Honey and Co - Sampler

Sarit Packer & Itamar Srulovich

at home

Middle Eastern recipes from our kitchen

At home Sarit and Itamar, this is us: middle-aged couple, married plus three. Honey & Co, six years old, was our first-born, our tiny, happy Middle Eastern restaurant on Warren Street; Honey & Spice, three years old, is the little deli we opened across the road from the restaurant, truly the ‘sandwich’ middle kid, with a slightly split personality between a deli and a homeware heaven; and lastly our baby, Honey & Smoke, two years old, is a big, screaming, all-attention-seeking Middle Eastern grill on Great Portland Street, just five minutes down the road from its siblings.

We moved to London from Israel on Christmas Eve 2004. We knew almost nothing and no one, but we were head-over-heels in love with our new town and hungry for our new beginning. If we ever got lonely, we had each other; and if we got homesick, we headed to our kitchen to recreate some of our childhood flavours, Middle Eastern comfort food – it made us think of friends, family and a life we had left behind, and most of all it made us happy.

When we wanted to make new friends, it was our kitchen we turned to again.

Cooking for the people who let us into their lives was an easy way for us to show ourselves, our little story: chopped salad and eggs, cumin and lemon, garlic, olive oil and lamb, and many more things you cannot say with words.

Over the years there have been many meals shared. There have been birthdays and weddings, births and deaths, silly and serious feuds, moments of great joy. And always there’s a table laid, people coming over and us in the kitchen, cooking through good and bad.

As we opened our restaurant, our kitchen at home got abandoned for a while. It was just us two, working all hours of the day. We took everything to work; not only every piece of kitchen kit that could be useful but also the actual dishes we cooked at home. The food that had brought us together was now bringing more and more people to our table: guests at the restaurant and then others, who also wanted to cook with us, or help us serve our food. As more people joined the team, we could gradually work a bit less, reclaim our home kitchen and really enjoy the precious time we got to spend there. We could cook with ease again, play a bit, and be reminded what it is all about – simple food made with care, solely for the pleasure of those you cook for.

Life is complex, but cooking is easy, and something good is guaranteed to happen if you just follow the recipe. Every home, every life, has its anchors and rituals, its own way to come together, its own recipes for happiness. In this book we offer the recipes that make up our home, our happiest place; the bright flavours we adore and prepare for the people we love most.

At home

For us two

Green shakshuka When I was growing up in Jerusalem you could see them in every neighbourhood – old ladies in traditional clothes from the villages nearby, sitting on the pavement with a rug underneath them, bunches of leaves splayed in front of them, selling the products of their gardens and field forages. Eggs of different colour and size. Bunches of parsley, dill and coriander, sandy and fragrant. Mint and other tea herbs: esoteric things with strange, wonderful flavours – white savory, lemon geranium, bitter leaves which were used to make a delicious infusion that was reported to make you sleepy (we called it sheba but it’s called absinthium or wormwood in English). Mustard greens, wild green chard, spinach, and other vegetal leaves so obscure we didn’t even know their names. We didn’t know then about organic or bio-dynamic vegetables, and foraging then was not the buzzword it is now, but everyone knew that the stuff these ladies were selling just tasted better.

We go to the farmers’ market on Sundays. Nothing fancy, just good wholesome meat, some cheese, eggs, bread (which always costs more than you’d expect), fruit, and vegetables as they should be: beets, carrots and radishes with dirt and leaves still on them, English spinach with big leaves and big flavour, leeks and bunches of chard. I always buy too much. By Thursday all the leaves in the fridge will have to be thrown away and the eggs will no longer be farm-fresh, so on Wednesday evening my thrifty wife charges through the fridge and picks them all out – the tops from carrots, beets and radishes, whatever is left of the chard and spinach, and all the herbs in the house – before they wilt.

She gives them a good wash and a chop, and stews them all in olive oil.

Once all the leaves are tender and their liquid has gone, the eggs go on top. Our Wednesday night dinner tastes different every time, but always makes me think of those women back in their villages, with whatever leaves and eggs they didn’t sell that day, having a similar meal, humble and delicious.

