Eastern Mediterranean mezze get the José Andrés treatment in his wonderful new 'Zaytinya' cookbook

By Leslie Brenner

A month ago, you might have been tempted to think the world already had enough Mediterranean cookbooks — and then José Andrés published one.

The prolific restaurateur and founder of World Central Kitchen seems to have put his heart and soul into Zaytinya, which celebrates the mezze (shared small plates) tradition of the Eastern Mediterranean — Greece, Turkey and Lebanon. (Zaytinya means “olive oil” in Turkish).

More specifically, it celebrates “José’s way” with those dishes — just as the Washington, D.C. restaurant it’s named for does. The result is one of the most exciting cookbooks published in the last few years. The recipes are tremendously appetizing and do-able, and the dishes that wound up on my table were, without exception, pretty spectacular.

Most exciting to me is the book’s deep dive into Greek culinary traditions and ingredients. Serious titles on the subject are uncommon on the American cookbook landscape, and it’s such an appealing cuisine. Happily, it is a strong focus in the book.

But it’s not Greek grandma cooking (nor Turkish or Lebanese grandma cooking) that’s on display in this volume. As Andrés writes in his introduction, his mezze honor the region’s traditional dishes but “created in a new way — using ingredients and techniques that inspire me and my team. That’s what gives Zaytinya its unique style, and what has filled the restaurant from the first day it opened, two decades ago.”

Seared Scallops with Tzatziki, prepared from a recipe in ‘Zaytinya’: This is not Greek grandma cooking.

José’s way with scallops

Andrés’ recipe for Seared Scallops with Tzatziki is a case in point. The tzatziki is pretty straightforward-traditional; garlic confit in place of raw garlic is a worthwhile cheffy touch, and the tzatziki on its own is wonderful. Here it gets spread it on a plate, topped with seared scallops and garnished with shaved radishes, herbs and Sumac Rose Spice — a magical blend of pink peppercorns, dried rose petals, sumac, cumin, Urfa pepper and sesame seeds. The use of rose petals is more Persian, Turkish and Indian than Greek, and that’s the kind of flair that makes so many of the recipes stand out.

That spice mix also happens to be gorgeous, so it’s surprising that the photo of the scallops in the book leaves it off. (When was the last time a recipe you attempted at home was prettier than the photo in the book?) Since testing the recipe, I’ve been using the mix on all kinds of things: sprinkled on other fish besides scallops; over leeks vinaigrette, or over labneh for a snack. (It would also be fantastic on cacik, the Turkish yogurt-and-cucumber soup, or on minted pea soup, hot or cold.)

RECIPE: ‘Zaytinya’ Seared Scallops with Tzatziki

The book does include some recipes that are completely traditional, particularly in the chapter on sauces and spreads. There you’ll find straight-ahead hummus and toum; I didn’t test those, but I did test a recipe for muhammara. — roasted red pepper and walnut spread. Andrés’ headnote explains that the dip is “often associated with Syria, but it’s also claimed by Lebanon and Turkey,” where the dish is made with Marash pepper, very similar to Aleppo (which is what Andrés’ recipe calls for). Andrés has you roast the peppers partway, then scatter walnuts over them and continue roasting, then sprinkle Aleppo pepper and cumin over those and roast a little longer. Then everything gets blitzed together. Very smart, simple and user-friendly, and that muhamarra was easily the best that’s ever come out of my kitchen.

RECIPE: ‘Zaytinya’ Muhammara

Zaytinya’s introduction provides a lot of rich background — about what first drew the Spanish-born chef to the Eastern Mediterranean, and about all the history and shared culture that connect modern-day Greece, Turkey and Lebanon. “The connections between the people of this region are old and deep,” he writes, “and their shared food traditions prove that what brings us together is more powerful than what separates us.”

