Jason Perlow

Yes, we're just oozing with friendliness.

Heyjude, one of our Pacific Northwest members, has at LEAST 1000. Her apartment is wall to wall cookbooks.

Cool. They even have recipes on the Nabisco web site for using these things. http://www.oreo.com/oreo/or_recipe.htm The Oreo web site also has lots of cool free video games can play. I particularly like "Super Snack 500", a NASCAR racing game where you race cars with various Nabisco products emblazoned on them.

Yes. He describes me as this way all the time. Ahem. Excuse me, Jason. When did you become a food writer? Well, I am, on this web site. Haven't you read my Spanish Brandy peice on TDG? I'm a published TECHNOLOGY writer though. On real paper, and everything. It pays a little bit better than food writing. Marginally enough for me to contribute for paying the bills for this place, so you can read the missives of REAL food writers.

Yes. He describes me as this way all the time.

Man, your therapist must be making serious FU money.

Rosie, is there something you want to tell me about Lowell?

I emailed Pete about this, since he posted his inquiry originally on Chowhound about it.

But I forgot, you don't READ the Daily Gullet, Steve.

Jersey. We have better ones here.

I agree, you can go pick up your toys and go home now.

Yeah, I am sure the Onassis family would appreciate you calling them peasants!

How exactly do you qualify rustic peasant food? Virtually all meat in Greek culture was reserved for the upper class. Its preferred to be served in simpler ways.

The Ottoman Empire is what became of the Roman Empire, which attributed much of its higher culture to the Greeks. As you were saying?

A really hearty red lentil soup.

Yes.

Modern Greek cuisine still is heavily influenced by lot of stuff going back to Apecius, Steve.

I think there is a bias against complex spicing in Greek cusine when compared to Turkish, but that goes back thousands of years. I've had different examples of Greek pastry -- and yes in Turkish cuisine there appears to be more variety, but to say they take less care with their ingredients and preparation and have less refined cuisine for that reason, well, is bullshit. Greece has some of the best olive oil in the world, and the best seafood. Maybe they subscribe to the less is more philosophy when it comes to complexity of the dishes.

Bullshit. Thats the best I can say to that.

Here is a whole treatise on turkish/ottoman cuisine: http://www.ottomansouvenir.com/Turkish_Cui...ish_cuisine.htm Nice pictures too.

If you take a look at this later map, you can sort of understand where things get funky: http://www.worldstatesmen.org/Ottoman.jpg Here's another cool one, that shows how it was chopped up: http://www.ottomansouvenir.com/img/Maps/Ot...nt_1683_map.jpg

Okay, its settled. Its Ottoman Cuisine.

The Ottoman Empire had a tremendous reach, which is why Lebanese and Palestinian/Israeli cuisine shares a lot of these things as well. see "Jerusalem During the Ottoman Period" http://jeru.huji.ac.il/eh1.htm

Burn her at the stake! Burn the witch I say!

On searching for kofta and kefthedes, I found another greek recipe site: http://www.eatgreektonight.com