On a trip to Turkey as a young woman, chef Ana Sortun fell in love with the food and spent months learning the traditions of Turkish cooking from local women. Inspired beyond measure, Sortun opened her own restaurant in Cambridge, the award-winning Oleana, where she creates her own interpretations of dishes using the incredible array of delicious spices and herbs by Arab-Mediterranean chefs.

In this gorgeously photographed book, Sortun shows readers how to use this philosophy of spice to create wonderful dishes in their own home. She reveals how the artful use of spice sand herbs rather than fat and cream is the key to the full, rich flavors of Mediterranean cuisine--and the way it leaves you feeling satisfied afterward. The book is organized by spice, revealing the ways certain spices complement one another and how they flavor other foods and create for home cooks a kind of sense-memory that allows for a more intuitive use of spice in their own dishes. The more than 100 tantalizing spice categories and recipes include: