Shakshuka with mixed greens, herbs, onions, garlic, and spices—and eggs that cook right in the pan. Make it for dinner with crispy latkes, and eat the rest for breakfast the next day!
If there’s a certain demographic living in your home of, say, age 10 or under, you may laugh when I tell you that the term sababa, the name of the latest cookbook from Adeena Sussman, colloquially translates as “Everything is awesome.”
In my house, this phrase cues The Lego Movie theme song.
In Sussman’s cookbook, it’s a reflection of life in Israel. She says the phrase, a bit of Hebrew borrowed from Arabic slang, “has come to define a state of being, where everything is cool as can be.”
EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!
Sussman is a U.S. expat living in Tel Aviv within easy walking distance of Shuk HaCarmel, commonly referred to as the Shuk. Resplendent with fruits, veggies, spices, herbs, meats, fish, olives, and more, it’s the kind of open-air market that most of us can only dream of.
The market is the pulse of her daily life, the natural inspiration for this imaginative cookbook full of Israeli food. Sussman transports you to the tastes, sights, and smells of this vibrant market, where seasonality is the ultimate but perhaps most intangible currency. I only wish I were actually there.
That’s the beauty of cookbooks: They can take you to another world. You might not be about to get on a flight to Tel Aviv, but that’s okay. You don’t need the Shuk in order to make the recipes in this cookbook.
In the spirit of the fresh and seasonal cooking that permeates this book, it might behoove you to consider your own seasons where you live before you start cooking, but you certainly don’t have to! You can find most of these ingredients in your local supermarket, online, or if you happen to be lucky enough to live near a Middle Eastern grocer (which I do!).
What’s Awesome About Sababa
My copy of this cookbook is littered with Post-its across the tops and sides, tagged and flagged for future cooking.
Start the day with a tahini smoothie with banana, dates, tahini, some nuts, and berries. Are you as obsessed with za’atar as I am? Then you’ll want to tackle the za’atar flatbreads. Sussman provides her custom recipe for this popular spice blend, comprised of thyme, oregano, sumac, marjoram, sesame seeds, ground sumac, and sea salt. (Za’atar also refers to the herb of the same name—which is not as commonly found as the spice blend.) Lemony Cauliflower over Labaneh (homemade yogurt), is a celebration of textures and flavors—crispy, cool, creamy, and more.
There are specialty breads, spreads, salads, and so many delicious things that you’ll want to make right away. I only wish it were summer; I’d be making the Toasted Challah Caprese Salad with Za’atar Vinaigrette. (I can’t justify making this recipe with winter tomatoes; It seems like an affront.)
There’s also kugel, tabbouleh, haloumi, recipes with roasted grapes, and the most gorgeous looking jeweled rice, studded with barberries (or dried cranberries) and a healthy showering of chopped dill.
What is Shakshuka?
The dish I selected to share with you is a variation on a well-known Middle Eastern dish called shakshuka, which is typically made with tomatoes and therefore is not green.
Here, you cook down a ton of greens and herbs with some onions, garlic and dried herbs and spices, add a little half and half, and then cook the eggs right in the pan. Scoop it out and serve with the crispy latkes.
Q & A with Adeena Sussman
This cookbook is a love letter to the Shuk—something I think a lot of people can relate to, even if they aren’t living in Tel Aviv. (I feel this way about my local farmers’ market, which is an organizing principle of my life.) Tell me what you wanted to convey to people about your experience with it?
I want people to feel the same magic that I feel when I walk into the Carmel market every morning. A renewed sense of adventure dovetailing with the familiarity you can only achieve by being a regular visitor. I love sharing how I made the market a part of my community by essentially moving in (This is only partially a joke since I live a block away!), asking a lot of respectful and genuinely curious questions, and also just standing back and observing how my favorite vendors talk to customers, gleaning local tidbits, and learning from them.
The Carmel market is also such a multicultural place and it’s really a reflection of Israel’s vast and rich collection of ethnic and religious, immigrant-driven traditions. There are Arabs and Jews working there, and religious and nonreligious people, and Eritreans and Sudanese and people from Thailand and the Philippines. It’s really a microcosm of what the real Israel looks like today.
Not all of us have access to the Shuk and its bounty, but we have the Internet and international ingredients are more widely available. So let’s talk ingredients. What’s the most underrated but easily accessible ingredient you need to buy for this book?
