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

All of the recipes that I have made from this book have been excellent. My personal favorite so far has been the lamb and chickpea stew. The recipes are easy to follow and Ms. Helou's accompanying stories are a great addition to the book. I found all of the recipes to be very simple and most make great light meals. There are a few recipes with hard/impossible-to-find ingredients, but for someone who enjoys reading about food they are still interesting, and Ms. Helou does a great job of offering ideas for alternative ingredients. A+

`Mediterranean Street Food' by Lebanese culinary writer Anissa Helou is an example of my second most favorite type of cookbook (first being good single dish or single ingredient books on things such as soups, casseroles, potatoes, or eggs) in that it gives us recipes which all fit into an excellent theme of dishes for entertaining, while being both informative and entertaining while discussing its subject. Other great titles in this vein are Joyce Goldstein's `Enoteca' (Italian wine bar cuisine) and Ellen Leong Blonder's `Dim Sum' on the famous Chinese (primarily Cantonese) `tea lunch' cuisine so well transplanted to San Francisco and other American Chinatowns. The first thing which recommends Ms. Helou's book is that while it presents something from virtually all the great cuisines of the Mediterranean, there is a relatively small space devoted to dishes from Spain, southern France, and Italy. Even though Italy is the 900 pound gorilla of Mediterranean cuisine, it doesn't contribute much to this book because the author is much more familiar with the food of the Levant and North Africa and Italy, France, and Spain have such great restaurant traditions, there is little true street food to be found in these countries. One byproduct of this fact is that this book teaches us a new word for Italian eatery to join the lexicon of restaurante, trattoria, osteria, and enoteca. This is a friggitorie or `fry shop' which may be indoors, but traditionally serves people at a counter at which they stand to eat. From Italy, most of Ms. Helou's examples seem to come from either Liguria (Genoa) or Sicily. But, far more of the dishes come from the Arab and Berber influenced part of the Mediterranean. The first relatively short chapter is on soups. This is no surprise, as soup dispensing and eating requires a lot more equipment and involvement than a snack you can hold in your hand. The most instructive aspect of these five recipes is that a lot of this street food seems to be based on cheap ingredients, either on beans or animal parts such as tripe which are but a step from being discarded offal. The exception that proves the rule is the snail soup based on a Mediterranean delicacy. The second, much longer chapter is on `Snacks, Salads, and Dips'. This chapter has a lot of old favorites such as the Spanish potato omelet (tortilla), the Italian spinach omelet (frittata), Italian vegetable meatloaf (polpettone), salads with feta, cabbage, beans, and eggplant, plus lots and lots of fried foods and dips. Frying, grilling, and breads seem to be the most common styles of street food, which seems odd to Americans, where the most common street food is steamed hot dogs. Breads, including pizzas and flatbreads is the next, second longest chapter. This may be the most interesting chapter in the book, as once you remove the pizza and foccacia recipes, you are left with a great source of breads from North Africa, the Levant, and Asia Minor (Turkey). By far the most familiar

I work in Dearborn, Michigan, home to 30,000 people of Arab origin. I therefore often eat authentic cuisine from that part of the Mediterranean and all the recipes I've tried from this book stand up to what I find on the streets (OK, in the restaurants) here. I'm also lucky that I can go to a local Arab grocery and easily find some of the specialty items she uses, like preserved lemons. You don't need that, though, to succeed with her recipes. You can even buy your spices at the grocery, but, really, wouldn't you rather get the quality stuff from Penzey's? The Turkish seasoned kabobs (p. 158) are now one of my sumer grilling specialties. I pair them with the feta cheese salad (p. 33) and a crisp rose or sauvignon blanc. Try the garlic sauce ("Thum") on p. 72, but understand that she's right when she says "...it will make you a social leper for a day or two afterward." The garlic exudes from your pores, but oh, it was delicious going in!

If you are looking for great tasting dishes and are not afraid to use the exotic combinations of spices you will have fablous kebabs. The salads are fablous the Grilled Pepper and Tomato is so easy to make and the flavors complex. For a real treat try the watermelon pudding with jasmine water. It is so refreshing. I've had 2 dinner parties featuring the recipes from this book. The guests loved the complex and diverse flavors and textures.Keep this handy for travels and for the barbeque.