Michael Solomonov aims to simplify Israeli classics for home cooks in ‘Zahav Home’
Solomonov, who is Israeli and has faced protests since Oct. 7, said he hoped the book would provide comfort at a challenging time
Steven Cook and Michael Solomonov shot the pictures for “Zahav Home” in Solomonov’s Philadelphia house. (Courtesy CookNSolo)
(JTA) — A lot has changed since the last time Michael Solomonov released a cookbook, back in 2018. The celebrity chef has opened several new restaurants. He has expanded his empire beyond Philadelphia to New York City. And of course he has watched his native Israel, the flavors of which have defined his career, come under attack.
After Solomonov raised money for emergency services in Israel following Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion, pro-Palestinian protesters in Philadelphia took aim at him. They staged a protest outside Goldie, his kosher falafel joint, accusing it of “genocide,” and called for a boycott of his restaurants, some of which have Hebrew names.
What the protesters haven’t done, Solomonov and his longtime collaborator Steven Cook said this week, is dampen appetites for their food.
“Since Oct. 7, we are busier than ever,” Cook said during a launch event in New York City this week for the duo’s third book, “Zahav Home,” named for their first, and highly acclaimed, restaurant.
“We all know how challenging it is out there right now,” Cook said. “Fortunately, for us it is a lot of noise. Our customers have doubled down in their support for us.”
Cook’s comments came during an appearance with Solomonov at the Streicker Center at Temple Emanu-El on Manhattan’s Upper East Side on Tuesday, the day that “Zahav Home” hit shelves. Their tour will take them on a circuit of Jewish communal venues across the United States — marking a slight departure from their last launch, when in addition to a range of Jewish and non-Jewish venues, the pair also had a series of appearances at Williams Sonoma stores.
At a time when some Jewish creatives and personalities have openly questioned whether they are welcome in non-Jewish spaces, Cook said he and Solomonov have a different reason for sticking to a Jewish circuit.
“It is a built-in audience for what we do,” Cook told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Jewish communities have been incredibly supportive of all of our books, and we got enthusiastic responses when we started making inquiries.”
Neither Cook nor Solomonov had planned to write a third cookbook after releasing “Zahav” in 2015 and “Israeli Soul” in 2018. But then came the pandemic.
“On March 16, 2020, everything stopped,” the partners write in the introduction to their book. “In a matter of a few hours, we went from more than four hundred employees to zero employees.”
The two men, who had then been business partners for 16 years, lived a block apart at the time.
“At the time that lockdown happened, we had been going to Zahav every single day for 13 years,” Cook said. “All of a sudden we couldn’t go there anymore. Our days were spent doing laps around this park. We thought our businesses would wither away, so in an effort not to be so depressed, the conversation turned to, ‘What did you cook for dinner last night?’ or the lunch I made for my family every day.”
Solomonov said, “Being able to cook for our families and then to have things to discuss and a creative outlet was cathartic.”
The partners realized they had a theme for a book, which they started in 2021 and completed the following year.
“We decided that since we were going to focus on home cooking, we would shoot in an actual home kitchen,” Cook said. “Mike lost the coin toss and everything was shot in his house. Everything in the book was cooked start to finish from scratch. Nobody was handing us pre-prepped ingredients. The recipes were improvised along the way.”
The book is made up of 125 recipes, all of which have Israeli and/or Jewish roots. So there is Eastern European matzo ball soup and Moroccan harira; Shira’s potato kugel flavored with parsley and dill; and phyllo bourekas stuffed with Swiss chard and feta.
Many of the recipes in “Zahav Home” appeared in their other books but have been streamlined for the home cook. Their chraime, for example, a North African fish stew typically eaten on Shabbat, was prepared with a whole fish in “Zahav.” In “Zahav Home,” the recipe calls for boneless fish filets.
“We grew up a little,” said Solomonov. “The ‘Zahav’ recipe is more fussy. I like to think that over the years we have changed and this is more realistic for the home cook. We are cooking for our families, on weeknights, with a time crunch which forces you to take different directions for the same recipe.”
The book starts with photos and descriptions of some of the condiments and spices that you would need to have on hand to cook some of the food in the book, such as baharat, a sweet and savory spice blend; pomegranate molasses; the fermented mango condiment amba; and smoked cinnamon, which they use in their lentil soup and kebabs.
Solomonov and Cook have been using these ingredients for years. But another thing that’s changed since they opened Zahav 16 years ago — and maybe in part because of their influence — is that those ingredients have become relatively easy to obtain.
“People are more familiar with the pantry ingredients that are fundamental to the food that we cook,” said Cook. “Certainly you can find a jar of harissa in any supermarket in America. And the quality and availability of tahini and everything else have improved.”
Although Cook says you don’t have to be Jewish to use the book — and their restaurants have a following that goes beyond Jewish diners — the authors do assume some familiarity with Jewish culture. They describe, for example, their Spatchcock Chicken recipe with Hungarian Seasoning as being perfect for Shabbat.
“I feel like ‘Shabbat’ is in the New York Times crossword puzzle so it’s fair game,” said Cook.
Harder to detect might be the fact that almost all of the recipes in the book would be accessible for cooks who keep kosher. The book does not advertise itself as comporting with traditional Jewish dietary laws, but none of the recipes call for non-kosher ingredients, including shellfish or non-kosher meats, and only one mixes meat with milk, a forbidden combination under the laws of kosher eating.
“That is our guiding idea at Zahav,” said Cook. “It is not a kosher restaurant but we never serve traif, and we never mix meat and milk. But we couldn’t resist [including a recipe for] those meatballs mixed with parmesan cheese. We left that in there as a little Easter egg for people to find.”
The philosophy has extended far beyond Zahav. The pair’s other restaurants — Laser Wolf, Dizengoff and K’far — do not serve pork or shellfish. (They do serve non-kosher meat and, unlike Goldie, do not carry kosher certification.) This fall, they’re opening Aviv, a cross between Zahav and Laser Wolf in Miami, complete with a charcoal grill and fresh Yemeni flatbread.
Also on the docket for this fall: a new restaurant called Jaffa Bar in Philadelphia.
“It will break our kosher streak,” said Cook. “It is a seafood bar.”
But while the food is the main point of their joint business, CookNSolo, in the post-Oct. 7 world they see their latest book as being about more.
“We are seeking ways to either connect to the community or find joy in challenging times,” Solomonov said, “and we are hoping that this book will provide a little bit of that.”
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