Date syrup, also known as Silan. It’s made from Medjool dates and has a rich sweetness with slight hints of caramel and even molasses (minus the sulfur). Drizzle on ice cream with tahini! Shake with pomegranate molasses into one of my best vinaigrettes (and there are many!). Infuse it with warm spices like clove, black pepper, and cinnamon before shaking with bourbon into a Middle Eastern Old Fashioned.
Did you fall in love with any new ingredients, or fall back into love with any specific old favorites?
I am completely besotted with Persian limes, which are dried limes (or lemons) that have the distinct funk of fermentation and add so much depth, tang, and intrigue to any dish that they touch. They can be used whole in stews, but I particularly like them ground up into a powder (a product you can also find online) which I use as the base of a spice dry rub and cure on chicken wings that I oven roast and glaze with pomegranate molasses. They are so friggin’ delicious!
What would surprise people about Israeli cuisine?
What’s so surprising about the culture of Israeli cuisine is premium placed on freshness, a social contract Israelis happily participate in. Whether you are eating out at a corner breakfast shop or eating out at a fine dining meal, if something isn’t at its peak of freshness it’s just not served, from raw ingredients like produce to local olive oil and the staggering array of fresh cheeses. Not to mention the breads, which are just incredibly good across the board. It’s a case of the elements definitely adding up to something that’s greater than the parts themselves.
What became your most used kitchen utensil or tool during the testing of recipes for this book?
My countertop manually operated citrus juicer is definitely a utensil that I absolutely cannot live without. I go through lemons, limes, grapefruits, oranges, clementines—you name it—with abandon, and they’re a huge part of the Sababa cooking experience, from lemony vinaigrettes and preserved lemons to the limes, clementines, and oranges I use in many of my cocktails and desserts. It’s a professional-grade model manufactured on a kibbutz in Israel that is used by all the juice stands in Tel Aviv and looks great on the counter. It’s super cool and interactive, and people are magnetically drawn to it and want to start cutting and juicing citrus themselves. It helps me bring people into my cooking and entertaining process and makes them feel instantly at home in my kitchen—recruiting people to help is the best entertaining tip there is!
Do you have a favorite recipe (or three) from this book, ones you’re still making?
How dare you ask me to choose between all of my children! We’ve got the Tahini Blondies going on repeat virtually every other day in my house; they disappear before I can get them out of the pan. The sheet pan roasted cherry tomatoes are a staple that we can’t live without; they get used as a topping on labaneh yogurt or hummus, stirred into the pappardelle pasta with labaneh cream sauce, and eaten straight off the baking sheet with a spoon.
Is there a recipe in here you couldn’t bear to cut, but you don’t know that it’ll be the most popular one?
I would say that my Amba Tofu Curry is a bit of an outlier. Replacing curry paste with amba—a savory fermented mango sauce that made its way to Israel via Iraqi Jews who had lived in India—is a bit controversial. And obviously tofu and okra aren’t everyone’s jam. I absolutely love the way the flavors come together and I love a good vegetarian dinner… it’s possible that that may not win any “most popular” awards. But I love it so!
MORE MIDDLE EASTERN FAVORITES
Adeena Sussman’s Green Shakshuka with Crispy Latkes Recipe
- Prep time: 30 minutes
- Cook time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Za’atar, as it’s called for in this recipe, refers to the fresh herb of the same name more commonly found in the Middle East. If you can find it, great; if not, feel free to omit or to substitute 1 teaspoon dried spice blend for the fresh za’atar, thyme, or oregano Sussman calls, or for a combination of dried oregano, sesame seeds, and salt.
From Adeena: I shop the Shuk for the produce the way some scour racks for clothes, pouring over a table of greens for the frilliest kale, the chard with the loveliest shade of green, the spinach with the most beautiful tapered blossoms. I end up with arms so full that I get home and start cleaning and separating leaves from stems, eager to cook down the bounty so the rest can fit, albeit tightly, in the fridge. A great vehicle for this bounty is a skillet of green shakshuka, which always seems like a great idea in theory, but in practice has some technical issues: I want my shakshuka base to hold together like a sauce the way its cousin, red shakshuka, does, almost becoming one with the eggs. I found my solution in an American steakhouse side: creamed spinach. By adding half and half to the cooked greens, it brings them together, taking on the earthy flavor of the vegetables while adding a little sweetness and creaminess. I took it a step further, making latkes that serve as the ideal landing spot for those golden yolks and sauce.
