In part #4, we take a look at foods from the Middle-East as well as the Caribbean. These two regions seem to have been gaining steam recently with new immigrants bringing their culture’s foods to the west and helping to form new restaurants and fast food joints. Caribbean fast food places usually have food like fish, meat, yams and fruit. Hot peppers and lemons help to give their food a spicy edge and are the basic seasonings of their food. Lemon and hot peppers are still key ingredients in Caribbean cooking.
One of their more popular dishes is called Jerk Chicken. Jerk’ is a unique Jamaican method of preserving, seasoning and cooking meat – usually chicken or pork. The meat is marinated with a mixture of spices and peppers and traditionally cooked over a flame. The basic ingredients for a jerk flavouring are thyme, pimento, spring onion, ginger, Scotch Bonnet chillies, black pepper, nutmeg and cinnamon.
Another popular favorite in North America are patties which are typical filled with either beef or chicken. Jamaican-style meat-filled pastries are also much more spicier than typical patties.
Another popular item is rum which was filtered from sugar canes brought over by Christopher Columbus. The sugarcane is now a staple of the Caribbean diets and in most homes you will find that desserts are incorporated in to most meals with cakes, pies and dumplings and are just as important as a hot main meal.
Arabian food today is the result of a combination of Lebanese/Indian cooking and many items not indigenous to the Persian gulf region. One of the more noticeable foods at a fast food joint is called a falafel. A falafel is a fried ball or patty of spiced fava beans or chickpeas. It’s traditionally served as a filling ingredient in a pita bread wrap.
Another popular arab food is called shish taouk. This term is often mistaken in North America and has thus been confused for two entirely different arab meals. The traditional meaning of the meal should really be called ‘chicken shawarma’ which is an Arabic term essentially referring to the process for cooking meat or chicken on a vertical roaster. Thus, chicken shawarma would be more accurate term for what is commonly referred to as shish taouk, much the same way that Lebanese restaurants in the city list beef shawarma on their menus.
Shish Taouk is has its origins in Turkish and means skewer. Taouk, also Turkish, refers to grilled or roasted chicken. The shish taouk that many people ask for at restaurants or fast food joints in North America is a large amount of tantalizing pieces of boneless chicken – marinated in olive oil, lemon and garlic – which are shaved from a vertical roasting spit, and either served on a plate or on a pita, laced with garlic mayonnaise or, preferably hummus, with a variety of vegetables, peppers, pickled turnips and tabbouleh.
Hummus is also very popular and consists of a dip made of chickpea paste and tahini (sesame seed paste), with flavorings such as olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, and paprika. It is traditionally scooped up with pita bread or can also be used as a non-traditional type of tip for foods like tortilla chips. Finally one last arabic fast food you may like to try is called baba ganoush and is a paste made of roast or grilled eggplant and tahini, a paste made from sesame seeds.
That’s all for #4 and we finally bring it to a close with #5, the American fast food diet.
Thanks to http://www.wikipedia.org for some of the information related to the specified foods.
[ratings]
Entries (RSS)