Product Description

In Mediterranean Street Food, Anissa Helou brings together some of the most memorable food in the world - everyday delicacies sold by street vendors or in simple shops. Interspersed with fascinating stories of her food adventures across the continents, Helou offers definitive recipes for favourites like Spanish tortilla, Italian panini, Morroccan tagines, Egyptian ful medammes, Turkish kebabs, and French pan bagnat. Brief introductions on the social and cultural histories of each country are followed by eight chapters divided by course or chief ingredient - recipes include soups, salads, and snacks, sandwiches, pizzas and breads, barbecues, one-pot meals, sweets and desserts and drinks. Each recipe in Mediterranean Street Food offers a delectable window into the rich food world of the Mediterranean, so that cooks as well as seasoned and armchair travellers alike can enjoy these unique culinary treats.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #504358 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This quirky cookbook features both tasty snacks and more substantial meals, all of them available on the streets of Italy, Turkey and other Mediterranean countries. Helou (CafE Morocco) is a friendly, inquisitive guide who's not afraid to express her own occasional squeamishness about eating on the street, especially in places like Cairo, where diners are expected to use the same spoons, cleaned only with a dunk in questionable water. A fascinating introduction shows a keen understanding of the entire region (Helou herself grew up in Beirut and fondly remembers the Corniche, an area filled with vendors of snacks, sweets and drinks). Recipes are organized by type of food (e.g., soups and sandwiches), and Helou provides a simple formula for arranging them into a traditional meal. Snacks include Farinata, a chickpea flour pancake from Genoa, and Stuffed Mussels from Istanbul, which are filled with rice and then steamed. A chapter on breads and pastries offers Lebanese Thyme Bread and Ramadan Bread with Dates. A few dishes, such as Greek Octopus and Onion Stew, sound like unlikely, albeit delicious, candidates for the eat-and-walk formula. A few more most notably a french fry sandwich from Beirut are just too strange to catch on. But on balance, this covers just the kind of food for which it is often near-impossible to locate a recipe. Desserts (Walnut Pancakes) and drinks (fermented Bulgur Drink) round out this solid collection of both curiosities and serious dining.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Anissa Helou, an art historian collector is the author of Cafe Morocco and Lebanese Cuisine which was named by the Los Angeles times as one of the best Cookbooks of 1998.