He tells us about the time he and his wife spent in Athens, Santorini, Thessaloniki and Istanbul more than two decades ago, doing research for the restaurant, and particularly time spent with the Kea, Greece-based cookbook author Aglaia Kremenzi, who became an important “mentor and guide.” It’s so delightful to read about restaurant R&D with that kind of depth and seriousness — such a rarity. America is filled with restaurants that get their ideas about the cuisines they represent from other American restaurants representing those cuisines, without their chefs and owners going back and diving deeply into those food cultures where they were born. That depth of research is felt throughout the book.

Gigantes star in a Turkish-Greek crossover

Once of my favorite dishes (at least so far; I have a couple dozen Post-Its on the pages of dishes I still want to make) is Andrés’ spin on piyaz, traditionally a Turkish bean-and-onion salad. Here it’s given a Greek twist with the addition of dill and ladolemono, a lemon-honey dressing. It’s served warm, more of a bean stew. Andrés calls for dried gigante beans or large limas; I used heirloom Royal Coronas from Rancho Gordo, which were ideal.

RECIPE: ‘Zaytinya’ White Bean Stew

A few tiny quibbles

The book isn’t perfect. Some of the yields were off (the Muhammara recipe says it makes about 1 cup; in fact it made nearly 2 cups); a recipe for Greek almond cookies (amygdalota) yielded 39 cookies, nine more than the 30 stated. Not a big deal, but 30 would have fit on one baking sheet, and 39 do not. An otherwise excellent recipe for meatballs in spiced tomato sauce, or soutzoukakia, makes far more sauce than needed for the one-pound-worth of ground beef it calls for; next time I’d make one-and-a-half times as much of the meatballs.

Also, I couldn’t help but wonder, other than the larger-format dishes in a chapter called “Family & Fire,” are these dishes really all meant to be mezze? I dearly love those scallops, but if they’re only meant to be one part of a big spread, that’s a lot of work. It’s not too much work for a main course, though — especially one that’s such a show-stopper.

A bit of explanation about how to approach menu-planning would have been appreciated. How many dishes would you plan for a spread, or how should one strategize executing them? Should you do a few cold ones and a few hot?

Finally, it seems crazy, in this day and age, not to include metric measures in a cookbook. I added metric equivalents in my adaptation of Andrés’ recipes, but they’re not in the original.

These are small quibbles, though, especially as everything tested was so delicious and appealing; there wasn’t a single dish I wouldn’t make again. (The spiced tomato sauce for those meatballs was outrageously good.)

I’ll certainly make Zaytinya’s Garides Me Ánitho (Buttery Shrimp with Dill) again, but I’ll need to get signed permission slips from my guests’ cardiologists: The mezze, which serves four, uses an entire stick of butter. I almost didn’t make it, until I read in the headnote that “shrimp like these are served in tavernas throughout Greece, along with a glass of ouzo,” and that it’s been on the menu at Zaytinya since it opened. (Damn — I missed it the couple times I dined there!)

Here Andrés’ twist is adding a touch of grainy mustard. It’s really good.

RECIPE: ‘Zaytinya’ Greek Taverna Shrimp (Garides Me Ánitho)

And those recipes with Post-Its?

There are so many I’m eager to make. Hommus with Spiced Lamb. Taramasalata Andrés promises will be a revelation (a jar of tarama, or carp roe, is on its way to me). Handmade Phyllo. Turkish Stuffed Eggplant (Mam Bayikdi). Cod Steamed in Grape Leaves (Bakaliarios Se Klimatofila). Manti (the iconic Turkish savory dumplings in yogurt sauce). A spice-rubbed Roasted Lamb Shoulder that looks amazing; you serve it with lettuce leaves, harissa, tzatziki, toum and pita bread. A beautiful parfait of Greek Yogurt with Apricots. Walnut Ice Cream.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying if you love cooking Mediterranean food, you definitely want this book.

Zaytinya: Delicious Mediterranean Dishes from Greece, Turkey, and Lebanon by José Andrés, Ecco, 2024, $45.

