5 Mediterranean Diet Recipes | Mediterranean Diet Dinner Recipes

Greek sheet pan chicken. It's so good. First let's slice up some veggies. I have zucchini. So we're gonna do half moons on the zucchini. Toss that right in your sheet pan. Bell pepper, any color you like. I just happen to have the yellow today. Go around the core. Thank you for coming. Now we're just gonna cut into strips. On the sheet pan it goes. One large tomato. Let's core it and we're gonna cut it into wedges. There we go. Don't you just love a sheet pan dinner? I mean what could be more exciting in life than a sheet pan dinner? Then we've got some onions. How colorful and bright this looks already. We are going to flavor our entire sheet pan with this magic sauce which begins with a quarter cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice, garlic, one or two garlic cloves, a little bit of dried oregano, a little kosher salt and a little black pepper. As you whisk you're gonna drizzle this olive oil and keep whisking. Salt and pepper on your nice veggies and then we're gonna go ahead and pour just a little bit, about a quarter cup on the veggies alone. Then we're gonna go ahead and toss with clean hands or a pair of tongs, whatever floats your boat. Go ahead and season the chicken thighs directly with kosher salt and black pepper on both sides and then I nestle them in between the veggies and they can snuggle next to each other as long as they're all touching the pan nicely as much as possible. We've got kalamatas and we've got some green olives. I told you it's a flavor party, didn't I? One big block of feta. I'm gonna leave my feta in chunks and just kind of tuck them in between. Here's your Lado limono sauce. You're gonna dress this chicken party with the rest of it. Going in the oven 425 for about 35 minutes or so or until the chicken is fully cooked through. I love the lemony garlicky Greek flavors. Oh my gosh and it smells like heaven. Oh my gosh, it's so good. Life is way too short so you need to be making a salad that you actually want to eat. That's where my Mediterranean chickpea salad comes in. Let's make it. Starting with a beautiful Dijon vinaigrette. A little bit of Dijon mustard, about maybe a teaspoon or so. I'm gonna try to wing it. Then we're gonna do some lemon juice and a little bit of garlic, salt and pepper. Aleppo pepper, about a teaspoon of this and then a teaspoon of sumac for a little more tang and flavor. Somewhere between a quarter cup to a third a cup of extra virgin olive oil. It's a chickpea salad so guess what is the star of this show? It's a chickpea, the humble chickpea. I have two cans, yep out of a can, no big deal unless you cook your chickpeas ahead of time which is fine too. So two cans of chickpeas right here drained and rinsed. An English cucumber and I just find it easy enough to split in half and then slice and then chop real small. Into the bowl we go. Next we have a bell pepper, easiest ways to go around the core. Then from here we're gonna just slice it up, chop like a pro and we have grape or cherry tomatoes. Now you can throw them in whole but to me that is a waste. I actually like to open them up and allow some of their juicy goodness to kind of mingle in with the rest of the veggies. So we're going in with the tomato. I'm gonna add in some chopped red onions. Roasted red pepper, so you can roast a couple of red peppers. I have a tutorial here for you on the channel or you can use a jar of roasted bell peppers and what you want to do is you want to chop them real small or slice them up because that way you can get a bite of the roasted red peppers in every bite. Now if you're not serving this one right away you can hold off on the avocado, you don't want it to look. Ah look at that, it's perfect. And then it's easy to pull off the skin like so. Slice and chop the avocado, going in with the avocado. Parsley alone is fine or if you have some fresh mint, basil, depending on the season and what you have available to you, you can grab some of that. Mixing the salad is just as essential. If you're not mixing all the salad well with your dressing, you have you have missed the flavor party. So this is a chickpea salad, not a wilty lettuce salad. It can stand alone as its own meal. What if I told you you're about 20 minutes away from one of the best meals you've ever made? I'm talking about this simple stuffed salmon. Start by working on our spinach, which is part of our delicious filling for the salmon. Extra virgin olive oil. Start with our shallot, two to three minutes or so. Now going in with some garlic, already creating beautiful flavors. Okay going in with the spinach and you may have to kind of like do a small bunch at a time to be able to fit it all. It's wilting easily here, you just kind of toss it around for a little bit. There we go. We're gonna take it off