How to Cook an Authentic Mediterranean Dinner (Greek)

hello everyone my name is bill bradley and uh today we're going to be doing a special class on how to cook an authentic mediterranean dinner and i'm a registered dietitian i've been specializing in the mediterranean diet for the last 15 years i'm the co-author of the book food the creek traditional recipes from the healthiest people in the world and the two recipes we are going to cook today is fr are from the island of crete crete is a greek island it is famous for being one of the healthiest places in the world it's a blue zone and i went there about 12 years ago to research the diet to learn more about it i spent two months there and we've we've been back many times but the island had some really interesting facts about the health first of all in the 1950s and 1960s they had the highest longevity rates in the world uh ansel keys went around the world to look at heart disease in men and just to give you an idea uh like finland was the worst finland had like 193 deaths per thousand the united states was in the 90s deaths per a thousand for heart disease with men and then we get down to like italy which is another mediterranean country it was 30 deaths per thousand and okinawa okinawa japan which is another very famous blue zone also a lot of very healthy people had 13 deaths per thousand and on the greek island of crete there was only three and as a matter of fact when the researchers first went there they could only find one man on the entire island who had any kind of heart disease in a 10-year period so heart disease was almost completely unknown and the reason that they had the highest longevity rates is because they also had very low rates of cancer diabetes was pretty much non-existent they didn't have any problems with obesity so they were incredibly healthy people and the recipes we're going to cook today i'm going to make two quick recipes and both of these recipes are traditional recipes from crete and they're both uh recipes from kula varadakis and as i said they're both in our book food secret and we're going to give out want to give out a cookbook we're also going to give out a bottle of our new extra virgin olive oil and we're also going to give away one of our 10-week weight loss meal plans that will be near the end of the program so i'm going to start cooking and we're going to start by making a white bean soup and the thing that makes a lot of mediterranean cooking very mediterranean is the amount of olive oil that is used so oftentimes uh if you get a mediterranean a so-called mediterranean recipe here in the u.s or you know wherever that's not the mediterranean it might have like one to two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and a lot of people think that that's a lot of olive oil but this recipe for this soup i'm going to show you a uh a measuring cup here and our new olive oil and we this olive oil is great because it has a spout but we're going to just keep adding olive oil to this until we get to the amount of olive oil does anybody want to guess how much olive oil is going to be in this recipe again this is a traditional mediterranean recipe uh i can see the chat over here so if anybody wants to guess how much olive oil we're going to use in this um actually if uh if somebody guesses the right amount i'll give them the cookbook so whoever i see half a cup uh not quite three quarters of a cup we are now at a third of a cup it's not three quarters of a cup colleen says one cup and she is the winner of the extra virgin olive oil so colleen if you can put your email in the chat and then or we'll get a hold of you and and then we'll send you a free copy of our cookbook so the answer is one cup of extra virgin olive oil and which seems like an incredible amount of olive oil but this is the normal amount that is eaten in a traditional mediterranean diet so and again this soup we're gonna put this in here so that's one cup of olive oil and then we are going to start adding the other ingredients which includes onion and extra virgin olive oil is incredibly healthy for you as long as you get real extra virgin olive oil as many of you may know much of the olive oil that's in the us and outside of the mediterranean is often fraudulent olive oil and so you have to be really careful to make sure that you're getting real olive oil as a matter of fact sometimes the olive oil that you get in the stores is sometimes not even olive oil i don't know if anybody saw the 60-minute special on this but um sometimes it can actually be adulterated uh vegetable oil and they add beta-carotene and um uh beta-carotene what's the other thing they add chlorophyll to make it green and taste like fruit and so if you um get that kind of olive oil or that kind of oil it's really not going to be good for you and so you want to make sure that when you're choosing olive oil that you always get a really great and fresh olive oil one that you trust like our olive oil comes from a uh a private estate in southern greece in the peloponnese region and so we know this is good olive oil it's one awards but also if you uh if you get olive oil like even at costco like the kirkland brand is is not a bad olive oil it's a traditional um it's a it's a good olive oil from a highly regulated part of italy so i just added onion to this and i'm now going to add some celery the great thing about the dishes in the in