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If you like this review, you might enjoy:

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READ: ‘Via Carota’ is Cooks Without Borders’ Cookbook of the Year

READ: Cookbooks We Love: Reem Kassis’ ‘The Arabesque Table’ offers irresistible spins on Levantine tradition

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A love letter to vospov kofte: How my mother and I quashed our beef and swapped it with lentils

By Varty Yahjian

[Editor’s note: We loved this essay, originally published in March, 2021. Because it celebrates a dish that’s traditionally eaten during Lent, it feels like a great time to bring it back.]

My mother and I see eye to eye on exactly three things: inappropriate humor, dangly earrings and eating with our hands. (Vehement approval!) Oh, and we both sleep in on the weekends and cancel plans before noon.

Aside from these, it’s hard to find common ground between us, and we widen that distance in the kitchen. There, we disagree about it all. She doesn’t salt food while it cooks, while I think it’s a mistake to wait till the end; I like caramelizing onions, while she thinks it's a waste of time.

We do, however, have a common food heritage, one that spans the 36 years between us: We both grew up eating food native to the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. 

Our family tree is ethnically Armenian, but for the three generations preceding me, we have had Bulgarian nationality. In the early twentieth century, my paternal great-grandparents escaped ethnic cleansing in Anatolia and settled in Sofia, Bulgaria — where my father was born, and where my parents would eventually meet in the 1970s. My mother’s great-great-grandparents left Anatolia for the same reason even earlier, sticking to the Black Sea’s coast following their voyages as refugees. 

The result of these migrations is our family’s tradition, a fabulous mix of Armenian, Bulgarian, and now with me, American sensibilities. 

Gayane (left) and Varty Yahjian, making vospov kofte / Photo courtesy of Varty Yahjian

As with most immigrant families, my mother is the sovereign of the stove. To her it’s an indisputable reign, making for a tumultuous dinnertime environment because over the years, I’ve relied less on her recipes as I create my own. For instance, I use stewed tomatoes and a lot of dill in our flu-season chicken soup in lieu of her usual celery and bell peppers. Like a true monarch, she loathes these types of rebellions, vexedly announcing “I’m sorry, but no, this is not how you do it!” before storming off. 

When we were all younger, my mother fed the whole family, of course. I don’t know how she did it, because after working a ten-hour workday and pulling dinner together, she had to deal with my ruthlessly picky palate.  

Until I was in middle school, I rarely ate anything that wasn’t potatoes, rice or macaroni. Mushrooms were smelly and pretended to be meat; buckwheat tasted like aluminum foil (yes, I said that exactly); and romaine lettuce, my final boss of hated foods, was unbearably bitter. 

Regardless of protest, my mom always made sure my plate left the table clean; if not, “mekhké” — it’s a shame, as she would say — because those last few bites were my good luck charms.

Thankfully my tastebuds evolved in tweendom. Perhaps it was the feeling of unsupervised freedom after being dropped off at the mall that led me towards the food court’s salmon nigiri and fried chicken with waffles. 

Or maybe my budding womanhood began to recognize how incredible it was that my mother managed to feed us every single night. I owed it to her to honor her food, especially because at this point, she was also working on the weekends. Looking back, I see that my mother’s cooking was a love-language, and I understand now why she’d get so upset when I brought back full Tupperwares of food from school.

But part of my coming around could also just be that at some point, I saw how unbelievably lame it was to be so stubborn about food. 

Photo by Varty Yahjian

In seventh grade I started watching Food Network, and my mother took note. Encouraging my growing curiosity, she bought me a copy of Cooking Rocks!: Rachael Ray 30-Minute Meals for Kids, and in her typical compliment-and-command delivery, inscribed on the first page “To my cute Varty to cook some meals!” 

And cook some meals I did, starting with Ray’s Tomato, Basil and Cheese Baked Pasta recipe, which I’ve since memorized and still make, with some grown-up additions. My parents loved it, and I was immediately validated — a powerful feeling for anyone, and especially a Green Day-listening, greasy-haired thirteen-year-old.

