Perfectly timed to coincide with the warmer weather, Medesque, by Georgina Hayden is a gorgeous cookbook, published this week, that will take your appetite straight to the Mediterranean.  There are  over 100 delicious and easy recipes to be cooked at home by anyone and everyone. From weeknight dinners to weekend feasts, travel through Italy, Spain, the Middle East and beyond with these tempting recipes.

Georgina Hayden

Georgina Hayden is a multi-award-winning cook and food writer from north London.

She writes for publications such as The Telegraph, Delicious Magazine and Observer Food Monthly, and in 2021 won the Fortnum & Mason Best Cookery Writer Award for her work in Waitrose Food magazine. She has appeared on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, and regularly appears on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch and BBC1’s Saturday Kitchen. Growing up above her grandparents’ Greek Cypriot taverna, Georgina developed a love of cooking and storytelling through the recipes passed down to her. She started her career working at various food magazines, and then went on to join Jamie Oliver’s food team where she worked for 12 years.

Her third book, Nistisima (2022), was a Sunday Times bestseller and was voted Best Cookbook at the OFM and Fortnum & Mason Awards. Its follow up, Greekish (2024), became another Sunday Times bestseller and was shortlisted for Book of the Year at the British Book Awards.

Medesque is her fifth book.  Published by Bloomsbury at £26 for a lovely hardback, it’s packed with inspiration and beautiful photography.

Here are a few recipes to tempt you to buy the book.

Seadas saganaki: cheese and honey triangles

“You are covering three bases here: feta, filo and honey. It’s an easily achievable version of a Mediterranean theme, the love child of an Italian-Greek-Middle Eastern delicacy which all share that lovely salty-sweet combination. Seadas, from Sardinia, is a sweet deep-fried pecorino cheese ravioli; Greek saganaki is fried cheese drizzled with honey; knafeh is their Middle Eastern cousin of syrup-soaked kataifi pastry layered over cheese.

Truth be told, these can be eaten at any time of day, but are lovely at breakfast. Thyme and Aleppo pepper, or chilli, are both definitely needed here as counterpoints, so don’t leave them out.”|

SERVES 4

100g feta (vegetarian, if needed)

40g pecorino (vegetarian, if needed)

½ unwaxed lemon

100g ready-grated mozzarella (vegetarian, if needed)

Leaves and spriglets from a few thyme sprigs

30g shelled unsalted pistachios

8 regular sheets of filo (or 4 larger sheets)

Olive oil

2 tablespoons honey

Sea salt and freshly ground

black pepper

1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper, or a pinch of chilli flakes, to serve (optional)

In a mixing bowl, break up the feta with a fork until it is finely crumbled. Finely grate in the pecorino and lemon zest. Add the grated mozzarella and most of the thyme leaves. Mix everything together and set aside. Finely chop the pistachios.

When you are ready to make the triangles, get the filo out of the fridge. Lay a sheet out in front of you, short side closest to you, and brush with olive oil, then lay a second sheet on top (or, if using the larger sheets, brush 1 with oil and fold it in half). Spoon one-quarter of the cheese mixture over the bottom corner of the filo, leaving a gap around the edge, then fold that corner over into a triangle shape. Repeat, folding the triangle away from you up the filo sheet, tucking in the edges as you go, until you have a sealed folded parcel. Repeat with the remaining filo and cheese filling. When you have made all the triangles, set a large frying pan over a medium heat and pour in enough olive oil to just cover the base. Fry the parcels for 2–3 minutes on each side, in batches if need be so as not to crowd the pan, until golden all over. Remove from the pan on to a plate lined with kitchen paper to blot off excess oil, then transfer to a serving plate.

Drizzle each triangle with ½ tablespoon honey and sprinkle with a good pinch of seasoning, some of the chopped pistachios and a few thyme leaves. I love a pinch of Aleppo pepper too; it adds a lovely heat. Serve straight away.