For us two

Roasted duck legs with clementines and apricots

Dinner for 6–8 8 duck legs For the salt rub 30g/1oz/2 tbsp table salt 1 tsp ground cinnamon 1 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper 1 tsp ground ginger For roasting 2 onions, peeled and cut into wedges 2 clementines, quartered 150g/51⁄4oz/1 cup dried apricots 2 bay leaves 2 star anise

This should be the centrepiece for your next Christmas meal, it looks so festive and wintery. The apricots will soak up all the lovely duck juices, the skin will crisp and the whole thing will make you want to snuggle by the fire.

Don’t be intimidated by duck. This is the simplest thing to cook and really excellent for entertaining as it will not dry out, and can also be made in advance and re-heated to serve. The only thing to take into account with this recipe is that the duck legs need to be salted before cooking: a day ahead, if you can, or at least 6 hours as a minimum.

1. Mix the salt rub ingredients together and sprinkle over both sides of the duck legs. Wrap in cling film and place in the fridge for at least 6 hours, but ideally about 24 hours.

2. Heat your oven to 220°C/200°C fan/425°F/gas mark 7 and place the duck legs in one layer in a deep roasting tray. Roast in the oven for about 20–25 minutes or until the skin starts to colour. Carefully drain off the fat (you can keep it to roast some potatoes on another day – it lasts for ages in the fridge).

3. Add the onion wedges and clementines to the tray, and return to the oven for another 15 minutes. Remove the tray again, add the apricots, bay leaves and star anise, and then pour over enough water to reach just halfway up the duck legs (you may need a little more or a little less than 600ml/21fl oz/generous 21⁄2 cups, depending on the size of your tray).

4. Reduce the oven temperature to 180°C/160°C fan/350°F/gas mark 4.

Cover the tray, return to the oven and cook for another 40 minutes.

Remove the cover and check the liquid level – it should still reach about halfway up the legs. Baste all over, re-cover and return to the oven for another 30 minutes.

5. Remove the cover, baste again and return to the oven for 15 minutes, before basting one last time. Push any apricots into the liquid so that they don’t burn, then cook for a final 15 minutes to finish crisping up the skin.

For friends

For friends

About Honey & Co. Opened in 2012, Honey & Co was Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich’s first solo adventure – a tiny restaurant in London serving traditional Middle Eastern food, the kind you find in people’s homes, using the best ingredients they could get their hands on. They have since gone on to open Honey & Spice and Honey & Smoke as well. Cooking and baking since she was five, Sarit trained at Butler’s Wharf, at the Orrery under Chris Galvin, J Sheekey, The OXO Tower, Ottolenghi and Nopi. Itamar Srulovich was born and raised in Jerusalem. Also cooking since the age of five and leaving a great mess in the kitchen ever since, Itamar trained on the job in various places in Tel-Aviv where he met Sarit. They are the authors of a weekly food column in the Financial Times, as well as the award-winning Honey & Co: Food from the Middle East and Honey & Co: The Baking Book. @Honeyandco www.honeyandco.co.uk #HoneyandCoAtHome

Praise for Honey & Co: Food from the Middle East: ‘The ingredient that is in every mouthful, that isn’t on the menu, is the huge dollop of home-made love…’ The Sunday Times ‘It's the kind of stuff you'd love to dish up to your pals and bask in the resulting praise... It's food you would always be happy to eat.’ Guardian ‘Here, the food is as much about creating an atmosphere as it is about any individual dish, a new way of looking at Middle Eastern cuisine, subtler, more modern.’ Sunday Telegraph, Stella magazine The Sunday Times ‘Food Book of the Year’ 2014 Fortnum & Mason Food & Drink Awards ‘Cookery Book of the Year’ 2015 Guild of Food Writers Awards ‘Best First Food Book’ 2015

For us two

For friends

For a crowd

For the weekend

This is our home food, our happiest place; the bright Middle Eastern flavours we adore and prepare for the people we love most.

Figs and walnuts; lemon and mint; the saffron-spiced soup we managed to make even though the kitchen cupboard was empty; the scent of cumin and lamb from the oven, greeting our friends when they come over; the seasonal treats we wait for every year; the grand centrepiece we worked all day to make, a cake cooling on the kitchen counter; a quick, delicious snack made in seconds at the end of the day; a tasty something that says like nothing else can: welcome home.

UK ÂŁ26.00

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