Honey & Co. at Home | Sarit Packer & Itamar Srulovich
Honey & Co. at Home
Middle Eastern Recipes from our Kitchen
By Sarit Packer & Itamar Srulovich
Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.
Sarit: Hi, I'm Sarit Packer.
Itamar: And I'm Itamar Srulovich. We both together have the restaurant Honey & Co. in London as well as Honey & Smoke, and Honey & Spice.
Sarit: And we've just written our third cookbook Honey & Co. At Home.
Itamar: Which is about what we eat at home, what we cook at home.
Suzy Chase: You were born in Israel, grew up in Israel, and met your husband, Itamar, by mistake in a restaurant kitchen. Tell me about that.
Sarit: I'd actually trained in London, and then moved to Israel, and was working and had no intentions on being romantically involved with everyone, I was very-
Itamar: With anyone.
Sarit: With anyone.
Itamar: Yeah.
Sarit: What did I say?
Itamar: With everyone.
Sarit: With everyone. Definitely not with everyone. I was not romantically involved with everyone, nor anyone at all. I was very career focused and very minded and I had this plan about how I was going to run a kitchen, a Michelin star kitchen by the time I was 30 and relationships were not part of that plan. But then I worked in this kitchen and this guy came in, and he was extremely annoying at the beginning, and we became really good friends first. No?
Itamar: Yes, absolutely.
Sarit: You might not think it was good friends, but we became good friends first and then somehow things happened. Then we ended up getting married and it wasn't the plan at all.
Suzy Chase: So this cookbook is very home cook friendly, you even divide up the chapters in an interesting way, beginning with for us two, then moving on to for friends. Describe how you organize this cookbook.
Itamar: Well, we had a lot of debates about how to go about it. We knew what recipes we wanted to put it in, because we knew what we cook at home, and what we thought we'd want to share. But we didn't know quite how to slice it up, and we felt that the regular divide of starter, main, dessert just doesn't work, because nobody really eats like this at home. Do they? Do we?
Suzy Chase: No, you're right.
Itamar: Unless you have very fancy guests, you wouldn't have starters, mains, and desserts. You'd just have whatever you're having.
Sarit: Also sometimes you just want a snack, or you want to nibble on the sofa or you just want something that is in your freezer. My kind of favorite thing is cookies that are just in the freezer that you can slice a few off and bake. So, we started to play around with this idea of what do we cook for when. What recipes actually, how do they appear in our lives? And this made the most sense to us because they are things really that we just eat when it's the two of us and these kinds of staples that we cook for dinners if friends come and that was a natural way to divide the book.
Suzy Chase: In the for the weekend section you have recipes like honey and spice cookies, fig and feta pide, Jerusalem sesame bread. So what sorts of dishes do you like to make on the weekend?
Itamar: Well, I think the weekend is kind of... You don't really... The weekday cooking is you just want to get some food on the table, you don't want to be too involved, but you do sometimes want to geek out and really take on a kitchen project. And baking I find is something that you do more on the weekend then in the week. So there's a lot of these things, especially the baking recipes that you take time and enjoy the process and you know?
Sarit: Also, that you can kind of go back to and nibble a bit at different times of day, if that makes sense? If we make a big loaf of aubergine bread, then you slice a bit, and you eat it, but then later in the afternoon you can have another slice. It's very approachable in the way you can eat it, but takes a bit more time to prepare.
Suzy Chase: So one of the things you always wanted to do was travel and taste all kinds of foods you couldn't get in Israel. How did you land in London in 2004?
Itamar: You'll be sensing a theme here, we didn't plan to stay in London for a long time. We just thought that we will come for a couple of months.
Sarit: Yeah. The idea was to move on, and do all of Europe, because I had the English passport and once we had married it meant Itamar could work all over the European Union. We thought we would do London for four to six months and then go to France and then do Spain and then maybe-
Itamar: Italy.
Sarit: Yeah. And that was the plan and we really believed that was what we were going to do, but it's quite hard to settle in London. It takes time to get apartments, to get proper jobs. Actually we loved it and we didn't feel that we were ready to leave it yet. Yeah. So it happened that it was a year then it was two years, but we do a lot of traveling. We just do it as a holiday rather than working. We try and go to as many different places as we can, and taste as much food as we can everywhere.