Pappa al ratatouille

“A mixture of ideas inspired by my adoration for Italian pappa pomodoro, but with French and Spanish influences. It’s so, so delicious, though it’s very humble and it doesn’t look like much. It becomes so creamy that it’s hard to believe it contains no dairy.

If you’ve got a glut of lovely late-summer veg, it’s just stunning, a great make-do-and-end style soup. If you don’t have a courgette, don’t worry about it; if you have more peppers, just shove them in. Make it to your tastes.”

SERVES 4

4 garlic cloves

2 red peppers

1 aubergine

2 courgettes

½ bunch of thyme

Extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon caster sugar

400g can of good-quality chopped tomatoes

125g stale bread, ideally ciabatta (gluten-free, if needed)

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Start by prepping all your vegetables. Peel and finely slice the garlic. Halve the peppers, remove the seeds and finely slice. Peel the aubergine in stripes, leaving some of the skin on, and cut into small cubes, around 1.5cm. Cut the courgettes the same size. Pick the thyme leaves.

Place a large saucepan or flameproof casserole over a medium heat and pour in 4 tablespoons of olive oil, then add the garlic. Fry for a minute before adding all the rest of the prepared vegetables, the sugar and most of the thyme. Season generously and fry for 15–20 minutes, over a medium-high heat, until the vegetables are coloured and starting to soften. Add the tomatoes to the pan, pour in 800ml water and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and leave to simmer for around 30 minutes, until the soup has thickened and is rich.

Tear the bread into small chunks and stir into the soup. Cook for a further 10 minutes. Stir in 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve with the remaining thyme sprinkled over the top.

Spatchcocked chicken, chorizo, tomatoes and cream

“One of my favourite recipes in this book at the time of writing (though I am fickle), so much so that I couldn’t pick only one picture of it; it had to have two just to show you its true magnificence! Cooking the bread under the chicken to catch all those juices is an absolute game-changer. You will be snaffling off bits of that chicken fat-toasted bread as you are carving, because it’s completely irresistible.”

SERVES 4 – 6

1.8kg whole chicken, spatchcocked

½ teaspoon sweet smoked paprika

1 teaspoon dried oregano

Olive oil

2 onions

1 garlic bulb

125g cooking chorizo

4 slices of sourdough bread

400g cherry tomatoes

½ bunch of basil

150ml double cream

30g Parmesan

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat your oven to 240°C/220°C fan/gas mark 9. Remove the chicken from the fridge and spatchcock it, if that hasn’t been done already. To do that, cut down either side of the chicken’s backbone and parson’s nose with a pair of large, sturdy scissors or poultry shears and discard it (or save it for stock). Then lay the chicken out flat like a book, skin side up.

Press firmly on the breastbone with the heel of your hand to really flatten it out. Place the spatchcocked bird on a plate and rub with the sweet smoked paprika, oregano and a super-generous pinch each of salt and pepper. Drizzle with olive oil and rub it all in. Set aside while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Peel the onions and cut into thin wedges. Horizontally halve the bulb of garlic. Finely chop the chorizo, if it isn’t already. Tear the sourdough into large pieces and use it to line a large roasting tin. Scatter over the onions, garlic and chorizo, then top with the spatchcocked chicken. Dot the cherry tomatoes all around the chicken, then tear over half the basil leaves. Drizzle everything with olive oil, season and pop the tin in the oven. Immediately reduce the oven temperature to 200°C/180°C fan/gas mark 6 and roast for around 1 hour. Halfway through, baste the chicken if possible with any juices. After an hour, the skin should be crisp and the veg and bread gnarly. Carefully lift the chicken on to a plate or tray and leave to rest for a few minutes.

Meanwhile, carefully remove the garlic bulb halves from the roasting tin, squeeze out the cloves and discard the skins, returning the roasted garlic to the tin. Pour in the cream and mix everything together, breaking up the rich, chewy sourdough as you go. Finely grate in most of the Parmesan and stir. Either return the chicken to the tin, or spoon the bread sauce on to a platter and top with the chicken. Finish by grating over the remaining Parmesan then scatter with the rest of the basil leaves.