Vegetarian recipes from Israel

Vegetarian cooking in Israel crosses two inheritances: the Levantine kitchens, where olive oil, tahini, lemon, parsley and cumin lead, and the Jewish kitchens of central Europe and Yemen, which lean on potato, egg and dough. Dietary law has a concrete effect: since meat and dairy are not mixed, a whole meal is often built without meat so that cheese and cream can stay on the table. That is the logic behind potato bourekas, flaky pastry filled with a salted puree, and potato kugel, a dense, compact bake.

An everyday meal arrives as small plates set down together rather than as courses. Israeli salad, finely diced cucumber and tomato with lemon and olive oil, appears at breakfast as readily as at dinner. The full sandwich exists too: sabich stacks fried aubergine, egg cooked long enough to brown, tahini, parsley and a tart mango sauce called amba into a pita. Shabbat then imposes its slow cooked dishes, since the flame is not relit: Yemenite jachnun, a roll of buttered dough, spends the whole night in a low oven, and is eaten in the morning with an egg, grated tomato and chilli.