the mediterranean is that you're going to get all the vegetables you need and you're going to get all the good fat that you need and the good olive oil so that you know if you ever go to an italian restaurant here or a mediterranean restaurant sometimes you'll get olive oil on the side in a uh like a cruet that you can dip your bread in but in the in if you're actually in the mediterranean they don't do that because you are going to get all this wonderful olive oil in every dish and instead of getting your bread just an olive oil you're dipping your bread in this amazing mix of olive oil and herbs and you'll see what we add to this which is a little bit surprising actually one of the things that we're going to add um so we're going to add celery we're going to have this on a medium heat we'll put the links for the recipes in the youtube chat and feel free to ask any questions as we go uh next thing i'm going to add arts and carrots these are cut carrots from our local farm share we're going to add about four carrots one thing that you do end up doing a lot in the mediterranean diet is cutting vegetables because there's a lot of vegetables and so um you can use a food processor to cut vegetables or a mandolin i usually just use a knife but if you're making a lot of food then something like a food processor to cut the carrots and the celery is is not a bad thing um after we uh finish adding the ingredients here we're gonna go on to show you what a traditional greek salad looks like and it's probably not what you it's definitely not what you would get at a greek most greek restaurants here in america okay so we've added celery onions and carrots to the one cup of olive oil and then we're going to turn it up a little bit and we're going to let that cook i see people are from florida southern utah anybody from uh another country out there besides the u.s okay so when we're talking about olive oil i just want to say a few things uh that are super important uh to make an authentic mediterranean meal you want to make sure that you have authentic authentic mediterranean olive oil and like i said there's a lot of fraud a lot of stuff isn't olive oil or it's not extra virgin or it comes from a lot of different places and it's not just like from a single source so it's really important that you get the right kind of olive oil so like i said costco um the kirkland brand has good olive oil trader joe's olive oil is good whole foods olive oil is good um they when i say good they they're good they might not be as flavorful as like a really single estate type of olive oil but they're still going to be really good for you when you are testing your olive oil like if you can go to a place that has the big barrels of olive oil you can taste them you want to be tasting for a peppery burn and that burn is a very strong anti-inflammatory as a matter of fact a thousand years ago they used the olive oil to cure headaches and toothaches because that was their ibuprofen 1000 years ago so you want to make sure that you get that peppery burn it's going to help with inflammation it also is full of antioxidants vitamin e really really good things so if you can if you have any kind of a local like middle eastern store or like a spanish store greek store anything like that go in and ask them if you can try their olive oil and ask them for the root for their best olive oil and a lot of people say well i just use the extra virgin olive oil just to put on salads and like the really good oil we use this olive oil on everything including uh frying if you're because the fact that you know that it's a myth that you can't fry with extra virgin olive oil and it's uh it actually is one of the best oils to fry with you want to try not to get it past the smoke point but it keeps a lot of its health qualities even when it's frying and so in the mediterranean they'll make french fries fried in olive oil and they're amazing if you've ever had them they're so so delicious okay so we are uh just look at that can you see the olive oil dripping there that's that's an amazing it's gonna be an amazing white bean soup this is also called a lavera which means that it's cooked in lots and lots of olive oil so one of the surprising ingredients for the soup is we the traditional way you would use dried orange slices but here we are going to just slice do a couple of slices of orange maybe three slices with the with the juice and the flesh and the skin we're just going to drop it right in there and then we're going to add some oregano this is oregano that we picked from our own garden and dried we're going to add some of that and then we will want to add some bay leaves one or two bay leaves so this recipe can be done in about 20 minutes but i always recommend with soups like the next day it's always going to be better uh and if you cook it for 30 to 40 minutes it's going to be even better like 30 to 40 minutes on a low heat next we're going to add some tomato paste another great thing about the mediterranean diet is if you have somebody in your family that doesn't really like vegetables there's a lot of different ways that our vegetables are prepared and it's often hidden in things like this this soup and if it's if you have somebody in your family that's more of a meat eater you can always add something like chorizo to this you could add chicken really any any uh you know you could even add fish to this like a white