I've made this twice because it's really, really good! It works with fresh or frozen spinach, but I prefer fresh. Gitter, and Katherine Perry ASSISTANT EDITOR: Samantha Ronan EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Alyssa Langer ART

My family loved this, but I thought it was just okay. I used a hand blender instead of actually putting it into the blender (I was trying to skip some clean-up) but it would have been a better consistency had I followed the recipe. I think that my eggplants were too large, because the soup was really eggplanty, overly so, it seemed to me. America's Test Kitchen, based in a brand new state-of-the-art 60,000 sq. ft. facility with over 15,000 sq. ft. of test kitchens and studio space, in Boston's Seaport District, is dedicated to finding the very best recipes for home cooks. Over 50 full-time (admittedly obsessive) test cooks spend their days testing recipes 30, 40, up to 100 times, tweaking every variable until they understand how and why recipes work. They also test cookware and supermarket ingredients so viewers can bypass marketing hype and buy the best quality products. As the home of Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country magazines, and publisher of more than one dozen cookbooks each year, America's Test Kitchen has earned the respect of the publishing industry, the culinary world, and millions of home cooks. America's Test Kitchen the television show launched in 2001, and the company added a second television program, Cook's Country, in 2008.

There is not a specific definition to this diet—it’s more of a general lifestyle and eating pattern based on Mediterranean region countries, including Greece and Italy, that were having significantly fewer deaths due to heart disease, as observed in the 1960s. Since then, studies have shown that this diet is correlated with reduced risk factors for cardiovascular disease, according to Mayo Clinic. This diet emphasizes plants (lots of fruits and veggies); healthy fats ( extra-virgin olive oil); whole grains ( farro, anyone?); weekly portions of fish, poultry, beans, and eggs; moderate dairy; and limited red meat. Red wine is also OK in moderation.

There is a short section at the beginning that covers the basics of a Mediterranean diet and what your pantry basics will be, as well as appendices that provide nutritional information for each recipe (# servings is the only thing included with the recipe itself) and some conversion tables (weight, volume, temperature, etc.).The #1 best-selling modern classic—America’s Test Kitchen’s indispensable guide to the life-changing Mediterranean diet, with more than 600,000 copies sold