelled, he says in his newest offering.

The 48-year-old’s latest venture in a very long time of accessible cookbooks (22 to be exact) – and accompanying Channel 4 show Jamie Cooks The Mediterranean – takes us from Southern Europe to the shores of the Middle East to Northern Africa.

Over the years ( The Naked Chef first graced our TV screens in 1999), it’s fair to say Oliver, with his jovial, no-nonsense, man-of-the-people image, has made home cooking doable for many people who otherwise wouldn’t cook and given others a go-to stash of reliable recipes when you don’t have the time or inclination for complicated. One thing’s usually a given though – the dishes will be tasty.

Luckily, I’m Oliver’s target market for this particular “solution-based” book as he so calls it; as a working mum, I’m time-poor, my skills in the kitchen are fairly basic – but I’m a foodie and will always be looking for flavour-packed dishes.

So, what can you expect from 5 Ingredients Mediterranean?

The concept – of just a handful of ingredients needed for each dish – is, at its core, uncomplicated and easy to digest. For beginner cooks, long lists of ingredients can be intimidating, not to mention costly, and even seasoned home cooks need ease sometimes, too.

Using just five (helpfully individually pictured on each page) requires some clever additions to pack in flavour, though – a bag of mixed frozen veg counts as one, for example, or shop-bought tzatziki. So purists might not approve, but the time-poor among us will really appreciate the simplicity and corner-cutting.

As with all his recent books, you’ll need a few very basic pantry ingredients like olive oil and red wine vinegar, and not one of the recipes is longer than half a page – some even just one paragraph.

Chapters are pretty standard (but practical) covering salads, soups and sarnies, pasta, veg, pies and parcels, seafood, fish, chicken and duck, meat, and finally, sweet things. You’ll find Spanish influence in grilled asparagus with salmorejo (usually a type of soup) sauce, pata negra and paprika, a French Marseilles fish soup with fennel, Greek pork and prune stew and Italian pistachio panna cotta, inspired by Arabic flavours found in Sicilian cuisine.

Oliver then crosses the Med for the likes of Tunisian kafteji (chopped-veg street food) and Moroccan-inspired squash tagine with chickpeas, ras el hanout, olives and dates; before heading east for Turkish flatbreads called pides are packed with colourful veg, mint, pistachio and feta and Palestinian-style spiced chicken generously covers dark, sticky onions, pine nuts and flatbreads (which are shop-bought, no judgment from us).

What are the recipes like to cook?

Well, I start simple for a weekday dinner and attempt the baked tomato soup. Reminiscent of Italian panzanellas, this dish couldn’t have been simpler to put together (although not super-quick) is nutritious, comforting and very tasty, with the added bonus of cheap ingredients.

Another night I rustle up Oliver’s roasted squash lasagne, with chestnuts, taleggio and crispy sage, for a family dinner – the autumnal ingredient combination sounds delicious, but I do have trouble getting hold of one of the five. Taleggio, a mild Italian semisoft, wash-rind cow’s milk cheese, wasn’t in a large supermarket or cheesemonger – who suggested a French Mont des Cats instead.

There’s no better way to get flavour out of a butternut squash than to roast it, and aside from the time this takes, it’s an easy – and fun – dish to put together, scooping out the roasted flesh and spreading across fresh lasagne sheets before crumbling over fried chestnuts and cheese and assembling. The result isn’t as “oozy” as Oliver’s picture suggests, but my substitute cheese could be to blame, nonetheless everyone agrees it’s very tasty – while feeling lighter than a traditional lasagne.

One of the easiest recipes in the book has to be the charred okra salad. All you have to do is dry fry the okra and tomatoes and assemble on top of tahini-laden yoghurt and season with red wine vinegar and dukkah (which I made from dry-frying ground cumin, coriander, sesame seeds, fennel seeds and almonds instead of buying). It’s truly idiot-proof.

