It comes in threes, love.
And in so many forms.
First, in the romantic idea of a recipe. If that sounds like hyperbole, go to a bookstore and look, just look at a copy of Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi’s cookbook, Jerusalem. It’s art. You want to make everything. It doesn’t matter how anything tastes because you eat with your eyes in this book long before a long-simmered bite touches your lips.
Second, in the co-authors’ love, shown through the book—an ode to growing up in two different areas of Jerusalem.
And third, in why and for whom you cook this dish. For me, last night, that was the most important part.
I started slicing eggplant at 5pm. I was searing chicken thighs at 5:30, after picking tomatoes from my garden with my guest. The rice was soaking, the eggplants sweating, releasing the tiny amount of bitterness they were allowed to absorb this summer. At 6pm I was frying cauliflower, simmering the chicken to make a broth. 6:30, deep-frying eggplant, straining chicken broth. 7pm, grinding cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, black peppercorns, cumin, coriander seeds. 7:30, layering it all in a pot, tomatoes overlapping each other on the bottom, rice and turmeric-tinged broth on top.
8pm, making the yogurt and cucumber sauce, toasting the sunflower seeds in sweet, salted butter. Setting the table. 8:30, flipping the whole thing onto a platter, topping it with the toasted seeds, mixing the spiced yogurt sauce, sitting down.
Three and a half hours.
Hearing my mom say thank-you. The realization that I’d just made her something full of so much love hitting my heart with a pang.
Was it amazing, the dish? It was exactly what it needed to be. Appreciated. And loved. Like we should all be.
Make something beautiful for someone, even yourself.
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