Cooking my way through Adeena Sussman's Shabbat
I may have mentioned that it’s the holiday period in Israel, which means two-week vacations abroad for some, and a steady cycle of cooking for others, like yours truly.
While I’d love to plop myself down in a foreign destination or two during this early fall holiday period at some point in my life, I’m a lover of the Jewish holiday period, the slightly slower pace, the steady gatherings of family and friends, time spent in synagogue, and the opportunity to dig into cooking and new recipes.
September also happens to be the season of new cookbooks, including Shabbat, the spanking new book full of recipes by my very dear buddy Adeena Sussman, and what better way to bring her closer — she’s on a really long, three-month book tour in the US — than by finally getting to cook these recipes she’s been working on for the last three years?
So that’s what I’ve been doing. I started on Rosh Hashanah with the Fig & Pomegranate Brisket — fantastic, we ate it all up — along with Pomegranate Sumac Margaritas and some smears of Feta, Artichoke & Pea Dip for our Sababa challahs (not during the same meal).
I sustained my caffeine high throughout with Shaken Iced Tahini Coffee, and then embarked on a vegan Shabbat meal in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with a Sussman feast, including Kresch Family Cabbage Noodles (with rice noodles rather than egg noodles), a recipe in homage to the cooking of our friend
’s mother, Cold & Crunchy Rice Salad (using up the rice, radishes and zucchini in the fridge — score!), Glazed Crispy Tofu with Eggplant & Brussel Sprouts, Double Mango Salad with Amba Dressing (which is really Triple Mango Salad cuz of the mango in the amba, another Sababa fave), Sweet Potatoes with Miso Tahini Butter (wow!) and for dessert, mango ice cream with magic shell, a Sussman and Chrissy Teigen creation.
But it wasn’t over! We fasted through Yom Kippur, breaking on scrambled eggs and homemade baguettes (a little misshapen but pretty good), and then it was time to prepare for Sukkot dinner, one of my favorite holiday meals, as we celebrate our twin sons’ birthdays and there’s really nothing like eating in the sukkah.
So, what did we eat that night? Steffi’s Brisket, the more traditional meat-and-potatoes version often prepared by Adeena’s beloved departed mom, Steffi, with Balsamic-Glazed Onions & Leeks along with the Glazed Crispy Tofu again, for my vegetarian niece, and Tomato Jam Roasted Salmon for my pescatarian brother-in-law. We started with the spectacular Sweet & Tart Eggplant Salad (lots of frying eggplant there, but worth it), along with the Sababa babaganoush, and for my lemonade-loving 15-year-olds, a pitcher of Pink Lemonade (made with smashed blueberries), which they appreciated and the Lime-Coconut Custard Pie with Press-In Crust for dessert. Uh huh, yeah, it was delicious.
Almost done here. Brought some of the leftovers to my sister
‘s house for lunch the next day, where we all discussed Shabbat and Adeena and what city she was in and where she was heading to next.Last night, I decided to try one of the pasta dishes, partially because I had a slab of pumpkin in the fridge and was intrigued by the Spicy Butternut Squash Pasta with Crispy Sage Bread Crumbs. Yum. We’ll be making that again. The leftovers were even better.
And for now, that is really it, although a Shabbat/holiday weekend looms again and I’ve been eyeing the Fudgy Medjool Date Brownies and the One-Skillet Chicken & Herby Rice, along with the other 150 recipes in this cookbook. And I’ll probably make the Ultimate Egg Salad for the shul kiddush lunch this Shabbat.
Every time I prepare one of these new recipes, I stand in the kitchen, Instagramming some part of the process and tagging Adeena, knowing that she’ll see it eventually, in some hotel room or airport, in a cab or waiting to begin her next event. Sometimes we WhatsApp about the recipe, discussing the elements that make it work.
In some ways, it’s just an extension of our years-long conversation. We met many years ago in Jerusalem, eating Shabbat dinners together with our other dear friends, her roommates Devorah and Amy, and taking Shabbat naps in the shades-down, fan-turning-cooled living room. We spent weekends in the Galilee, dipping into the Kinneret and eating ripe mangos off fruit-laden trees in the backyard of the house we rented (pre-Airbnb). And then, fast forward some twenty years, Adeena moved back to Israel, married my friend Jay (I had to get her back to Israel somehow) and had developed this whole chef-cookbook writing career, creating fabulous recipes that are just what you want to eat or drink or nosh.
Sometimes she’ll talk to me about the recipe development process, discussing what vegetables to focus on or add to the mix, what kind of chicken recipe would be helpful or bringing a batch of the new challah recipe for a Friday night dinner. But for the most part, the cookbook ends up being the most delightful surprise, this cornucopia of stories and details and recipes that have emerged from this wonderful friend of mine, over weeks and months of trial and error.
We all feel a sense of pride and joy in Adeena as we serve her dishes, never having made them before but pretty sure they’ll be as good as everything else she’s created. And then we discuss which recipes will become the standards, the ones that we’ll make every week and that will be equally loved by all her readers.
I’m betting on that Fig & Pomegranate Brisket, but I don’t think I’ll ever convince Daniel to switch to Golden Challah from her Sababa challah. But, you never know. In the kitchen, anything is possible.
ncG1vNJzZmiilajAqq%2FAnq%2BcnZyhsq%2FAwJ2tnqakqr%2Bmv42srJurpJawrHrCqKRoqF%2BYvLC3yKeeZqWpYsSixYytn6unpZy1bq3DnpynmV2owrS%2FzJqlrA%3D%3D