"MiddleEast" news and stories

Over the past few years, there has been an increased interest in foods from the Middle East and the surrounding areas. This seems to be largely because consumers are looking to cook with different grains and more spices than ever before. At first, this interested manifested itself in dinners served with a side of couscous, instead of white rice. Now, home cooks are buying tagines and looking into completely new (to them) styles of cooking.

Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon is organized by country, so the differences between each cuisine are immediately obvious to the reader. Author Claudia Rodin, a certifiable expert on the cuisines of the region, does an excellent job incorporating detailed information about ingredients and the history of the dishes into the rest of the text. There are roughly 150 recipes and all have been adapted so that they will be relatively easy to remake in, say, the average American kitchen, although a trip to a specialty grocer may be in order to pick up a handful of the less common ingredients. Recipes include many vegetarian options and lots of couscous, along with Tagine of Chicken with Preserved Lemons and Olives, Squabs Stuffed with Date and Almond Paste, Baba Ghanouj and Pistachio Cake.

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Make a list of all the things that could contribute to world peace on a piece of paper. Is bacon at the top? If not, perhaps it should be. The people at Peace Through Pork think that it might just be the key to solving the world's problems. They offer up a deep, critical explanation in which bacon is a metaphor for the fears and desires of both societies and individuals, but to keep it brief, here is their drunken frat boy explanation:

1. Bacon is really tasty.
2. People that don't eat bacon obviously have issues.

Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? One slice of bacon, by the way, has only about 40 calories and 3 grams of fat, along with 3 grams of protein, which makes it a filling and satisfying food that shouldn't necessarily be counted out of your diet for health reasons unless you're watching your saturated fat intake (1.1 g), in which case you want to eat it in moderation. If you're interested in showing your support, a bacon awareness bracelet is available.

Non-food related note: If you're a registered voter in the US, you can also make a difference in a way that is unrelated to bacon. You can go out and vote!

[via boingboing]

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