Food

Birth of a Cuisine

Chandra Ram

I call it the Ottolenghi effect. All over the U.S. and Europe, home cooks are throwing parties drawn exclusively from his cookbooks, chefs are rediscovering simple vegetable dishes and everyone is talking about cooking with eggplant, yogurt and pomegranates.

But it’s not just the work of one particularly talented and charming chef that has brought this kind of attention to Israeli food. As political and military activities turn our collective attention to Israel...