In high school, armed with my new driver's license in our family's Volvo wagon, I began tearing through Los Angeles' incredible culinary jungle — thrilled by the star anise and coriander at our local pho shop and tacos de lengua in Cypress Park. 

At home, I started carefully watching my mother because those smells of toasted butter, tomato sauce, and allspice had begun to signal more than just “dinner’s ready.” They were re-introducing me to flavors of my heritage — a connection to my great-grandparents I now feel so grateful for. 

I slowly learned the basics of our household standards: pilaf with vermicelli noodles, Bulgarian meatball soup, moussaka and dolma. I mostly observed and tried not to intervene because the few times I did, I slowed my mom down and got in the way. I watched how she used her hands to scoop roughly chopped onions into a pool of olive oil with a slice of butter for taste, and then liberally season them with paprika and chubritsa, a dried herb essential to the Bulgarian kitchen. 

Fast-forward to 2021, and we’re back in the same kitchen. My mother and I don’t really cook together; typically it’s only one of us preparing dinner for the family at a time. 

Varty (left) and Gayane Yahjian / Photo courtesy of Varty Yahjian

Except this time we’ve decided to collaborate — on a popular Western Armenian dish, vospov kofte, lentil “meatballs.”  

Vospov in Armenian translates to “with lentil” and kofte, or “meatball,” is spelled in Turkish. Neither word necessarily explains where the dish originates from. Lest we forget, the majority of the Middle East and all of Anatolia — where my great-grandparents are from — were under Ottoman rule for centuries. Present-day Armenia and Turkey share a border, and given their history, attributing food to either one is fertile ground for an argument in the comments section.

Typically the dish is served as part of the cold mezze on Western Armenian dining tables. It’s popular during Lent, when animal products are shunned in observation of Jesus Christ’s forty days resisting the devil’s temptation. As such, Armenian Lenters have gotten pretty creative over the last two thousand years in reworking dishes to meet the orthodoxy’s expectations. Vospov kofte is one of these remixes, where beef or lamb is swapped with red lentils and bulgur to make for a lighter, all-vegan version that pleases God and mortals alike. It’s so delicious that in our family, we enjoy it year-round.  

Given our foundational cooking disagreements, the idea of my mom and I preparing these vospov koftes together is a big deal. 

We begin by bickering over which saucepan to use, a common pre-cooking ritual for us. I prefer to use a smaller pot, but my mother insists (and I’ll now admit rightfully so) that we’ll need the larger one to contain the lava-like bubbles red lentils make when they simmer into a thick paste.

After enough shuffling around one another in near-silence, the tension finally breaks as we laugh about how the measuring cup could have disappeared into thin air. 

We measure out and soak bulgur, which will get stirred into the thick lentil paste along with parsley, spices, scallions and sautéed onions, discuss the supremacy of Italian parsley over curly-leaf as we chop, and compare the ways we’ve failed at trying to cut onions without crying. We learn that neither of us is the timer-setting type, and our bulgur probably spends a bit too long soaking. Not a big deal, though.

We hand-knead everything together with great conviction, and slowly it turns into an aromatic paste, sticking to our fingers. After scraping as much of it off our palms into the bowl as we can, we set aside a little bowl of water, dip our fingers in, and start shaping the kofte into its characteristic, ovalesque shape, lengthened on the ends and slightly flattened in the middle. We arrange our koftes in a neat wreath, decorate it with more chopped parsley, and then finally face the truth: It is extremely rare to find us in the kitchen together. Why is that?

“Because you always tell me what to do for no reason,” I say with a touch of shade.

Vospov kofte / Photograph by Varty Yahjian

My mom pauses, and for a millisecond drops eye contact before returning with the smile of someone who’s seen me spit out celery and start fights over cilantro: “You have a great taste, and everything you make is very yummy. Let’s cook together more.” 

And because she wouldn’t be my mother without giving me a task, she hugs me and says, “Just you need to do clean-up after you cook.” 

I’ll heed her words, because she’s right: The countertop is a cacophony of utensils, parsley stems and spilled cumin. But for once, this mother and daughter are totally, deliciously, in sync. 