The creaminess of the yoghurt-tahini sauce marries perfectly with the sweet pops of tomato and vibrant okra, and the overall fanciness of the dish made it seem like I spent a lot more time on it than I actually did. Although delicious, it was slightly one note – it might work better as a side dish in a symphony of Mediterranean small plates, rather than the star of the show itself.

Cooking multiple dishes for entertaining feels very doable when each recipe only calls for five ingredients, and I try this tactic for a Sunday lunch. The lemon tzatziki (whole) chicken marinates for two hours in the Greek cucumber yoghurt dip before it cooks, and alongside the roasted onions and jammy lemons, it is delicious, but the consensus is we can’t really taste the tzatziki – although the dip may have contributed to general juiciness of the meat.

Desserts can be a bit daunting, but Oliver’s minimal-ingredient recipes are a great place to start. With bitter dark chocolate and just a hint of espresso in a very rich moose, “Jools’ chocolate dream” couldn’t be easier to make – and the individual pots are a hit among my guests.

If you’ve got more mouths to feed, the baked cheesecake is worth a go. Aside from the masses of cream cheese you need to buy, it’s easily created from what’s probably already sitting in your kitchen cupboards, like icing sugar and eggs. Perhaps I’m not a very skilled baker, but the prep takes much longer than the 10 minutes Oliver stipulates. You need to plan four hours to chill (I didn’t and we ate it at 11pm), but it’s easy, even total beginners can create quite an impressive dessert centrepiece.

The texture is perfect, creamy, but firm enough to hold together and slightly golden on top. It needs something to balance out the richness – Oliver suggests serving with fresh fruit, but I make a sharp raspberry coulis which works perfectly. In theory it serves 12, but I think we’ll be tucking into this cake for weeks.

Feta filo turnovers with fresh marjoram, runny honey and pistachio sprinkle

“When I was a teenager visiting Cyprus on holiday, I was wowed by the recipes that would cook feta rather than just serve it in salads raw,” Oliver writes.

“For me, this is so incredibly simple, satisfying and impressive.”

Total time : 20 minutes

Ingredients :

4 sheets of filo pastry

200g feta cheese

½ a bunch of marjoram (10g)

25g shelled unsalted pistachios

Runny honey, to serve

1. Lay a sheet of filo on a damp tea towel and brush lightly with olive oil.

2. Crumble a quarter of the feta across one side of the pastry, leaving a three-centimetre gap around the edges, and pick over a quarter of the marjoram leaves.

3. Carefully fold over the filo, press the edges to seal, then fold in half again, pressing down gently to secure. Brush lightly with olive oil.

4. Place a large non-stick frying pan on a medium heat with a splash of olive oil, add the filo parcel and cook for two minutes on each side, or until golden and crisp, then transfer to a serving plate.

5. Meanwhile, bash or roughly chop the pistachios. Drizzle the parcel with honey and scatter over a quarter of the pistachios. Repeat with the rest of the ingredients, serving each parcel as soon as it’s ready.

Tunisian prawn spaghetti, fragrant rose harissa, zingy lemon and fresh parsley

“Tunisians are one of the biggest pasta eaters on the planet and they have a whole load of their own pasta shapes and techniques,” Oliver says.

“Harissa really amplifies the sweetness of the prawns here – delicious!”

Total time : 22 minutes

150g dried spaghetti

8 large raw shell-on king prawns

2 tsp rose harissa

½ a bunch of flat-leaf parsley (15g)

1. Cook the pasta in a pan of boiling salted water according to the packet instructions.

2. Meanwhile, peel the prawns, removing and reserving the heads and leaving the tails on. I like to run a small sharp knife down the back of each, discarding the vein, so they butterfly when they cook. Toss the prawns with the harissa and leave to briefly marinate.

3. Place the prawn heads in a large frying pan on a medium heat with one tablespoon of olive oil and fry until golden all over, stirring regularly and gently squashing to extract amazing flavour.

