Bilhana: Wholefood Recipes from Egypt, Lebanon and Morocco

While Middle Eastern cuisine is, by and large, inherently healthful, there is always room for improvement, innovation and adaptation. This creative cookbook of soups and salads, roasts and grills, seafood and sweets, and drinks and more, acknowledges and adopts many current dietary trends and methods. "swapping ... quinoa for rice." for instance. or "baking rather than frying" falafel while folding in classic flavors and spices. "from Lebanon to Morocco." Cauliflower rice (florets ground into bits), like quinoa, offers a gluten-free alternative to rice, dressed with olive oil, lime juice. garlic and parsley. Cardamom and mastic, a distinctive. resiny Arab ingredient "redolent of sunbaked hillsides." localizes a Gwyneth Paltrow-inspired recipe of creamy broccoli soup. Old methods (smoldering charcoal in the oven for seasoned kofta) blend with hip, new flavors (hibiscus popsicles anyone?) in this tempting reimagining of a traditional cuisine.