Make dinner, not war - fixating on Iraq in a 24/7 manner has gotten me thinking about Iraqi cuisine. I know nothing about it, which disturbed me somewhat, given that I am passionate about food in general and love to learn about what people eat around the world and figure out how to cook it in the comfort of my own kitchen. Googling "iraqi cuisine" wasn't extremely helpful here. Aside from an interesting anecdote about the Jews of Baghdad and their importation of a pizza-like dish called lahma bi ajeen, which is comprised of ground lamb and spicy tomato sauce baked atop yeast bread, the consensus seemed to be that the Iraqis didn't have a real cuisine of their own, and relied on a lot of recipes that were actually Iranian or Kurdish in origin. There is a lot of hankering for grilled foods in Iraq, from skewered meat to local fish, but being that the urge to barbeque seems to be one of the great culinary universals for humanity (cf. Steve Raichlin's The Barbeque Bible for an epic whirlwind tour of grilling around the globe), it's hard to call that something unique to the modern-day inhabitants of Mesopotamia.

But there may be hope for the Iraqi table, after all (that is, if there are any tables left in Iraq when we're through with them). Nawal Nasrallah has just written a 664-page tome called "Delights from the Garden of Eden: A Cookbook and a History of the Iraqi Cuisine", which is available through Amazon.com. Unfortunately there isn't a review or description of the book, but it sounds like a timely addition to my already overloaded cookbook shelf. Too bad all my credit cards are maxed out...