4. Roughly chop and reserve the top leafy half of the parsley, then finely slice the stalks and add them to the pan with a pinch of sea salt and black pepper. Fry for one minute, then add the marinated prawns and cook for one minute on each side.

5. Using tongs, drag the pasta into the pan, squeeze in half the lemon juice, throw in the parsley leaves, then toss together, loosening with a splash of starchy cooking water, if needed. To serve, pick out and discard the crispy prawn heads and cut the remaining lemon half into wedges for squeezing over.

Jools’ chocolate dreams

“Chocolate and coffee are celebrated all around the Med and they’re also my wife’s two favourite indulgent pleasures, so why wouldn’t I create possibly one of the most decadent desserts on earth?” says Oliver.

Total time : 40 minutes, plus cooling

150g dark chocolate (70%)

125g unsalted butter

50ml good espresso

2 large eggs

125g golden caster sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 120C/250F/gas ½.

2. Snap the chocolate into a heatproof bowl, add the butter, espresso and a good pinch of sea salt, and place over a pan of gently simmering water to melt very slowly until smooth, stirring regularly.

3. Meanwhile, whisk the eggs and sugar together until pale and doubled in size, then carefully fold in the melted chocolate mixture.

4. Boil the kettle. Divide the mixture between six coffee cups or ramekins and put them into a roasting tray. Place the tray in the oven, then carefully pour in enough boiling kettle water to come halfway up the side of the cups.

5. Bake for exactly 20 minutes, then carefully remove from the oven and leave to cool in the water for two hours.

6. To serve, I sometimes shave over some extra chocolate, or add fresh fruit like cherries, blood oranges or wild strawberries, with a dollop of yoghurt or crème fraîche.

‘5 Ingredients Mediterranean’ by Jamie Oliver (Penguin Michael Joseph © Jamie Oliver Enterprises Limited, £28)

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Why You Need Jamie Oliver’s 5 Ingredients Mediterranean Cookbook

Renowned chef Jamie Oliver has once again delighted food enthusiasts with his latest culinary creation, “5 Ingredients Mediterranean: Simple Incredible Food.” Let’s take a closer look at this exciting cookbook, inspired by Jamie’s travels and lifelong passion for delicious, uncomplicated cuisine. Additionally, we’ll explore Jamie Oliver’s culinary journey and touch upon some of his other notable cookbooks.

“As an Amazon Associate, we may earn commissions from qualifying purchases made through links in this post”

Embarking on a Mediterranean Culinary Journey

“5 Ingredients Mediterranean” is not just a cookbook; it’s a voyage through the vibrant and diverse flavors of the Mediterranean. With over 125 easy-to-follow recipes, Jamie Oliver aims to make everyday cooking both thrilling and straightforward.

Whether you’re a seasoned chef or a novice in the kitchen, these recipes empower you to create mouthwatering dishes without the need for a long list of ingredients or complicated culinary techniques.

Diverse and Mouthwatering Creations

The variety within the pages of this cookbook is truly remarkable. From refreshing salads and hearty soups to flavorful pasta, delectable seafood, succulent chicken, and indulgent desserts – there’s a tantalizing option for every palate and occasion.

Picture yourself savoring dishes like tender asparagus carbonara, epic quick salt cod, island salad, and herby steak with crispy potatoes. Each recipe is crafted to evoke the sunny vibes of the Mediterranean.

[Images: JamieOliver.com]

Jamie Oliver’s Culinary Touch

What makes “ 5 Ingredients Mediterranean: Simple Incredible Food ” special is the personal touch of Chef Jamie Oliver. With a genuine passion for both cooking and the Mediterranean region, Jamie has infused every dish in this cookbook with the essence of his culinary experiences. His dedication to creating accessible yet extraordinary meals shines through, turning each recipe into a delightful adventure.