Suzy Chase: It's kind of like living in New York City, I came here and I was like, "I'm just going to live here two years. It's really expensive." And then I've been here for like 20 years now. It's so funny.
Sarit: Yeah.
Itamar: Yeah.
Sarit: It's really strange, these big cities, they suck you in. And also, there's always another part of the city that you don't know.
Itamar: To discover. Yeah.
Sarit: Yeah. There's different cuisines in the city, and you can travel like an hour and be in a completely different place, and that never stops in London. We still don't feel like we know it all. So it's been 15 years.
Itamar: Yeah. I think we very much are in love with London now, I don't think that we be able to live anywhere else. Would you?
Sarit: I don't think so.
Suzy Chase: The first step in your food journey was realizing that the food of your homeland was pretty terrific, and you didn't have to look west. Talk a little bit about that.
Itamar: We had a very clear line drawn between the food that we like to eat and cook at home and the food that we cook for work. We were very much looking to cook Italian food, or French food, or European food. We didn't quite even think about serving the Middle Eastern food that we love so much in a professional capacity. So when we started realizing, and this is, something that London is very good at taking on different traditions and celebrating them. When we arrived to London and we suddenly started to see that yeah, this is actually just delicious food and people want to eat it and we certainly want to eat and cook it. So why the hell not?
Suzy Chase: Isn't it interesting that Israeli food wasn't a thing 10 years ago?
Sarit: It completely wasn't though. It really was just what we had at home. We would sometimes go in London, there's a few restaurants that do beautiful Lebanese food, and we would go to that as a reminiscent thing. But they're not very popular, or they weren't very popular in London at the time. It was kind of like an obscure thing to go and eat this food. It had a complete shift in people's understanding, and in people's relationship to the kind of cuisine. But it's good, it's good that people know more about it now.
Suzy Chase: Sarit, for you growing up met chop salads at every meal, like a condiment almost. When making a chop salad, if you get good cucumbers, you're halfway there. Talk about the difference in flavor between a good cucumber, and an okay cucumber.
Itamar: Oh my God, how long have you got?
Sarit: I know it's like the biggest subject. We still, when we go back home, or if we go to Jordan or anything like that, we come back with suitcases full of cucumbers. I mean, it's ridiculous. But there's something about the crisp... First of all, small cucumbers. Which they keep a sweetness, and a freshness, and a real kind of crispiness to them. It's just something we don't get in the UK. The ones in the UK come in singles and plastic bags, you know? Individually-
Itamar: They're shrink-wrapped.
Sarit: Individually shrink wrapped. They're huge. They're full of water and seeds, and they just don't have that crispiness. It's almost like somewhere between a marrow or zucchini and a cucumber. It's not what we call cucumbers. So, kind of for us everything is about those tiny fingerling ones. Thin, crisp, hardly any seeds, very little juice.
Itamar: Very sweet.
Sarit: Yeah. It just makes a huge difference to a salad.
Itamar: No, but it's true what she said. If one of us would go either back home to Israel or if we travel, we would come back with like three, four kilos of cucumbers, fresh green ones in the suitcase. And this is you know how when you travel you bring candy to work, we just bring cucumbers and placed them in the kitchen. Everyone just digs in.
Sarit: But they dig in, people love them.
Suzy Chase: Is there anything we should look for at the grocery store when we're buying cucumbers? Can you like visually see it?
Sarit: If you can find ones that still have the tiny yellow flower attached and it's still yellow, that's the best thing because it means there's so recently picked that that flower hasn't had a chance to, wilt and die, because they can keep quite well in the fridge for a while. What happens in the supermarkets is you never get to see that produce that still has those tiny little yellow flowers. And if you do, that's the freshest you can find.
Itamar: They want to be really, really tight and taut. They shouldn't have any give when you press them. That's kind of what I look for and they should be nice and unblemished, if possible.
Sarit: And quite light as well. Because the water, that heaviness that comes from water, they should be very light to toss.
Suzy Chase: One recipe in the cookbook that I wasn't familiar with was shatta? Is that how you pronounce it?
Sarit: Yeah.
Itamar: Yeah.
Suzy Chase: Can you describe this and what do you put it on?
Itamar: What don't you put it on?
Sarit: Yeah. It's kind of our version of, I suppose, any kind of chili sauce that you would get, like a Sriracha or anything like that. It's a fermented chili, salted, leave it to kind of semi-pickle, semi-spice it. It kind of makes it spicier but mellower as well. I can't explain. Because it loses-
Itamar: The harsh.
