This week, Michael David Lukas, the author of The Ora­cle of Stam­boul blogs for The Post­script on under­stand­ing the Mid­dle East through food, and what to eat while dis­cussing his book. The Post­script series is a spe­cial peek ​“behind the scenes” of a book. It’s a juicy lit­tle extra some­thing to add to a book club​’s dis­cus­sion and a read­er’s under­stand­ing of how the book came together. 

A few years ago, I wrote an essay for Slate argu­ing that food — par­tic­u­lar­ly Clau­dia Roden’s cook­book, Arabesque—might be the best way to under­standthe Mid­dle East. I may have over­stat­ed my case (I was work­ing, at the time,as an assis­tant to the Jew­ish cook­book authorJoan Nathan and was very much enam­ored by the pow­er of food). But I still­stand by the basic crux of the essay: food is an excel­lent means ofun­der­stand­ing Mid­dle East­ern his­to­ry, soci­ety, and reli­gion. Food brings peo­ple­to­geth­er and allows us to com­mu­ni­cate beyond lan­guage. As the Turks say, ​“food­feeds the essence of life.” Thus, I have devised the fol­low­ing menu for book­clubs read­ing The Ora­cle of Stam­boul.