Introduction

One of our favourite recipes in this collection, a simple couscous with tomato and onion, is based on a dish Sami’s mum, Na’ama, used to cook for him when he was a child in Muslim east Jerusalem. At around the same time, in the Jewish west of the city, Yotam’s dad, Michael, used to make a very similar dish. Being Italian, Michael’s dish was made with small pasta balls called ptitim. Both versions were beautifully comforting and delicious.

A dish just like Michael’s is part of the Jewish Tripolitan (Libyan) cuisine. It is called shorba, and is a result of the Italian influence on Libyan food during the years of Italian rule of the country, in the early twentieth century. So Michael’s ptitim was possibly inspired by Tripolitan cooking in Jerusalem, which in turn was influenced by Michael’s original Italian culture. The anecdotal icing on this cross-cultural cake is that Michael’s great uncle, Aldo Ascoli, was an admiral in the colonial Italian navy that raided Tripoli and occupied Libya in 1911.