Sarit: ... the harsh bite on your tongue and it's just delicious on anything that you want to add a bit of spice to, that's a thing to add.
Itamar: This is something that you'd make in the summer when you get loads of a fresh chilies, then the excess, you just chop it up and put it in salt and leave it and that would be your condiment for the winter. But you can do it whenever you have extra chilies, or even red peppers, you can make yourself a nice little condiment.
Suzy Chase: What is one recipe in this cookbook that immediately takes you back home?
Sarit: Potato and feta fritters.
Itamar: Yeah. I was thinking that as well.
Suzy Chase: For both of you?
Sarit: Well, it's just because it's different things. It is, but you know what, because we have this in Hanukkah, in the Jewish tradition you fry a whole load of things. Yeah? I don't know how you could have a holiday that just celebrates frying lots of food, but it just is. And I'm not a massive doughnut fan but fried potatoes with a bit of honey on, that I can definitely prescribe. So it comes from this kind of culture of latkes and onions and potatoes fried. But then if you just add a bit of feta for salt and a bit of honey on top, it's just the nicest thing.
Suzy Chase: Tell me Honey & Co., Honey & Smoke, and Honey & Spice.
Itamar: Honey & Co. is the first one, it's the-
Sarit: Baby.
Itamar: Yeah. It's the baby. It is the baby. And it's tiny. It's very, very small. And it's 10 tables. So it sits 25.
Sarit: Yeah, 25 people. It's very intimate and it's very home cooking of the Middle East. Yeah, stews and slow cooked meats and meatballs and you know?
Itamar: Salads.
Sarit: Salads. It's very, very comforting food.
Itamar: And then Honey & Smoke is a big restaurant. It's a proper grill house. It's inspired by the grill houses and kebab shops of the Middle East that we love. And this is very big, very buzzy. The food is very robust. Everything's on the grill. Lots of mesa, beautiful bread, and sweets. And Honey & Spice is a deli, really. We always say that it's the most fun, because we can sell everything that we want. Beautiful tahini that we get from Lebanon and olive oil, that we get from Israel and from Spain and from Greece. We make loads of jam to sell there, and cookies, and biscuits, and breads, and crackers, and cookbooks.
Sarit: But also we buy these amazing knives that are handmade and we buy pots and pans that we like. So it's like our fantasy shop of everything we would want to have in our kitchen, but we don't really have space because we have a London flat. So it's all in the deli.
Suzy Chase: And these are all in London Proper? All three of these?
Itamar: Yeah.
Sarit: They're all five minutes walk from each other. So it's really funny. But we always wanted to be able to be in all of them all the time. And the only way to do that, is to make them walking distance. So they're less than five minutes walk from each other.
Suzy Chase: Last night I made your tuna dip with broccoli, potato, and eggs on page 70.
Itamar: Did you like it?
Suzy Chase: Oh gosh. You know what? This dip is perfect for a quick weeknight meal.
Itamar: Yeah.
Sarit: Yes. That's exactly [crosstalk 00:13:59].
Suzy Chase: It was actually filling.
Sarit: This is when we forget we have people coming or if it's just the two of us and we're running back from work and [inaudible 00:14:08]. And the one thing that you're guaranteed to find in a London supermarket is broccoli and potatoes and some eggs. We always have good tin tuna, because it's one of our favorite things. It's just so quick to make it. It's from everything that you have at home with whatever vegetables are in season as well, because it's great in summer when you have all the produce, just eating anything with that tuna dip is delicious.
Suzy Chase: I'm interested to hear about the Portuguese deli in Brixton that served this dish.
Sarit: They're sadly closed.
Itamar: Yeah they closed. I know it's a big deal here in the States, gentrification. Certainly it is in London, but in a slightly different way though I feel.
Sarit: It is, but it definitely fell victim to gentrification that deli, because it was there for years. I used to go to it first time I lived in London more than 20 years ago and we started going there together, because we lived just around the corner. But you know? It used to be the place where you get the best tuna and the best cured Spanish meats and stuff like that. But sadly no more.
