"Food as Cultural Diplomacy in the Levant"
(Romania; TVR, Channel 1)
May 23rd, 2013
But how would the modern recipe for eggplant salad look like? The answer comes quickly and it’s an answer adapted by modern methods: it is more elaborated with spices but with a less intense taste of the initial product.
“We took a dry and baked plum; we filled it with eggplant salad, sesame paste, dry ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, coriander and pepper. We’ve also added pine seeds.” And that’s how you obtain a version of the eggplant salad that is more elaborate and ready to be consumed as a “fast food” product, as the occidentals prefer. At the “Levant” Forum, the eggplant salad was used as an alarm for all the dangerous tendencies in the actual gastronomy.
President Emil. Constantinescu: “Food in the Orient is a reason for friends to spend time together, enjoy, and discuss”. The "Levant, Cradle of Cultural Diplomacy: Rediscovering the Mediterranean" Forum took place until today, in Bucharest.