Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons

This selection of recipes forms an collection of dishes from lesser explored areas of the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Middle East. Divided into 12 chapters based on ingredients, the author introduces the home cook both to unsual indgredients and to unsual ways to cook with old favourites. Each dish is unusual, either because it uses " exotic" ingredients such as flower waters, pomegranates and cardamom, or because of its unusual use of ingredients, such as " Middle Eastern Orange Cake", made almost entirely of pureed whole cooked oranges. Several dishes are unsual simply because of their names, consider " Ice in Heaven", or the " Crazy Water" of the title.