Mediterra by Ben Tish is all killer no filler

Following the success of his previous cookbooks, including Sicilia and Moorish, Ben Tish is back with more in the form of Mediterra. The Cubitt House chef has found his spiritual home in the sun-soaked Mediterranean, with recipes dedicated to the entire region, from Spain in the west to Turkey in the east and south to North Africa.

 

The cover is reminiscent of hot summer evenings in the shade, and would be a beautiful book to add to any collection before even opening its pages. Once you do, you’ll find simply-laid out recipes that are easy to follow, divided into the following chapters: Northern Shores, Eastern Shores, Southern Shores and Islands, in which recipes are further collated by country. This division can make it hard to find what you need if you’re looking for something like a snack or a dessert, but it does mean chefs can search for flavour profiles and national inspiration instead.

 

For example, within Southern Shores, the Tunisian recipes flow from cumin-roasted aubergines with blood orange to honey and harissa chicken wings and then to lamb kofta before ending at ma’mouls – a sweet date shortbread. It’s like a menu of starters, mains and desserts for each location. You can pick a country that suits your vibe, or peruse places to see what makes each country tick.

 

Tish keeps filler content and introduction to a minimum, preferring to let the recipes speak for themselves. A few brief paragraphs at the start of each section give a picture of his experience, with one such paragraph preceding Eastern Shores, titled ‘Staff meals and the best grilled chicken’, describing a memorable dish of spatchcocked grilled chicken with charred skin and “contrasting flavours of sweet honey, fresh herbs and sour sumac”. He gives his own version of the dish a few pages later, complete with sun-splashed photography.

 

Often in recipe books you’ll find one star dish that stands out from the rest, but in Tish’s tome every recipe seems to be a banger – you wouldn’t go wrong in making any one of them. But with so many in one book and the aforementioned simple design, photos for many have been sacrificed, making it less useful for visual learners.

 

Nevertheless, if you don’t have time to go on holiday this summer, make a dish from Mediterra and you’ll feel like you are.

 

Mediterra by Ben Tish (Bloomsbury, £26)

 

Photography by Kris Kirkham