Varty Yahjian lives, works and cooks in La Cañada, California. This is her first story for Cooks Without Borders. 

A love letter to vospov kofte: How my mother and I quashed our beef and swapped it with lentils

By Varty Yahjian

My mother and I see eye to eye on exactly three things: inappropriate humor, dangly earrings and eating with our hands. (Vehement approval!) Oh, and we both sleep in on the weekends and cancel plans before noon.

Aside from these, it’s hard to find common ground between us, and we widen that distance in the kitchen. There, we disagree about it all. She doesn’t salt food while it cooks, while I think it’s a mistake to wait till the end; I like caramelizing onions, while she thinks it's a waste of time.

We do, however, have a common food heritage, one that spans the 36 years between us: We both grew up eating food native to the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. 

Our family tree is ethnically Armenian, but for the three generations preceding me, we have had Bulgarian nationality. In the early twentieth century, my paternal great-grandparents escaped ethnic cleansing in Anatolia and settled in Sofia, Bulgaria — where my father was born, and where my parents would eventually meet in the 1970s. My mother’s great-great-grandparents left Anatolia for the same reason even earlier, sticking to the Black Sea’s coast following their voyages as refugees. 

The result of these migrations is our family’s tradition, a fabulous mix of Armenian, Bulgarian, and now with me, American sensibilities. 

Gayane (left) and Varty Yahjian, making vospov kofte / Photo courtesy of Varty Yahjian

As with most immigrant families, my mother is the sovereign of the stove. To her it’s an indisputable reign, making for a tumultuous dinnertime environment because over the years, I’ve relied less on her recipes as I create my own. For instance, I use stewed tomatoes and a lot of dill in our flu-season chicken soup in lieu of her usual celery and bell peppers. Like a true monarch, she loathes these types of rebellions, vexedly announcing “I’m sorry, but no, this is not how you do it!” before storming off. 

When we were all younger, my mother fed the whole family, of course. I don’t know how she did it, because after working a ten-hour workday and pulling dinner together, she had to deal with my ruthlessly picky palate.  

Until I was in middle school, I rarely ate anything that wasn’t potatoes, rice or macaroni. Mushrooms were smelly and pretended to be meat; buckwheat tasted like aluminum foil (yes, I said that exactly); and romaine lettuce, my final boss of hated foods, was unbearably bitter. 

Regardless of protest, my mom always made sure my plate left the table clean; if not, “mekhké” — it’s a shame, as she would say — because those last few bites were my good luck charms.

Thankfully my tastebuds evolved in tweendom. Perhaps it was the feeling of unsupervised freedom after being dropped off at the mall that led me towards the food court’s salmon nigiri and fried chicken with waffles. 

Or maybe my budding womanhood began to recognize how incredible it was that my mother managed to feed us every single night. I owed it to her to honor her food, especially because at this point, she was also working on the weekends. Looking back, I see that my mother’s cooking was a love-language, and I understand now why she’d get so upset when I brought back full Tupperwares of food from school.

But part of my coming around could also just be that at some point, I saw how unbelievably lame it was to be so stubborn about food. 

Photo by Varty Yahjian

In seventh grade I started watching Food Network, and my mother took note. Encouraging my growing curiosity, she bought me a copy of Cooking Rocks!: Rachael Ray 30-Minute Meals for Kids, and in her typical compliment-and-command delivery, inscribed on the first page “To my cute Varty to cook some meals!” 

And cook some meals I did, starting with Ray’s Tomato, Basil and Cheese Baked Pasta recipe, which I’ve since memorized and still make, with some grown-up additions. My parents loved it, and I was immediately validated — a powerful feeling for anyone, and especially a Green Day-listening, greasy-haired thirteen-year-old.

In high school, armed with my new driver's license in our family's Volvo wagon, I began tearing through Los Angeles' incredible culinary jungle — thrilled by the star anise and coriander at our local pho shop and tacos de lengua in Cypress Park. 