Exploring Jamie Oliver’s Culinary Legacy

Chef Jamie Oliver is one of the bestselling cookbook authors of all time. In addition to “5 Ingredients Mediterranean,” Jamie Oliver has left his own mark on the culinary world with several other noteworthy cookbooks.

His earlier works, such as “ One: Simple One-Pan Wonders ” and “ 7 Ways” Easy Ideas for Every Day of the Week ” showcase his commitment to simplicity, flavor, and accessibility in the kitchen.

Another of his previous cookbooks, “ 5 Ingredients: Quick & Easy Food ,” laid the foundation for his latest masterpiece, “5 Ingredients Mediterranean: Simple Incredible Food.”

“5 Ingredients: Quick & Easy Food” Overview:

In this earlier work, Jamie introduced a revolutionary concept: crafting delicious meals with only five key ingredients. It’s consistently a best seller on Amazon in the Budget Cooking category .

The cookbook aimed to simplify cooking without compromising on flavor. This made it an instant hit among busy individuals and cooking enthusiasts alike. Each recipe was a testament to Jamie’s dedication to creating accessible yet impressive dishes, perfectly aligned with the fast-paced modern lifestyle.

Our Final Thoughts

Ready to embark on your Mediterranean Cooking Journey?

Are you ready to infuse your kitchen with the flavors of the Mediterranean? “5 Ingredients Mediterranean: Simple Incredible Food” by Chef Jamie Oliver is more than a cookbook; it’s an invitation to experience the joy of simple and incredible food.

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5 Ingredients Mediterranean

31 August 2023

Over 120 brand new recipes for everyday cooking.

From speedy pastas to decadent desserts.

A taste of the Mediterranean, using just 5 ingredients for each dish.

Who’s the author? Jamie Oliver is a bestselling author, chef and campaigner. Often credited with revolutionising home cooking in Britain and beyond, Jamie is a household name and one of the most influential voices in the food industry.

What’s it about? Jamie’s latest cookbook sees a return to the winning formula of his hugely popular 2017 cookbook 5 Ingredients: Quick & Easy Food , this time with a focus on the fresh flavours of the Mediterranean. Inspired by Jamie’s travels around the region, you will find chapters covering pasta, soups and sandwiches, meat, chicken, veg, fish, seafood, pies, and sweet treats, all made using just five basic ingredients. This transformative approach not only makes cooking quicker and easier but the shorter ingredient lists also help to keep the cost of the food shop down too.

Perfect for:  Busy home cooks, from families to single professionals, looking for easy-to-follow recipes with Mediterranean flavour.

Recipes from 5 Ingredients Mediterranean

Jamie Oliver’s Easy Fig Tart

by Jamie Oliver from 5 Ingredients Mediterranean

Jamie Oliver’s Rogue Ratatouille Risotto

Jamie Oliver’s Herby Steak and Crispy Potatoes

Jamie Oliver’s Sea and Mountain Skewers

Jamie Oliver’s Minty Courgette Tart

Jamie Oliver’s Lemon-Tzatziki Chicken, Fluffy Pan-Juice Rice, Jammy Onions and Roasted Lemons

Jamie Oliver’s Chicken and Merguez Stew, Beautiful Bay Marinade, Slow-Cooked Onions and Beans

Jamie Oliver’s Sweet Pea Orecchiette

Jamie Oliver’s Feta Filo Turnovers

Jamie Oliver’s Lemon Curd Tart

Jamie Oliver’s Crispy Paprika Chicken

More about 5 ingredients mediterranean, recipe collections, your favourite recipes from jamie oliver’s 5 ingredient meals on channel 4.

Find recipes from Jamie Oliver’s 2023 Channel 4 cookery TV series 5 Ingredient Meals and accompanying cookbook 5 Ingredients Mediterranean.

Cook from the book: Jamie Oliver’s 5 Ingredients Mediterranean

We turned to 5 Ingredients Mediterranean by Jamie Oliver to create simple, flavour-packed midweek recipes for seven days – here’s what we found.

