Uzbek Carrot Salad

The Levant (from the French lever, “to rise,” or “point of sunrise” or the “East” as a noun) generally includes all the countries along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean but more specifically refers to what is now Lebanon, the Phoenicia of Biblical times. Its fabled trading ports, Sidon, Tyre and Byblos—now small Lebanese towns—once linked the western cities of the Silk Road with Europe. Baba Ghanoush is sometimes called “poor man’s caviar.”