At home, I started carefully watching my mother because those smells of toasted butter, tomato sauce, and allspice had begun to signal more than just “dinner’s ready.” They were re-introducing me to flavors of my heritage — a connection to my great-grandparents I now feel so grateful for. 

I slowly learned the basics of our household standards: pilaf with vermicelli noodles, Bulgarian meatball soup, moussaka and dolma. I mostly observed and tried not to intervene because the few times I did, I slowed my mom down and got in the way. I watched how she used her hands to scoop roughly chopped onions into a pool of olive oil with a slice of butter for taste, and then liberally season them with paprika and chubritsa, a dried herb essential to the Bulgarian kitchen. 

Fast-forward to 2021, and we’re back in the same kitchen. My mother and I don’t really cook together; typically it’s only one of us preparing dinner for the family at a time. 

Varty (left) and Gayane Yahjian / Photo courtesy of Varty Yahjian

Except this time we’ve decided to collaborate — on a popular Western Armenian dish, vospov kofte, lentil “meatballs.”  

Vospov in Armenian translates to “with lentil” and kofte, or “meatball,” is spelled in Turkish. Neither word necessarily explains where the dish originates from. Lest we forget, the majority of the Middle East and all of Anatolia — where my great-grandparents are from — were under Ottoman rule for centuries. Present-day Armenia and Turkey share a border, and given their history, attributing food to either one is fertile ground for an argument in the comments section.

Typically the dish is served as part of the cold mezze on Western Armenian dining tables. It’s popular during Lent, when animal products are shunned in observation of Jesus Christ’s forty days resisting the devil’s temptation. As such, Armenian Lenters have gotten pretty creative over the last two thousand years in reworking dishes to meet the orthodoxy’s expectations. Vospov kofte is one of these remixes, where beef or lamb is swapped with red lentils and bulgur to make for a lighter, all-vegan version that pleases God and mortals alike. It’s so delicious that in our family, we enjoy it year-round.  

Given our foundational cooking disagreements, the idea of my mom and I preparing these vospov koftes together is a big deal. 

We begin by bickering over which saucepan to use, a common pre-cooking ritual for us. I prefer to use a smaller pot, but my mother insists (and I’ll now admit rightfully so) that we’ll need the larger one to contain the lava-like bubbles red lentils make when they simmer into a thick paste.

After enough shuffling around one another in near-silence, the tension finally breaks as we laugh about how the measuring cup could have disappeared into thin air. 

We measure out and soak bulgur, which will get stirred into the thick lentil paste along with parsley, spices, scallions and sautéed onions, discuss the supremacy of Italian parsley over curly-leaf as we chop, and compare the ways we’ve failed at trying to cut onions without crying. We learn that neither of us is the timer-setting type, and our bulgur probably spends a bit too long soaking. Not a big deal, though.

We hand-knead everything together with great conviction, and slowly it turns into an aromatic paste, sticking to our fingers. After scraping as much of it off our palms into the bowl as we can, we set aside a little bowl of water, dip our fingers in, and start shaping the kofte into its characteristic, ovalesque shape, lengthened on the ends and slightly flattened in the middle. We arrange our koftes in a neat wreath, decorate it with more chopped parsley, and then finally face the truth: It is extremely rare to find us in the kitchen together. Why is that?

“Because you always tell me what to do for no reason,” I say with a touch of shade.

Vospov kofte / Photograph by Varty Yahjian

My mom pauses, and for a millisecond drops eye contact before returning with the smile of someone who’s seen me spit out celery and start fights over cilantro: “You have a great taste, and everything you make is very yummy. Let’s cook together more.” 

And because she wouldn’t be my mother without giving me a task, she hugs me and says, “Just you need to do clean-up after you cook.” 

I’ll heed her words, because she’s right: The countertop is a cacophony of utensils, parsley stems and spilled cumin. But for once, this mother and daughter are totally, deliciously, in sync. 

Varty Yahjian lives, works and cooks in La Cañada, California. This is her first story for Cooks Without Borders.