Ebury Press, 2012, hardcover, illustrated, 320 pages, index, condition: new.

A collection of 120 recipes exploring the flavors of Jerusalem from the New York Times bestselling author of Plenty.

In Jerusalem, Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi explore the vibrant cuisine of their home citywith its diverse Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities. Both men were born in Jerusalem in the same yearTamimi on the Arab east side and Ottolenghi in the Jewish west. This stunning cookbook offers 120 recipes from their unique cross-cultural perspective, from inventive vegetable dishes to sweet, rich desserts. With five bustling restaurants in London and two stellar cookbooks, Ottolenghi is one of the most respected chefs in the world; in Jerusalem, he and Tamimi have collaborated to produce their most personal cookbook yet.

One Israeli Breaking Breads and one Palestinian, Palestine on a Plate: cookbook read, now one by an Israeli and a Palestinian. Both were born in Jerusalem in the same year and neither wanted to tell their parents they were gay. They weren't lovers they are friends and business partners in a restaurant in London, and this book is a collaboration of them going home and finding the food of their city. How they met was they were both employed in the same restaurant in London and bonded "over a shared languageHebrewand a joint "incomprehension of traditional English food".

The pictures are as appetising as the recipes. If you know anything about Israeli food, you would know that it relies on a large variety of really fresh veggies and that Middle Eastern food in general, is less about meat and more about everything else and it usually has cumin, oregano and sesame in it somewhere. The best dish of all is a plate of Palestinian hummus, marked in circles with a fork, drizzled with olive oil and tahina sauce, a pile of chickpeas, soft and delicious in the middle, all dusted with paprika and pita or esh tanoor, a giant flat bread baked on the side of a clay oven, to mop it up. Gee, I'm hungry now. Sadly it isn't diet food, or not in the quantities I could eat it.

There's a Syrian shop (really Palestinian, all Arabs in the Caribbean are called Syrians but all are Palestinian or Lebanese), close to me and it imports food from Palestine, it is hard to resist buying the tins, boxes and packages, especially the giant boxes of sweets and candies. But the only one I give in to (regularly) is the vine leaves. They do stuffed vine leaves better than anyone else, more of a vine perfume and taste (especially the oil/water they are packed in), although the rice filling is pretty much the same as the Greek dolma.