the heat, put it through a mesh strainer to get rid of the extra liquid. Make sure that you push down on it, get rid of as much of this juice as possible. Work on the filling now. Start with our spinach that we just wilted and drained. Chop it up. Going in one medium bowl. The recipe calls for preserved lemons. If you can't find those or if haven't made them already, you can fry up some lemon rings and I have shared that recipe before but fried lemon rings are the easiest thing. You just slice up a lemon and then gently fry it in some extra virgin olive oil and that will give you a similar flavor or vibe to the preserved lemon. So we're gonna chop these up as well. Drain these roasted peppers as well, especially if you're using roasted peppers from a jar, they're gonna be pretty liquidy. They're gonna be a lot of liquid that you want to get rid of. So you're gonna do the same thing by pushing them through a mesh strainer. Some capers, about two tablespoons of Greek yogurt goes right in here. And then we're gonna use a little bit of Aleppo pepper flakes. Aleppo pepper has a little bit of a kick but it's also got some tangy sweet undertones. It's delicious. Season with a pinch of kosher salt and black pepper. A gorgeous mixture of things here that will be our filling for the salmon. Take the salmon and then just kind of put the palm of your non-dominant hand on top and cut a small slit carefully right in the center here because you are creating essentially a little pocket for the filling. Come to kind of the middle where it's quite thick and carefully run a small chef's knife through to make an open cavity or pocket. Salt and pepper on all sides and even in the cavity. Spoon in the filling as much as you can fit in. Don't be shy with it. And then just set it right in your baking dish or baking pan. Oven at 400 degrees. We're going to go in for about 12 to 14 minutes. All right, let's see. Oh baby, this is looking good. Perfection. Let's see how I did. This is really good. I'm serious. One of the most exciting things about cooking the Mediterranean way is that you can turn something as humble as one can of beans into a satisfying dinner. Let me show you how I make Greek baked beans. Come with me. Extra virgin olive oil. Go ahead with one nice big onion chopped. Garlic. We're not shy with our garlic. And then celery and carrots. So far so good, right? Saute this party and allow it to sweat nicely. Kosher salt. Toss, toss, toss. Diced tomatoes from a can. And I'm going to add a little bit of water as well. And we're going to add some flavor makers, another pinch of salt, some parsley, fresh thyme, cinnamon, oregano, red pepper flakes, dry bay leaf. We're infusing our sauce with so much flavor. It's simmering. Good things are happening. Oven on 375 at this point in time. Going in with our drained beans. We're using very large butter beans here from a can. They're just gonna happily simmer in this sauce for a few minutes and then we're gonna go ahead and finish it up in the oven. Going in the oven for about oh 20-ish minutes or so. Oh bean party. All right, bean party. Look at this. I'm getting all the Greek vibes, all the delicious flavors. It's good. You have got to try this Italian lentil soup. I guarantee you'll make it on repeat. Extra virgin olive oil. Onion, carrots, and celery going right in here. Right here. Season. Black pepper. Toss, toss, toss. We're gonna let this party sweat just a little bit while we rinse our lentils. Adding garlic here to this party. Some marzano. Tomatoes with their juices and a little bit of water to kind of rinse the rest here. Break up the tomatoes or smash them just a little bit. Vegetable broth and then a dry bay leaf goes right in here. Stir that all in. A good tablespoon of Italian seasoning. I'm gonna kind of highball it here. This is my homemade Italian seasoning. It's very easy. You probably have a few jars or stuff to use up. Combine them and make this beautiful seasoning. One cup of rinsed green lentils. Brown lentils will work. Black lentils will work. Bring this party to a boil. This party is happily bubbling. I'm gonna give it a quick stir. Turn it down. Keep it going and then add your lid on top part way allowing it to breathe. 20 minutes and we'll be right back. Let's see what's happening here. It's looking great. The flavors from the garlic, onion, Italian seasoning, the beautiful some marzano tomatoes. So good. Do a couple of big handfuls of spinach. About a couple of cups or so. Spinach wilts very fast so you really don't need to cook this super long or anything. Just as soon as they begin to wilt. And then we're gonna finish up with a nice big cup of fresh parsley. A shot of red wine vinegar. Ready to serve. This is a big pot of goodness. It's filling. Delicious. Find the recipe over on TheMediterraneanDish.com. I will see you later. Ciao.