Apricot paste, dried and formed into sheets. These are used for flavouring drinks, cooked with water and flavoured with mint, or desserts, or in lamb stews and in sweet and sour sauces. It also refers to a dish of grilled aubergines (US: eggplants) mixed with soaked apricot leather.
Lovage. A large unwieldy herb. Pick the stems off the leaves, tie them and hang them to dry for about 3 days. When crisp, crumble the leaves and store. Good in hotpots. Lovage seeds are used mainly in Indian cooking, and are from a plant of the caraway family. The greenish-brown seeds are a little larger than celery seeds and have a strong aroma of rather coarse thyme. Oregano can be substituted.
May be any eastern spirit, from an aniseed or liquorice-flavoured liquor in the style of raki to a pungent rum. May be distilled from grape, grain, date or the sap of a coconut palm. Its name comes from the Arabic araq, meaning juice or sap. The most famous, Batavia Arrak, is made in Java and is aged for 7-10 years.
Argan oil comes from the nuts of the Argan tree which grows exclusively in the south western part of Morocco. Nearly all the available argan oil is produced by a Berber women's co-operative called Targanine. The fruits of the tree are green, and resemble large, slightly rounded olives. Inside the fleshy covering is a hard shell containing up to three kernels from which the oil is extracted. The oil was extracted after the kernel has been roasted, ground and mixed with water to form a dough. It is recommended that the oil is added to foods which have already been cooked to add flavour and perhaps very sparingly in salads. It should not be used for frying.