More books by Jamie Oliver

Simply Jamie

Jamie Oliver: 7 Ways

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5 Ingredients Mediterranean: Simple Incredible Food Hardcover – Nov. 14 2023

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Print length 320 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Appetite by Random House
• Publication date Nov. 14 2023
• Dimensions 19.56 x 3.1 x 25.35 cm
• ISBN-10 0525612904
• ISBN-13 978-0525612902
• See all details

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About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Appetite by Random House (Nov. 14 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0525612904
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0525612902
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 1.19 kg
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 19.56 x 3.1 x 25.35 cm
• #8 in Mediterranean Cooking (Books)
• #9 in Celebrity & TV Show Cookbooks
• #19 in Quick & Easy Cooking (Books)

About the author

Jamie oliver.

Jamie Oliver is a global phenomenon in food and campaigning. During a 20-year television and publishing career he has inspired millions of people to enjoy cooking from scratch and eating fresh, delicious food. Through his organization, Jamie is leading the charge on a global food revolution, aiming to reduce childhood obesity and improve everyone's health and happiness through food.

Jamie started cooking at his parents' pub, The Cricketers, in Clavering, Essex, at the age of eight. After leaving school he began a career as a chef that took him to the River Café, where he was famously spotted by a television production company and the Naked Chef was born.

He has now published 23 bestselling cookery books, all with accompanying TV shows. Jamie lives in London and Essex with his wife Jools and their children.

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In Jamie Oliver's newest cookbook, you don't need many ingredients to make a delicious meal

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You don’t need a ton of obscure ingredients to cook up a delicious meal. That’s the crux of chef and restauranteur Jamie Oliver ’s new cookbook “ 5 Ingredients Mediterranean .”

The cookbook follows a similar format as Oliver’s 2017 release “ 5 Ingredients: Quick & Easy Food .” He says he didn’t intend to repeat the theme of simple, stress-free recipes, but saw that’s what readers wanted. Plus, he says his wife talked him into it after the success of his first easy recipes collection.

The book features everything from main courses to desserts. Readers likely have the ingredients on hand, making the dishes quick to whip up even if you have no time to head to the store first.

Oliver says that as times change, so does peoples’ relationship with cooking. He says the average consumer relies on takeout more often and doesn’t want a long grocery list or a meal that takes hours to prepare. Oliver says one of the main goals of writing this book was to make fresh, home-cooked meals approachable and attainable for people of all class statuses.

“Technology in life is changing our lifestyles. And of course, the food industry wants to fix everything for you. And what happens when that happens is people forget how to cook. And we know that when people forget how to cook, they're not so well,” Oliver says. “For me, cooking isn't just about joy and the gorgeousness of serving people that you love, but also it's kind of political and it's about our kids and it's about our futures.”

Book excerpt: '5 Ingredient Mediterranean'

By Jamie Oliver

Tunisian shrimp spaghetti

Charred brussels

Lemon-tzatziki chicken

"5 Ingredients Mediterranean" by Jamie Oliver is published by Flatiron Books © Jamie Oliver Enterprises Limited (2024).

Julia Corcoran produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt . Grace Griffin  adapted it for the web.

This segment aired on January 26, 2024.

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What is Jamie Oliver’s new 5 ingredients Mediterranean cookbook really like?

After the huge success of Jamie Oliver’s 2017 cookbook, 5 Ingredients, it was only a matter of time before the TV chef published another iteration. This time taking influence far and wide across the Mediterranean – from Italian pasta to Moroccan tagines.

According to wife Jools, the original 5 Ingredients is “the book all the parents at school talk about”, so Oliver felt compelled, he says in his newest offering.

The 48-year-old’s latest venture in a very long time of accessible cookbooks (22 to be exact) – and accompanying Channel 4 show Jamie Cooks The Mediterranean – takes us from Southern Europe to the shores of the Middle East to Northern Africa.

Over the years (The Naked Chef first graced our TV screens in 1999), it’s fair to say Oliver, with his jovial, no-nonsense, man-of-the-people image, has made home cooking doable for many people who otherwise wouldn’t cook and given others a go-to stash of reliable recipes when you don’t have the time or inclination for complicated. One thing’s usually a given though – the dishes will be tasty.

Niall McKenna’s bank holiday barbecue recipes

Bethel’s Kitchen is single-handedly solving our pickle problem - Eating Out

Luckily, I’m Oliver’s target market for this particular ‘solution-based’ book as he so calls it; as a working mum, I’m time-poor, my skills in the kitchen are fairly basic – but I’m a foodie and will always be looking for flavour-packed dishes.

So, what can you expect from 5 Ingredients Mediterranean?

The concept – of just a handful of ingredients needed for each dish – is, at its core, uncomplicated and easy to digest. For beginner cooks, long lists of ingredients can be intimidating, not to mention costly, and even seasoned home cooks need ease sometimes, too.

Using just five (helpfully individually pictured on each page) requires some clever additions to pack in flavour, though – a bag of mixed frozen veg counts as one, for example, or shop-bought tzatziki. So purists might not approve, but the time-poor among us will really appreciate the simplicity and corner-cutting.

As with all his recent books, you’ll need a few very basic pantry ingredients like olive oil and red wine vinegar, and not one of the recipes is longer than half a page – some even just one paragraph.

Chapters are pretty standard (but practical) covering salads, soups and sarnies, pasta, veg, pies and parcels, seafood, fish, chicken and duck, meat, and finally, sweet things. You’ll find Spanish influence in grilled asparagus with salmorejo (usually a type of soup) sauce, pata negra and paprika, a French Marseilles fish soup with fennel, Greek pork and prune stew and Italian pistachio panna cotta, inspired by Arabic flavours found in Sicilian cuisine.

Oliver then crosses the Med for the likes of Tunisian kafteji (chopped-veg street food) and Moroccan-inspired squash tagine with chickpeas, ras el hanout, olives and dates; before heading east for Turkish flatbreads called pides are packed with colourful veg, mint, pistachio and feta and Palestinian-style spiced chicken generously covers dark, sticky onions, pine nuts and flatbreads (which are shop-bought, no judgment from us).

What are the recipes like to cook?

Well, I start simple for a weekday dinner and attempt the baked tomato soup. Reminiscent of Italian panzanellas, this dish couldn’t have been simpler to put together (although not super-quick) is nutritious, comforting and very tasty, with the added bonus of cheap ingredients.

Another night I rustle up Oliver’s roasted squash lasagne, with chestnuts, taleggio and crispy sage, for a family dinner – the autumnal ingredient combination sounds delicious, but I do have trouble getting hold of one of the five. Taleggio, a mild Italian semisoft, wash-rind cow’s milk cheese, wasn’t in a large supermarket or cheesemonger – who suggested a French Mont des Cats instead.

There’s no better way to get flavour out of a butternut squash than to roast it, and aside from the time this takes, it’s an easy – and fun – dish to put together, scooping out the roasted flesh and spreading across fresh lasagne sheets before crumbling over fried chestnuts and cheese and assembling. The result isn’t as ‘oozy’ as Oliver’s picture suggests, but my substitute cheese could be to blame, nonetheless everyone agrees it’s very tasty – while feeling lighter than a traditional lasagne.

One of the easiest recipes in the book has to be the charred okra salad. All you have to do is dry fry the okra and tomatoes and assemble on top of tahini-laden yoghurt and season with red wine vinegar and dukkah (which I made from dry-frying ground cumin, coriander, sesame seeds, fennel seeds and almonds instead of buying). It’s truly idiot-proof.