fish would be good with this soup so what we're doing now is we're just cooking this down so that the the carrots are nice and tender okay so next we're gonna when we get to it we're gonna add um the cannellini beans and i'll talk more about that as we go um we're just going to let that cook and next we're going to make the salad so this is a traditional greek salad if you've ever had uh what you think is a greek salad in most greek restaurants in america what you're going to get is a lot of iceberg lettuce and green pepper and then usually a little less of everything else a traditional real traditional greek salad no lettuce as a matter of fact for most of the time that i've been in greece which is probably like four or five months at this point i have very rarely seen uh a lettuce in a salad as a matter of fact i mean like a chop chop salads which is a salad it's all chopped up sometimes that has lettuce in it sometimes not but i'm gonna make a traditional one today and instead of green pepper i'm going to use red pepper and the reason that we're going to use red pepper is because red pepper is basically a ripe green pepper and because it's on the vine longer and it it's what makes it gets its color it goes from green to yellow to orange to red the red has the most beta-carotene it has the most antioxidants it's basically a ripe green pepper and so it's another reason why a lot of people that eat green peppers get digestive issues because it's like eating like a green banana or a green avocado it's not really ready to be digested yet so it's best to use um a red pepper so that's a little bit different than the traditional but we're gonna just slice this right into here this is another thing that i learned when i was in greece a lot of the people don't use cutting boards and i mean i'm using a cutting board but a lot of the stuff they they just cut right into the salad next we're going to add just some red onion and we're going to we want it to be really thin slices of red onion the typical american gets about two and a half servings of fruits and vegetables a day whereas the average person in the mediterranean gets nine to fifteen servings a day so that's a huge difference and this is a huge part of why people are so healthy there a huge uh if you have a diverse a diversity of fruits and vegetables every week you are going to be improving your gut microbiome people in the mediterranean tend to have really good gut microbiomes which is one of the reasons why they're so healthy one of many so a good gut microbiome can mean that you have less brain issues less alzheimer's less problems with weight you're going to lose weight easier if you have a good gut microbiome and so it's really important to have a diversity and a lot of fruits and vegetables and that's what they what they do in the mediterranean so next we're going to add tomatoes just for the ease of this i'm going to add cherry tomatoes but you could you know in in the mediterranean you would often see this with uh with bigger tomatoes that are sliced and then we're going to add some cucumber i suppose i should be using a greek cucumber instead of an english cucumber but that's what we got and that is a super salt and onion okay so we're going to add add cucumbers and then some olives okay let me check let me check the chat over here um is fratelli carly good olive oil i don't actually know that particular olive oil um so i'm not sure of that one uh if that one's spelled right um i haven't heard of it um and thanks for the recipes you're welcome making this soup tonight we're going to put the recipe in the chat and it's also on our website at mediterranean living if you look up white bean soup you will find it there as well slovenia hello slovenia that's awesome you might be the furthest away so far for sure so so far we have uh cucumbers peppers red onion cucumbers and now we're gonna add some of the best ingredients i mean of course the uh the uh olives are one of the best and the vegetables one of the things that i hear people from the mediterranean say is that the olive oil is basically the the bus to get to the vegetables like if the olive oil is what makes the vegetables taste so good like if you think you don't like vegetables and and you've never had like olive oil soaked vegetables or like a soup like this that has a cup of olive oil in it with the vegetables i just recommend that you try it that way and i think that you will find that you really love it so we're going to add this is authentic greek feta that is in brine this is made with sheep's milk from trader joe's um really authentic feta cheese has is either made with goat milk or the cheese milk and so we're gonna add that on top and this is one of the ways that they would do it in grease they would just add the uh the fatter right on top then we're gonna top it with a little bit of oregano then we're going to add lemon juice you can also add red vinegar it would still be traditional i'm going to add a nice amount of lemon juice like a whole lemon give it a really nice lemony flavor and finally the ps the resistance of this particular salad is extra virgin olive oil and a lot so this is one of those dishes that when you get to the bottom of it you dip your bread in it it's gonna have um some feta cheese in it it'll have the olive oil in it the lemon juice and then some of the olive juice it's so good so delicious with lots and lots