Itamar: Yeah. And also it wasn't fancy because now you think about these European delis. We do have a beautiful Spanish one, but it's so expensive that it's like a special treat, but there you can just go and buy some decent ham and good tuna and stuff like that for... It wasn't a special occasion. It was just very good everyday produce. I miss that. And they were such nice people as well. They were always so nice to you.
Suzy Chase: Yeah. That's happening everywhere in New York City. It's really sad.
Itamar: Yeah.
Sarit: It is because these kind of local places where you know it's just the family and this is their food and they try and keep the prices reasonable and everything like that, instead of just marking everything up in a huge way. It made all this kind of food accessible, and where we live as kind of little Portugal in London, if that. You know that area where a lot of the Portuguese community lives. And there's still some other delis around, but this specific one that we would go to all the time is-
Itamar: Yeah. That was the best one.
Suzy Chase: Now to my new segment, this season called my favorite cookbook. Aside from this cookbook, what is your all time favorite cookbook and why?
Sarit: Wow. This is like an impossibility isn't it, to ask those questions? Can you choose them by times in your life? Because different times call for different things, don't they?
Itamar: I think you need to give us at least three.
Suzy Chase: Okay.
Sarit: There's two of us so maybe we can-
Itamar: We live with something like over a thousand cookbooks at home, I think. We have cookbooks everywhere, literally everywhere. When we were in the West Coast in the summer on the bit of the book tour and, I think, we came back with so many cookbooks. So, it's giving a new definition to the term book tour.
Sarit: Yeah. Book tour, buying all the buying all the books. Let's see.
Itamar: Can I tell you... I'm going to say which one is my favorite now. Right now.
Suzy Chase: Okay.
Itamar: My two favorites-
Sarit: You can't choose two. [crosstalk 00:17:26].
Itamar: No, I said three.
Sarit: No, but what about me?
Itamar: Okay. So you say-
Suzy Chase: Okay, you each get one.
Itamar: Yeah. We each get one and then there's a bonus one.
Suzy Chase: Oh my gosh. Okay.
Itamar: Okay. You start.
Sarit: Well there's a book that really got me into this career, or let's say, cemented my existence in the career in the first place, which is called Niko's. Which was the first British chef to get three Michelin star and he writes this great book. He was self taught, ex-banker I think, or insurance broker or something completely unexpected. He taught himself how to become a chef because he loved food so much. His restaurant, at the time when I started to become a chef, was seminal in bringing London into food. It was just so inspiring for me. The food is amazing and it's probably slightly dated now, but it was the reason I got so passionate about this fine dining, which is not the food I cook nowadays. And I will never probably do it again, because I don't feel that way about it now.
Sarit: But the book in itself was a huge part in my career. It's very English, you know? And because he was over time in England and that first really proper fine dining restaurant. It's an amazing book and he writes so great. He did not give a hoot about anything. He was rude to... He was one of these chefs that would ask customers to leave if they didn't appreciate his food. He was kind of crazy. And the first one he opened was in South London in a really bad neighborhood. I think, it burned down. It was really a big thing at the time. And for me, that whole story was inspiring.
Itamar: Mine, I have to say... I love all cookbooks really, but I think my current favorites. I'm going to split it between two new American purchases that we like. One new American purchase, which is the Slanted Door cookbook from San Francisco and that is Vietnamese food which I started cooking from. It's so nice. The food is so nice. And the other one that I love is the Squirrel cookbook. It's really good.
Suzy Chase: And they have a restaurant, right?
Itamar: Yeah.
Sarit: Yeah.
Suzy Chase: Okay.
Sarit: We could talk about cookbooks really forever.
Suzy Chase: I know. Me too. That's why I have this podcast. So where can we find you on the web and social media?
Sarit: Everything's at Honey & Co. honeyandco.co.uk is our website. And then on Instagram we're honeyandco, or you can find honeyandsmokerestaurant, or honeyandspicedeli. And then there's... What's the other one? Twitter, it's also just @honeyandco. A-N-D.
Itamar: The podcast is wherever you get your podcasts. That's Honey & Co. The Food Talks.
Sarit: Honey & Co. The Food Talks.
Suzy Chase: In Honey & Co. At Home you wrote, "Life is complex, but cooking is easy and something good is guaranteed to happen if you just follow the recipe." I love that. Thank you so much for coming on Cookery by the Book Podcast.
Sarit: Thanks so much. Thanks for having us.
Itamar: It's a pleasure. Thanks for having us.
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