Middle East - Anthony Ham [85]
VEGETARIANS & VEGANS
Though it’s quite normal for the people of the Middle East to eat a vegetarian meal, the concept of vegetarianism is quite foreign. Say you’re a vegan and they will either look mystified or assume that you’re ’fessing up to some strain of socially aberrant behaviour. There is a sprinkling of vegetarian restaurants in big cities such as Beirut and İstanbul, but the travelling vegetarian certainly can’t rely on finding them elsewhere.
Fortunately, it’s not difficult to find vegetable-based dishes. You’ll find yourself eating loads of mezze and salads, fuul, tasty cheese and spinach pastries, the occasional omelette or oven-baked vegetable tagens (stews baked in a terracotta pot) featuring okra and aubergine.
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VEG-A-WHAT? TRAVAILS OF A VEGETARIAN TRAVELLER IN TURKEY Miriam Raphael
As someone whose favourite part of the day is deciding what to eat, I was salivating at the thought of several months in Turkey. All that glorious bread! All that wonderful cheese! But on arrival in İstanbul I began to think, ‘All that meat…’ I recalled my friends warning me that as a vegetarian I would die in Turkey. After a week I had to agree; if something didn’t change I was going to die. Not of starvation but of a surfeit of Welsh rarebit!
But if you are up for a challenge, being a vegetarian in Turkey can be done. First, learn the phrases, ‘Etli mi?’ (Does it have meat?) and ‘Sebze yemekleri var mı?’ (Are there any vegetable dishes?) And get used to walking into the kitchen to check things out for yourself (because Turkish ‘vegetarians’ sometimes eat no animal but chicken). Then get acquainted with all the vegetarian salads and mezes on offer. A couple of these and some piping hot bread is often more than enough for lunch. Cheap lokantas (restaurants) are great for vegetarians. Not only can you see what you are ordering, but also they offer lots of hearty dishes – stuffed aubergines, plates of green beans, okra and peppers – with an obligatory pile of rice on the side. Better restaurants often have vegetable güveç (stew in a clay pot) on the menu. Covered in cheese and baked in the oven, it’s nothing short of scrumptious. Menemen, a stir-fried omelette with tomatoes and hot peppers, is also popular. Unfortunately, most soups, even ezo gelin (lentil and rice), are made with meat stock. Every town has a börekci that serves flaky pastry stuffed with white cheese and parsley. And don’t miss gözleme, a Turkish pancake filled with spinach, cheese or potato. If all else fails, there’s always dessert!
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The main source of inadvertent meat-eating is meat stock, which is often used to make otherwise vegetarian pilafs, soups and vegetable dishes. Your hosts may not even consider such stock to be meat, so may assure you that the dish is vegetarian. Chicken and mutton are the biggest hide-and-seekers in the region’s food, often lurking in vegetable dishes and mezze. Be careful.
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The earliest physical evidence of an international spice trade is found in the wall reliefs of the Funerary Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, Egypt.
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The best country for vegetarians is Israel, where kosher laws don’t permit the mixing of meat and dairy products, resulting in a lot of ‘dairy’ restaurants where no meat in any form is served.
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EATING WITH KIDS
Setting yourself up as a babysitter in the Middle East would have to be one of the more ill-conceived career choices. That’s because, with the possible exception of Turkey, it’s usual to eat out as a family group – you’ll often see young children dining with their parents and friends in restaurants until the early hours. Waiters are either welcoming or, at the very least, accepting of children and will often go out of their way to be helpful, whether happily heating baby food to offering the tried-and-true favourite – fried potato chips. Best of all, the cuisine of the region is very child-friendly, being simple and varied, although you should always make sure the meat is well cooked.
On the downside, Middle Eastern