The creaminess of the yoghurt-tahini sauce marries perfectly with the sweet pops of tomato and vibrant okra, and the overall fanciness of the dish made it seem like I spent a lot more time on it than I actually did. Although delicious, it was slightly one note – it might work better as a side dish in a symphony of Mediterranean small plates, rather than the star of the show itself.

Cooking multiple dishes for entertaining feels very doable when each recipe only calls for five ingredients, and I try this tactic for a Sunday lunch. The lemon tzatziki (whole) chicken marinates for two hours in the Greek cucumber yoghurt dip before it cooks, and alongside the roasted onions and jammy lemons, it is delicious, but the consensus is we can’t really taste the tzatziki – although the dip may have contributed to general juiciness of the meat.

Desserts can be a bit daunting, but Oliver’s minimal-ingredient recipes are a great place to start. With bitter dark chocolate and just a hint of espresso in a very rich mousse, ‘Jools’ chocolate dream’ couldn’t be easier to make – and the individual pots are a hit among my guests.

If you’ve got more mouths to feed, the baked cheesecake is worth a go. Aside from the masses of cream cheese you need to buy, it’s easily created from what’s probably already sitting in your kitchen cupboards, like icing sugar and eggs. Perhaps I’m not a very skilled baker, but the prep takes much longer than the 10 minutes Oliver stipulates. You need to plan four hours to chill (I didn’t and we ate it at 11pm), but it’s easy, even total beginners can create quite an impressive dessert centrepiece.

The texture is perfect, creamy, but firm enough to hold together and slightly golden on top. It needs something to balance out the richness – Oliver suggests serving with fresh fruit, but I make a sharp raspberry coulis which works perfectly. In theory it serves 12, but I think we’ll be tucking into this cake for weeks.

5 Ingredients Mediterranean by Jamie Oliver is published by Penguin Michael Joseph © Jamie Oliver Enterprises Limited (2023 5 Ingredients Mediterranean). Recipe photography: © David Loftus, 2023.

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Book details

5 Ingredients Mediterranean

Simple Incredible Food [American Measurements]

Author: Jamie Oliver

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Jamie's most popular cookbook goes Mediterranean in this mouth-watering follow-up This edition...

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Jamie's most popular cookbook goes Mediterranean in this mouth-watering follow-up This edition has been adapted for the US market. 5 Ingredients Mediterranean is everything people loved about the first book, but with the added va-va-voom of basing it on Jamie's lifelong travels around the Mediterranean. With over 125 utterly delicious, easy-to-follow recipes, it’s all about making everyday cooking super-exciting, with minimal fuss – all while transporting you to sunnier climes. You'll find recipes to empower you to make incredibly delicious food, but without copious amounts of ingredients, long shopping lists or loads of cleaning up. 65% of the recipes are meat-free or meat-reduced, and all offer big, bold flavor. With chapters including Salads, Soups and Sandwiches, Pasta, Vegetables, Pies and Parcels, Seafood, Fish, Chicken and Duck, Meat, and Desserts , you’ll find something for every day of the week, and every occasion. Dishes include: · Tender smoky eggplant · Epic prawns & beans · Rogue ratatouille risotto · Sizzling squid · Island salad · Herby steak & crispy potatoes · Easy fig tart · Jools’ chocolate dreams It's a real celebration of hero Mediterranean flavors and ingredients – quick and easy recipes for exciting everyday cooking.

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Flatiron Books

9781250319869

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Jamie oliver just announced his new 5-ingredient cookbook & the mediterranean recipes sounds so good.

by Justina Huddleston

Justina Huddleston

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When we’re feeling uninspired and just can’t think of five healthy, easy, and delicious meals to make for the week, there’s one celebrity chef we always turn to: Jamie Oliver . Not only is the British chef constantly sharing recipes on his Instagram account and website, but he’s also got a laser-focus on creating and sharing recipes that are feasible for people to cook at home, even on busy nights. He’s written several cookbooks that we keep on our shelves and look through again and again for dinner inspiration (dinspiration? Is that a thing yet?), and now, he just announced a brand-new cookbook that we have a feeling will become a fast favorite: 5 Ingredients Mediterranean: Simple Incredible Food .