of olive oil so this can be a meal on itself this is like a this has everything you need for a meal it's got protein and fat and vegetables so it's the whole thing and people will in the mediterranean eat the eat just the salad as a meal but i like to have the salad with a good soup like this a good traditional soup so now we're gonna add white beans um this is you can you can either use it from fresh or can in the can of course if you're really really busy like i am sometimes the canned is good this is a canned one this is four uh four cans and these four cans we have uh rinsed and drained drained and rinsed i'm gonna add that mix that in and then we're gonna add two cups of water to that and then some tomato paste and basically as soon as this comes to a boil you can uh you can eat this it's ready to go again like what i said um i like to wait 20 to 30 minutes because what happens is the olive oil starts to thicken with the water and all the vegetables and it makes a really nice it's like a beautiful white bean stew and so we have the salad oh i know what i want to do next i want to give away one of these extra virgin olive oils so as i said this is a new extra virgin olive oil that we got from that we just started on our website it's uh from the peloponnese region it's a single estate olive oil and award-winning olive oil and we just started selling it this weekend and um what i'd like to do is have whoever puts the puts in the chat box first three ingredients from the salad you will be the winner of the momalis extra virgin olive oil okay let's see who see who does that first and the only one winner for uh we got it okay is it crystal yes crystal h you are the winner of the extra virgin olive oil and so in order to uh claim your prize again um you can uh can they private chat or you don't know you can either uh send me an email at bill bradley mediterranean living dot com or if you want you can just put your uh your email in the chat and then we will send you uh a bottle of the extra virgin olive oil congratulations so the final thing for a good mediterranean meal i mean we have a weight loss program and and you know i'll talk a little bit about that because we're going to give away a free weight loss program in a minute and one of the things that you probably would eat a little bit less of if you were in the weight loss program is bread but bread is a huge part of the mediterranean diet i personally lost 50 pounds eating mediterranean i i still ate bread i just cut back but what i did eat was a very high fat diet like this i would eat a lot of this kind of soup i would eat salads and it makes it pretty easy to lose weight much easier than many other programs especially once you have done it for a few weeks and you start to improve your gut microbiome you start to decrease your inflammation and you start doing a lot of things that will help you lose weight but bread in the mediterranean is eaten everywhere and it's often a good sourdough bread and sourdough bread is really um first of all it's really delicious but it's also good for you because it has a lower uh effect on your blood sugar than yeast bread if you think of like how yeast rises quickly and sourdough is more of a slow process it does it's the same thing for your blood it raises your blood sugar slower and not as high as yeast bread so if you have any issues with blood sugar then having a good sourdough bread um is the way to go so thank you lorraine and we are just about done here with this we see okay this is perfect i'm gonna be able to show this but this is starting to thicken and as this thickens and um it gets all the flavors go into the beans and into the vegetables and like most soups especially bean soups it's going to be really good right now it's going to be even more amazing the next day so this is a traditional authentic mediterranean meal from greece or from crete and as i said the recipes are from kula varadakis who wrote foods of crete with me which you can get on mediterranean living you can now get the olive oil in mediterranean living as well i'm just wondering if there's any questions before we go you have a recipe for sourdough bread on your website uh we don't yet there is a recipe for regular bread and uh like a good whole wheat bread in the foods of crete but the most important thing with sourdough bread is is having a good sourdough starter sourdough bread uh it takes quite a long time and it's a bit of a process to make it's why i uh because i'm so busy i usually buy we have some really amazing uh bakeries where we live that only makes our dough and so we often just use sourdough bread that we buy let's see someone said their their internet is slow so they don't have a chance of answering first well we're going to fix that for the next thing um yes our next prize will be a random prize so even if you're two minutes late um that's fine so let's go let's do the next uh the last prize and so we have two 10-week online programs one is the mediterranean way program and this program uh teaches you everything you need to know about how to eat the mediterranean diet it's it's like the perfect program if your doctor told you you need to eat mediterranean or you're just really curious there's a hundred recipes there's lots of videos and and uh we actually have a special on it right now um so it's only forty nine dollars you can you can uh email me if you have a hard time