The Palomar Cookbook celebrates Israeli cuisine

It isn’t easy describing Israeli cuisine to people who haven’t visited the country. If you mention foods you ate at traditional shops – falafel, hummus, labneh, tzatziki – they’ll say they are Middle Eastern; if you speak of dishes you tried at modern restaurants – burgers, pizza, sashimi – they’ll insist what you had was American, Italian or Japanese.

It seems natural that Israeli food would be diverse because the State of Israel is made up of immigrants from all over the world while Jewish cuisine (not necessarily the same as Israeli cuisine) was influenced by whatever countries the people came from or lived in.

In the introduction to The Palomar Cookbook, Layo Paskin writes about what influences him and the other founders of award-winning modern Israeli restaurant The Palomar, in London: “In this house, we’re all mongrels, second- and third-generation immigrants who have adopted London and are united by our passion for food: food as the essence of our identities, our culture, our everyday lives and our celebrations.

“We cherish the recipes of generations hailing from Southern Europe, North Africa, the Near East and the Levant, and blend these flavours of home and history with the distinctive verve and vibrancy of modern cooking. For all of us, food tells stories, of where we are from and where we’re going, and the narrative begins fortuitously at our grandmothers’ heels.