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jamie Oliver (@jamieoliver)

5 Ingredients Mediterranean: Simple Incredible Food

Jamie Oliver’s newest cookbook is a riff on the successful formula of his other cookbooks, which feature tasty recipes with few ingredients. This time, he’s focusing on Mediterranean recipes, which aren’t just bursting with flavor, but are also heart-healthy and nutritious. The health benefits of eating a Mediterranean-style diet are well-documented, and this cookbook’s focus on meat-free and meat-reduced recipes will give you a boost, too (apparently 65% of the recipes are meatless or meat-reduced).

The book contains 125 recipes, including delicous-sounding dishes like: Easy Fig Tart, Epic Prawns & Beans, Island Salad, Herby Steak & Crispy Potatoes, and more. The book is available for pre-order now, and is coming out in the US in January 2024. But if that’s too long to wait, these other Jamie Oliver cookbooks should help fill the gap.

5 Ingredients: Quick & Easy Food

Jamie Oliver’s original 5 Ingredients cookbook is practically a classic already, and it’s easy to see why. Oliver packed this thing with 130 recipes, for everything from dinner to dessert. And lest you worry that recipes with just 5 ingredients might be bland or boring, just take a look at the reviews: the book has more than 14,000 5-star ratings. “So often recipes with bragging rights about few ingredients are boring, tasteless, or full of icky ingredients like canned cream of chicken soup. Not these,” shared one happy customer.

One: Simple One-Pan Wonders

If you’re less concerned with cutting back on ingredients and more concerned with cutting down on dishes, then Oliver’s One: Simple One-Pan Wonders could be the book for you. The concept is as straightforward as the title would imply, and the recipes include tasty dishes like Juicy Tahini Chicken, Hassleback Eggplant Pie, Sausage Papardelle, and Chocolate Party Cake. Oh, and he didn’t forget about minimizing the ingredients list entirely — each recipe in this book has just 8 ingredients or less.

We can’t wait for Oliver’s 5 Ingredients Mediterranean: Simple Incredible Food to finally hit our bookshelves, but in the meantime we’ll keep reaching for our old favorites of his when we need ideas for fast, easy, and delicious weeknight meals.

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November 7, 2023

You Have To Try Jamie Oliver’s 5-Ingredient Mediterranean Recipes

Prolific British chef Jamie Oliver is back with a new installment of his popular 5 Ingredients cookbook series. In 5 Ingredients Mediterranean find 125 recipes inspired by Jamie’s travels around Spain, Greece and Croatia including Chestnut Carbonara made with pasta, pancetta, chestnuts, eggs and Parmesan, and the crispy Couscous and Chicken Bake, where popular Mediterranean staples such as tzatziki and couscous come together.

Scroll down for some of Jamie Oliver’s 5-Ingredient Mediterranean recipes!

Chestnut Carbonara

“Oh my days, why has it taken me so long to infiltrate one of my favorite pasta dishes with beautiful chestnuts that can be nutty, crumbly and savory, but sweet and smooth all at the same time?” – Jamie Oliver

Get the recipe here.

Pot-roast Chicken

“Herby salsas are much loved in Catalan cooking, so, inspired by a recent trip to Barcelona, I’ve embellished this chicken and these rich, stock-cooked potatoes with a vibrant nutty number.” – Jamie Oliver

Couscous & Chicken Bake

“Couscous is used across the Mediterranean in so many wonderful ways – here I’m putting it center stage to create the most outrageous bake, with a crispy outside and beautifully fluffy center.” – Jamie Oliver

All products featured on House & Home are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Excerpted from 5 Ingredients Mediterranean by Jamie Oliver. © 2023 Jamie Oliver. Photographs by David Loftus. Published by Appetite by Random House®, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved

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