finding the special uh maybe we can put that in the chat as well to the landing page for the mediterranean whey program we also have a mediterranean diet weight loss program and as i said i've lost 50 pounds eating the mediterranean diet and this program is everything that i've learned personally and also everything i've learned as a dietitian doing research and helping other people with weight loss and so that program has weekly meal plans and again 100 recipes and lots of videos from me on on how to lose weight and tips and things like how to eat out things like that so that program we are also giving 30 off right now and winter who works with me is also going to put that landing page in the chat as well but what i want to do is we are going to uh pick a winner and should we do like between one and a hundred one in a thousand common what i think we should have them comment what they learned today oh yeah just choose a random number so we're gonna what we're gonna do is just comment on something that you learned today or something that you enjoyed about our program even something that you would like to improve about the program i would also like that because we're going to be doing a lot more lives or something that you would like to learn in the future comment on that and we're going to pick a random person through a random number generator and we'll tell you who that is so we'll make sure that the people that are two minutes behind can get on there too so we'll wait two minutes and uh we'll announce the winner in at uh 4 35 okay so this this uh this is actually really making me very hungry uh i'm going to let's put it in here so that you can see it this has gotten really nice and look how look how thick the juice is now so what i would do um like in the mediterranean way program i would have this whole meal i would have a nice bean soup like this if you can really see it but it's it's really really thick and delicious now and again a cup of olive oil and then i would have some greek salad on the side and some bread if i was in the weight loss program i would probably have the salad and a salad in the soup and maybe not so much bread and so i think that um this the other thing you know people worry about weight loss and having a cup of olive oil the thing is is that olive oil is very filling it actually potentially can increase your metabolism just in the digestive process and even though it has more calories you end up getting full quicker and staying full for longer like if i ate a soup like this even just by itself without a salad i'm not going to need to eat anything uh for you know until the next meal because it is so filling and that way you don't snack a lot and it makes it much easier to lose weight and it's satisfying so you feel full you've had a really good meal full of nutrition you feel good you let it have less pain in your body and you're more likely to exercise you're more likely to you know go outside and just do anything and so it's a great way to lose weight um to eat this way and it's the best way to maintain your weight uh the mediterranean diet was voted for the fourth year in a row by u.s news and world report as the number one diet in the world and it has it's one of those diets that's been around so long that it's not a fad diet you know some people like oh meditating that's bad it's been around for thousands of years it's not like some of the diets that are around now that have only been around for 10 years so let me see what we got here uh okay going to the top a lot of comments here soup looks delicious okay all right so how much olive oil to use i learned sourdough bread is good for diabetics uh just it's better for diabetics and i wouldn't say that you know don't eat a ton of it the soup looks delicious i was surprised to learn the red bell peppers have more nutrients than the others thanks for all the good info on olive oil i learned olive oil can be used for fries uh i also didn't know sourdough bread is good for maintaining blood sugar learn how to make an awesome authentic greek salad learn the lifestyle of crete this is great thank you so much i would love to learn to make a good sourdough bread i have made this soup it is delicious i love this and that your picture looks real how much olive oil can i have no sugar in the artisan okay that's great uh uh multi-grain sourdough bread from giant eagle has no sugar in it overhead camera so that we can see inside the pot we're working on that um we're just working on whether we can do that on youtube live we do actually have an overhead camera yeah all right thank you so much we have the random generator going good and the winner is lorraine stone rainstone congratulations lorraine so if you can either again send me an email at bill bradley mediterranean living dot com or you can just put your uh email in the chat and we will uh tell you how you can get into the next weight loss program which starts next monday all right well thank you very much everybody uh we are going to do more authentic mediterranean meals from greece but also from other countries and you can see how simple it really is to cook an amazing mediterranean meal so thank you everybody and i'll see you next time

Channel: mediterraneanliving

Views: 108,765

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Id: 3zMErQpnJXs

Length: 36min 24sec (2184 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 19 2021