Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons: Enchanting Dishes from the Middle East, Mediterranean, and North Africa

We're delighted to offer signed bookplates with the purchase of Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons.

Republished in a beautiful new cover, this is the beloved Diana Henry’s guide to the world of flavors that excited a young Northern Irish woman who had recently moved to London and found a Turkish grocery at the end of her street and an Arab community nearby.

I was writing about ingredients and dishes that weren’t well known then, but which have since become more mainstream–dried barberries, pomegranates, quince allioli, socca, arroz negro, these all seemed quite magical to me as I had read about and thought about them while growing up in a grey northern country. I wanted everyone else to be as captivated by them as I was.

It’s nearly impossible to not to be captivated by both the food and Henry’s prose, which is both lyrical and frank. “I’ve eaten a version of this dish which even contained pounded rose petals (though, to be honest, you couldn’t tell.”

And as much as Henry may believe that the ingredients which captivated her have become more commonplace, the uses to which she encourages us to put them are not at all that way. 

Quince allioli in the list above is not missing a comma; it’s a real thing, “delicious and unexpected,” as Henry says. You’re not likely being served fig anchoïade on a weekly basis, nor a salad of grilled endive and radicchio with goat cheese.

But with Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons you can be making them for yourself.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.