Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking

This cookbook is great! Recipes, photos, advice are all great!It’s a big, heavy book. Sadly, the packaging was just a plastic bag with no padding and no protection. The Amazon driver handled it well, the book suffered some modest damage as a result of inadequate packaging.

I have several cook books, but most of them are gifts from friends that I haven't even opened yet. I have a few that are staples to my diet, like Artisan Bread in 5 Five Minutes a day. Easy to follow, and delicious food without too much work.I love middle eastern cuisine. My brother's in-laws are Lebanese, and I fell in love with the food after having dinner at their house. I had made a few attempts at making hummus, pita, and other staple food items with poor results following online recipes. I read great reviews about this book, so I figured why not.I dove right in and went big early: Zahav Lamb Shoulder (a signature item at Solomonov's restaurant), rice pilaf, tehini hummus, and laffa bread. Was quite an undertaking for my first time, but everything was pretty straight forward. The end result was nothing short of...amazing.Lamb so tender you can pull it apart with a spoon. Smooth and creamy hummus. Puffy laffa with a bit of a crisp on the charred parts, and rice to soak up all of the delicious pomegranate au jus from the lamb. Every recipe was right on the money, no mistakes or ambiguous directions. I foresee myself cooking Israeli for the next few months to master all of the wonderful food described by this book, lol.Thank you Michael for making this fun, easy, and most importantly, delicious!

I live in Philadelphia, and got this cookbook after finding out there was a 1 month wait for this chef's restaurant! Let me tell you, this cookbook makes me think it would have been worth the wait.For starters, it's probably the most beautiful book I have in my house. The full-spread pictures of the food throughout are just the most incredible colors. Even if you don't want to cook from it, it's a great coffee-table piece. Seriously, it's beautiful.I've had this book for a couple of weeks now, and have cooked from it three times. Among the things I've made are: LOTS and LOTS of tehina sauce, charred eggplant (which was unbelievable), mushroom borekas (aka Israeli empenadas), and more rugelah than I'd like to admit. One thing I like about all of this food is that it reminds you how good savory dishes can be.One word of caution, read through the ENTIRE recipes before beginning. A lot of these recipes require letting things set for a few hours, which is easy but can catch you off guard if you're trying to cook for dinner.Another thing I liked about this cookbook is that it's both instructional and tells a story. Every recipe includes a brief explanation of how he learned about it, and how he learned to cook it.This book is a great introduction to Israeli food, a delicious but unrepresented cuisine as far as I've seen.

This cookbook is beautiful. It is interesting to read. I feel as if I am in the kitchen sitting around the table talking about the history of each recipe and food item with this wonderful and skill chef!

I am a cookbook lover and collector. This book is easily my favorite. The recipes are wonderful and descriptive. I love how they use each recipe to reveal a little piece of this beautiful culture and small bits of Mike and Zahav's own story. When I first got this book home I sat and began reading it cover to cover. I got interrupted when the recipe for the Moroccan carrots began to make my mouth water and I ran to my kitchen to make it immediately. I then sat back down with my bowl of carrots and continued to lick up every delectable detail of this beautiful tome. In full disclosure I should admit that I do know and adore Michael Solomonov and the restaurant Zahav. I love that with this book now everyone can. As a regular at the restaurant it is so easy to see how important Israeli hospitality is in creating the magic of Zahav. It is amazing to me what a terrific job Mike and Steve have done in continuing to capture this in their book. I can not wait to cook my way through every story in this book and to gift this book to everyone I know so they can do the same. To the authors, thank you yet again.

This is the best cookbook I've ever had. I haven't made a single thing in here I don't like. It is structured in an odd way in places (for example, you need tahina sauce to make hummus and they recommend a specific ingredient in the tehina sauce, so the whole recipe takes about 5 pages (6 if you are making a different type of hummus) spread out over the whole book. Even so, I just put sticky notes in to reference and cooked away! I made it for a group of 8 people and we all ate until we were absolutely stuffed! I got tons of compliments on the cooking! In case you're interested, I made the hummus tahina, Jerusalem hummus, Israeli salad, pita, rice pilaf with kale, and fried potatoes with harissa tahina. Honestly would have just bought the book for the hummus recipe it is so good.

Overall this an excellent cookbook with an accompanying narrative well worth reading. The blend of influences in Israeli cuisine is far more interesting than I had known and the mix of dishes covers a broad range. Working with the recipes takes a little bit of work as the measurements are sometimes a bit off. In particular, the braised lamb shoulder requires careful review. If you make it exactly as written, the results will be too sour especially when reheated the next day. Similarly, the Moroccan carrots recipe produces too much dressing. Use the dressing judiciously and you'll have a great dish.As a rather experienced home cook, I'm able to make the adjustments. However, a novice may find times when things seem off. Pesist and adjust and the results will be well worth the time.