Sababa: Fresh, Sunny Flavors From My Israeli Kitchen

"I actually got to meet Adeena when she came to the Post and we did an Instagram story with her, so I was familiar with the book and the food and one of my colleagues has picked it as her favourite cookbook of the year . Israeli food and Middle Eastern food is really having a moment here in the US. It’s such a sunny, bright cuisine and, when I read the book, I can really feel Adeena’s zest for this cuisine. She’s this joyful, giving, warm person and that really comes over. As for the food, it’s a mix of stuff, some traditional and some of which is a little bit more of a mash-up. “I read a lot of cookbooks. You can learn a lot that way” She has a recipe for Israeli ‘everything spice’, which is a really fun idea. She starts adding in things you find in Israel and she also has some other really clever fusion dishes. She has a ‘pitaquiles’ dish which uses pita breads in place of the tortilla chips. Chilaquiles are kind of a traditional Mexican dish where you have a sauce and you have tortilla chips, but here you use pitas. A few more things I liked about it: aesthetically, it’s really nice. You really feel like you’re in Israel. There’s a lot of bright colours. It feels like you could be standing in front of a window in Tel Aviv on a beautiful sunny day. She introduces you to a lot of ingredients that, even if you don’t end up making any of the dishes, maybe you just end up using elsewhere. For instance, she also introduces some clever swaps, like using date syrup instead of honey. And she has this tahini magic shell, which is brilliant. It’s just really fun stuff like that. And I’ve had a couple of the dishes out of the book and they’re delicious."