I thought I was quite well “travelled” when it came to foods from different cultures. Apparently not.
When a family member said “we’re inviting you around for dinner”, we thought oh goodie, someone cooking for us!! That’s a novelty! Not that we don’t love cooking for others, actually we secretly thrive on it (don’t tell anyone) but sometimes being a vegetarian means you’re quite often on the bench.
And then when a text comes through “We’re preparing a Jewish meal!”.. We both sat there looking at each other thinking “what the hell…” To our amazement, we had never (knowingly) had any traditional Jewish food, to the point we couldn’t even think of a single Jewish recipe!
As we drove up, with some trepidation, knocked on the door, walked in… We were welcomed by such powerful and delightful aromas!
We were then taken through the taste journey we would experience that afternoon! WOW!
Colin and Jane, my partners uncle and aunt, had prepared a full vegetarian meal… All because of me! Blown away by that aspect alone, no non-vegetarian host had ever, I mean ever prepared a full vegetarian menu (bearing in mind, out of eight, I was the only vegetarian)… There was a token small dish of chicken if anybody wanted to add it, which no-one did.

The front cover of the book that inspired this meal and opened my virgin eyes to this new world (ironic as it is possibly one of the oldest) of foods is shown below. We’ve just ordered this book.. No doubt there will be recipes inspired by it on here in due course.

Keep your mind open and thank you Jerusalem.. And Colin and Jane!

The book is Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi..

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