In her new cookbook, Maydān: Recipes from Lebanon and Beyond, Rose Previte writes about what it's like to be a women restauranteur in a male-dominated industry, and what it was like to grow up in rural Ohio in a Sicilian-Lebanese household. She shares her mother's staple recipes and dishes she learned from other women from around the world. Also, we remember Full Monty actor Tom Wilkinson, who died on last week at the age of 75. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
On the Ted radio hour, linguist Ann Curzan says she gets a lot of complaints about people using the pronoun they to refer to one person.
I sometimes get into arguments with people where they will say to me, but it can't be singular.
And I will say, but it is.
The history behind words causing a lot of debate.
That's on the Ted radio hour from NPR.
This is FRESH AIR.
I'm Tanya Mosley.
One of the first lessons restaurateur Rose Previtt learned early in life was what she calls the secret code, the ways her family used food to hold on to culture.
Previtt grew up in a small town in Ohio, eating almost exclusively home cooked lebanese dishes that were passed down from her great grandparents who immigrated to the US.
But as she writes in her new cookbook, Maidan recipes from Lebanon and beyond, it took a life changing move to Russia for her to discover that following in her family's footsteps was her calling.
In her new cookbook, which Bon Appetit recently named one of the best cookbooks of the year, Previtt shares some of her family's tried and true recipes, as well as recipes from home cooked throughout the Middle east and eastern Europe.
Many of these recipes come from areas we often think of as conflict in war zones like Lebanon, Georgia and Ukraine.
Previtt owns four DC area restaurants, Compass rows, which serve street food from around the world like jamaican curried conch, mexican tacos, El pastor and algerian vegetable tagine the Kirby Club in Virginia, which specializes in kebabs and the Michelin star rated maidan, which serves food from Lebanon and other parts of the Middle east.
She also runs the neighboring cocktail bar, Medina.
Rose Previtt, welcome to Fresh Air.
Thank you for having me.
That was a kind introduction.
Maidan is such a rich word because as we learn from you, it's a word that carries across regions and languages and it means the same thing.
I find it a really powerful word.
And, you know, ironically, it is an arabic word that I learned in Kiev, Ukraine, which seems like not a place where you would hear a lot of Arabic.