This bread is the love child of the Jewish challah and the French brioche: it is lighter and smoother than the former without being as rich as the latter. And like both its parents, it provides a feeling of both comfort and luxury, everyday and special occasion at the same time. The plait shape not only looks beautiful but makes it easy to tear a piece with your hand rather than slice, which is just how it should be eaten.
The real drama happens in the pastry kitchen – George, our Head Baker, and Julia, our Exec Chef, will be checking the prices, waiting for them to come down a bit so that the real project of September can start in earnest – making enough of our black bursa fig and cardamom jam to last until Christmas, something we rarely succeed in.
The most tortuous of all foods to prepare, this is truly a case of the result justifying the effort. Once you have tasted stuffed vine leaves from the cooking pot, you will understand why tinned ones can never compare. If you are lucky enough to own a vine, then use the fresh leaves – they are amazing when they are young and soft; all you need to do is blanch them for 30 seconds in salt water. But as most of us don’t have access to a vine, we buy pre-salted leaves in a jar. Some recipes leave room for personal taste and improvisation, but this is not one of them, at least not until you have made it a...
This dessert tends to get plenty of compliments and has become our signature dish. It is quite complex, with a few different components, and is quite ambitious for home preparation – not because the stages are difficult, but because there are a few of them. You can use a generic supermarket feta, but for a finish that is smooth and salty, buy one of the tinned smooth fetas sold in Middle Eastern delis. It will be worth it.
Sarit devised this recipe to finish a jar of tahini and a tin of preserved lemons that had been languishing in the fridge. The sticky cookie dough is shaped into individual balls, they’re then pressed a little, and rolled in sesame seeds. The result is a moist, fragrantly citrusy cookie with a satisfying crunchy exterior.
