I’ve never liked zucchini. At least, I’ve never found it to taste like much of anything, so I never bothered to cook with it. Then I picked up a book called Day of Honey.

The author, Annia Ciezadlo, is an American journalist who moved to Baghdad with her Lebanese-American husband in the fall of 2003 to report on the war and, with equal fervor, to eat. Her book weaves vivid descriptions of the dishes she savors in Iraq and Lebanon with the history, culture, language, and politics that underlie them and are in turn shaped by and through them. “During wartime,” she writes, “people’s lives begin to revolve around food: first to stay alive, but also to stay human….this is the story of that other war, the one that takes place in the moments between bombings.”

It is one of those books that I can’t put down yet never want to end. I deal with this by reading it only late at night, when I’m so tired that I almost forget what I’ve read and have to go back and read it over again the next day. The trouble is, it also makes me very hungry: I find myself lying in bed at three in the morning, craving foods I’ve never heard of: freekeh dajaj (roasted cracked green wheat with chicken and spices), mhalabieh (milk pudding flavored with rosewater, pistachio, and cardamom), and fattet hummus (chickpeas, tahini, garlic and shards of dried pita bread sizzled in butter, then swathed in yogurt and dusted with mint, cumin, and paprika.)

Ciezadlo’s description of her Lebanese mother-in-law’s zucchini dolma, stuffed with ground lamb, cinnamon, and allspice and drizzled with tangy garlic-yogurt sauce, echoed on my tongue when I encountered zucchini at the farmers’ market last week. For the first time, I bought some. I took them home and set to boring out their centers with an apple corer (bereft of the utensil that Middle Eastern cooks have devised for accomplishing this very task). I packed the filling into the hollow cavities as if stuffing a sausage, “corked” the holes with the zucchini stems turned inward, and steamed them whole in a simmering pot of beef stock and butter.

Guess what? I haven’t been able to stop eating zucchini since.

Zucchini Stuffed with Lamb and Spices
Serves 4-6

8 straight zucchini (about 6-in. long and 2-in. wide)
Salt for sprinkling in cavities
2 Tbsp. butter
2-3 cups beef or vegetable stock

Filling:
1 lb. ground lamb
½ cup uncooked long-grain white rice
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 tomato, cored, seeded, and finely chopped
2 Tbsp. chopped mint
2 Tbsp. chopped flat-leaf parsley
(or ¼ cup combination of any chopped fresh herbs: mint, parsley, basil, cilantro, and or dill)
1 tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. ground allspice
Salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes to taste

Garlic-Yogurt Sauce
1 large or 2 medium cloves garlic
Pinch salt
1 cup plain yogurt

1. Chop the tops of the zucchini and reserve. Using an apple corer, bore out the center of each zucchini, leaving a ¼-in.-thick wall throughout. (The straighter your zucchini, the easier this will be.) Strive not to puncture the bottom or sides of the zucchini. Sprinkle salt in the cavity of each zucchini. (Reserve the centers: while your dolma cook, you can chop them up, saute them in olive oil with minced onion and garlic and whatever spices you choose, and serve them hot with crusty flatbread as an appetizer.)

2. Mix the raw lamb, uncooked rice, onion, tomato, herbs, and spices for the filling. With your fingers, stuff it into each zucchini, packing it down tightly and leaving about a half-inch of space at the top. Stuff the stem end of each zucchini top into the cavities, as if corking them like a wine bottle.

3. Lay the zucchini side-by-side in a pan (or two) just large enough to fit them. Pour the beef broth over them, enough to reach halfway up their height. Chop the butter into small pieces into the broth. Place an inverted plate on top of the zucchini to weigh them down, then cover the pan tightly with a lid (or use aluminum foil if you don’t have a lid that fits).

4. Bring the broth to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer gently for about 40 minutes, turning the zucchini with tongs halfway through, until zucchini are easily pierced with a fork and the meat is cooked through.

5. Meanwhile, make the garlic-yogurt sauce: pound the garlic to a paste with salt in a mortar. (If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, just press or mince the garlic very finely.) Mix with the yogurt.

6. Serve the dolma drizzled with yogurt sauce and garnished fresh herbs. Serve with rice or pita bread if you like.