As a child, Adeena Sussman looked forward to the magic of Shabbat—the traditional Jewish day of rest—all week. It’s a treasured time when family and friends come together to relax, unwind, and revel in one another’s company during open-ended, and tantalizing meals. In Sussman’s home, then and now, the Shabbat table is a centering force, a nourishing place where one and all are welcome. It’s an opportunity every week to feed the soul.
Shabbat cooking is all about smart techniques, sound prep, and tasty, comforting flavors. We have not one, but two recipes to sare with you from Sussman’s new cookbook Shabbat. Because after all, what’s a drink without a snack and a snack without a drink?
Give Shabbat cooking a try with a dip Sussman calls the “Venn-diagram overlap of easy and delicious” and a margarita perfect for this transitional time of year.
Sip: Pomegranate Sumac Margarita
Snack: Feta, Artichoke, and Pea Dip
While you cook up your snackage, press play on some recently pubbed audiobooks. There’s something delicious for every listener:
Elisheva Cohen has just returned to New York with four years of sobriety and a scholarship to study photography with art legend Wyatt Cole. But the morning after a mind-blowing hookup, Wyatt Cole walks into the classroom, and Ely realizes the man she just spent the night with is her teacher. Wyatt has worked hard for his sobriety and career. He can’t risk it all for Ely, no matter how attracted to her he is or how bad he feels about insisting she drop his class. In A Shot in the Dark, Wyatt can help with her capstone photography project, but he cannot fall in love with her in the process.
It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper of a once-famous novelist William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. Andrew Bogle grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, and has found himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture. The “Tichborne Trial” captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task. The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of “other people.”
When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street they couldn’t believe they had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood and the ghosts of former inhabitants appear. Most people would flee. Margaret is not most people. It’s her house. But after four years, Hal leaves abruptly. Their daughter Katherine arrives, intent on looking for her missing father. To make things worse, September has just begun, and with every attempt Margaret and Katherine make at finding Hal, the hauntings grow more harrowing, because there are some secrets the house needs to keep.