Modern Israeli Cooking: 100 New Recipes for Traditional Classics

The author—a blogger (I Will Not Eat Oysters) of Israeli and Moroccan background and the owner of Toronto’s Moo Milk Bar—admits in this enthusiastic cookbook that defining Israeli food is difficult. Plenty of these recipes have Middle Eastern influences (e.g., a recipe for spinach falafel with parsley-flecked tahini), but what binds them more closely is irreverence and a willingness to deconstruct tradition. Oron taps into cuisines from around the world to make dishes such as fried rice with cilantro, cumin, and paprika, and fish tacos with Moroccan chermoula sauce. A chapter on dishes suitable for Shabbat includes lamb meatballs in spicy harissa sauce and fish cakes in a bright lemon sauce. Recipes are grouped by sentiment: one chapter offers beachy selections and another foods to satisfy midnight munchies. Chatty prose suited to social media doesn’t always translate well to a book (a chicken shawarma recipe is subtitled “take the mystery out of street meat”). But every time this book flirts with overkill, the author’s original take on recipes saves the day. (Nov.)