Mediterranean Street Food

"It does and it is just such fun to read. The author Anissa Helou is Lebanese and she is at home virtually anywhere. She speaks French and English and obviously Arabic. She takes you to places that you wouldn’t be able to go on your own and talks about the souks of Egypt or the main square in Marrakesh. But, for me, there is also the nostalgia effect. I lived for a while near Genoa and Genoa has incredible street food, mostly fried, which she describes in her book. I also like seeing the way the same food appears in different guises. The Greek tiropita (cheese/filo triangle) resembles the Turkish borek and the Lebanese bourekas. The same is true of kebabs or meatballs, whether they’re called kofta, keftedes or kefta. From the book you can see how foods are variations on the same theme, because many of the places she visited used to be part of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. I find the connections absolutely fascinating. There is a wonderful section in Prospero’s Kitchen where we talk about the street food of the past in Corfu and Zakynthos that is really fun to read. Besides such things as fried fish and grilled artichokes, you could also buy a chunk of bread called the “vouta” or the dunker and dip it into a pot, say, of tripe soup or pans of bubbling innards. You’d have to pay a few pennies more to soak up the oily drippings in the corners! Nowadays we have gyros and souvlakia, roasted meats with pita bread, sesame rings, and sweets like fried semolina cake or, occasionally, doughnut balls with honey."