Adapted from SABABA by ADEENA SUSSMAN, published by AVERY, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2019 by ADEENA SUSSMAN
Ingredients
For the green shakshuka:
- 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1 large onion
- 3 large garlic cloves
- 1 1/2 pounds mixed greens (kale, spinach, chard), stems removed and roughly chopped (about 16 cups)
- 1/4 cup vegetable broth
- 1 cup packed mixed fresh herbs (parsley, cilantro, basil)
- 1 teaspoon chopped fresh za’atar, thyme, or oregano (or 1 teaspoon dried za’atar spice blend)
- 1 tablespoon finely chopped jalapeño, (about 1 jalapeño)
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg, plus more to taste
- 1/2 to 3/4 cup half-and-half
- 8 large eggs
For the crispy latkes:
- 2 very large Russet potatoes (2 pounds), scrubbed
- 1 medium onion
- 2 large eggs
- 1/2 tablespoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
Method
1 Prep the latkes: Fill a large bowl with cold water. Using the large holes on the side of a box grater (or a food processor fitted with the shredder attachment), grate the potatoes and onions and transfer to the water and let them soak for 10 minutes to release the potato starch.
2 Prep the shakshuka ingredients: While the potatoes and onions for the latkes soak, prepare the ingredients for your shakshuka.
Set out a large cutting board, and finely dice the onion, thinly slice the garlic, remove the stems and roughly chop the mixed greens. Measure out 1 cup packed finely chopped mixed fresh herbs, and finely dice 1 tablespoon of jalapeño. Set the ingredients aside and return to the latkes.
3 Squeeze out the potato liquid: Place a clean kitchen towel on the counter near the sink. Using your hands, lift handfuls of the potatoes and onion out of the water, while squeezing out as much water as you can back into the bowl. The potato starch will settle in the bottom of the bowl, and you will use that later.
Set the potatoes and onion onto the towel. Fold the towel over the mixture and squeeze out and discard as much of the liquid as you can from the potatoes and onions. Set the towel full of potatoes and onion aside.
4 Make the latke batter: Let the potato water settle for about 5 minutes, then gently drain the water out of the large bowl, tipping out all except the white potato starch at the bottom.
Add the squeezed potatoes and onions to the sludge in the bottom of the bowl, then add 2 large eggs, salt, and pepper and stir it all together. Set the latke batter aside and make the shakshuka.
5 Cook the onions for shakshuka: In a 12-inch oven-safe skillet set over medium heat, add the olive oil. Once the oil shimmers, add the onions and cook, stirring, until lightly golden, 9 to 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, 1 more minute.
6 Cook the greens: Raise the heat in the skillet to medium-high, then add the greens in batches, stirring as they wilt and release most of their liquid, 2 to 3 minutes per batch (you don’t want the greens to be completely dead, but they should have slumped and reduced in size significantly). Add the vegetable broth and cook until mostly absorbed. Stir in the mixed herbs, thyme, jalapeño, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
7 Add the half-and-half: Reduce the heat to medium-low, stir in the half-and-half, and simmer until the mixture unifies and thickens slightly, 1 to 2 minutes. (At this point you can turn off the heat, cover the pan, and return to the latkes.)
8 Preheat the broiler and pan fry the latkes: Turn on your broiler to get it warmed up. You will finish the shakshuka in it.
In a 10-inch skillet set over medium heat, add 1/4 cup of oil (don’t worry, they’ll still crisp without burning). Scoop 1/3 of cup of latke mixture into the pan. You should be able to cook 2 or 3 per batch. Press down gently so each latke is about 4 inches around and 1/2-inch thick.
Fry until each side is golden and crisp, 3 to 4 minutes per side. Drain on paper towels. Repeat with the remaining batter and oil.
9 Finish the latkes and the shakshuka: When you add your last batch of latkes to their pan, set the skillet with the shakshuka in it over medium heat. Remove the lid, and use a spoon to hollow out 8 small wells for the eggs. Crack the eggs into the wells. Cook on the stovetop for 3 minutes, then transfer to the broiler to cook until the whites are just opaque but the yolks are still runny, 2 to 3 minutes.
10 Serve: Place a latke on each plate, serve the green shakshuka on top or alongside.
