Mediterranean Street Food by Anissa Helou. Anissa Helou, born in Lebanon and living in London, is an experienced culinary writer who appears regularly on British TV and writes a column for the Financial Times. She is also a photographer and the book is nicely composed and presented with her black and white photos throughout. Helou states in her introduction that as a kid in Beirut she was never allowed to eat street food in as much as
“ . . . girls from good families don’t.” That set the stage for her enduring fascination with street food vendors and their dishes.
As I read on, I began to wonder if she was going to address the health risks of non-natives eating street food. (I ate the stuff without regret in Japan and Hong Kong, as a young dashing naval officer, but I doubt if I would do it now.) She views a perceived lack of hygiene as often more apparent than real, and leaves it at that—save for a note to herself to carry her own cutlery when next in Cairo. Mmmm.
If you give a thought to what street food in all about (quick and/or uncomplicated), the chapter headings here are intuitive, namely soups, snacks-salads-dips, breads and pizzas, sandwiches, BBQs, one-pot meals, sweets, desserts and drinks. She presents about 135 recipes, most capable of being prepared quickly without the need of much more than fire, a pan, product, spices and oil.
Readers of Wright’s A Mediterranean Feast or Wolfert’s Couscous and Other Good Food From Morocco will find much familiar here. If you have prepared some of Wolfert’s dishes or my tagine dishes you have the pantry and spice rack to tackle Helou’s Mediterranean street food.
We did her Moroccan Eggplant Salad the other night following the recipe, which was straightforward. It was delicious, though a bit too oily. This led me to check her other recipes to determine if Helou is a bit heavy on the olive oil. She is, at least in her salads. So, as you should do with all recipes, mark them up to your liking after following the author’s recipe. Fair enough. Next time I do this dish, I’ll cut the oil by 20%.
We’ll try, I’m sure, some of the snacks, salads and dips as well as the kebab BBQ’s. Her one-pot meal recipes look good and I should try one or two as quick-prep variants of the more elaborate lamb dishes that I favor. But, given the cost of fresh lamb shanks, maybe I won’t.
I bought the book because I liked the concept. You might too. It’s a welcome addition to the two related books, aforementioned.