Mediterranean Street Food: Stories, Soups, Snacks, Sandwiches, Barbecues, Sweets, and More from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East - Softcover

Helou, Anissa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060891513 ISBN 13: 9780060891510

Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks, 2006

Synopsis

Who can resist a chickpea fritter in Nice, a kebab in Athens, an aniseed cookie in Tuscany, hummus in Tel Aviv, stuffed zucchini in Genoa, or a potato omelet in Spain? Cold or hot, sweet or savory, street food is everyone's temptation.

Anissa Helou loves street food. When she travels, she stops at every tea cart, sandwich stand, and candy stall to trade stories with local vendors and learn the recipes that tempt the crowds. Join her on a fascinating adventure around the Mediterranean, where eating on the street is a way of life. Learn the secret ingredients to the perfect Stuffed Mussels sold on the streets of Istanbul. Come along to a Berber woman's Moroccan Bread stall in Marrakech. Buy a sweet, sticky Semolina Cake from a cart in Cairo. From simple salads to fragrant barbecues to irresistible dips and drinks, each dish can be enjoyed on its own, or two or three may be combined to make a meal. With lively black-and-white photographs from Anissa's travels and more than eighty-five fast, flexible, flavorful recipes, Mediterranean Street Food offers home cooks the chance to experience the tastes of distant lands without leaving the kitchen.

About this title

About the Author:

Anissa Helou is a writer, journalist, and broadcaster. Born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, she knows the Mediterranean as only a well-traveled native can. Lebanese Cuisine, her first book, was nominated for the prestigious Andre Simon Award and was named one of the best cookbooks of 1998 by the Los Angeles Times. Mediterranean Street Food was described by the New York Times as "a marvelous book." It won the Gourmand World Cookbook Award 2002 as the best Mediterranean cuisine book in English. Helou lives in London, where she has her own cooking school, Anissa's School. She appears frequently on British television and radio. She has written many articles for the Weekend Financial Times, and has contributed to several other publications including Gourmet, the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post. An accomplished photographer and intrepid traveler, Helou is fluent in French and Arabic as well as English.

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 this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0060891513
• ISBN 13: 9780060891510
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304