"Chasing Smoke" by Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich

Amman, Jordan © Patricia NivenFor the travel starved, “Chasing  Smoke” is a cookbook with benefits.

Recipes from the Levantine region are nestled within a travelogue that introduces them in the context of place. From Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Turkey and Greece, food explorers Sarit Parker and Itamar Srulovich collect stories, ingredients, and ideas. Their focus here, in their fourth book, is on produce, seafood, meats and breads cooked over fire.

The espoused chefs, who own the London grill-house Honey & Smoke, travel with photographer Patricia Niven, who intimately captures settings from angles that help the reader feel to also have experienced the outdoor markets, eateries, landscapes and fiery grills they include.

Travel is a memorable mix of adventure and misadventure with happy discoveries along the way, and a chef couple’s anecdotes remind us how food-finds and exposure to people and places around the globe can expand one’s approach to eating and cooking. (They confess to following older customers around outdoor markets,  believing more experienced shoppers are likely to lead to the best of what’s offered.)

The Levant is the Mediterranean Middle East, and a regional home to shish kebabs, flat breads, spice blends such as baharat, and za’atar, the sesame paste known as tahini, and Aleppo (Syria) and Urfa (Turkey) chilis.

The cooking parts of this book begin with tips on technique, moisture-protecting wet brines and dry aromatic seasoning rubs for meat, poultry and fish. A third of the recipes involve grilled vegetables. Whole potatoes, artichokes, sweet potatoes, beets and more are cooked in embers. Kohlrabi, a cabbage relative, is cooked about 30 minutes among ashes, rotated until its skin is charred and a knife is easily inserted at its center. Celeric halves go in parchment and then in foil for a 30-minute roast. For the sweet potatoes, they make a tahini with raw almonds in place of the sesame seeds traditionally used.

Peach and endive halves are rubbed with olive oil and grilled for salad. Whole green onions, cabbage wedges, apple slices, and cuts of zucchini and other squash are oil or butter-rubbed for the searing grates.

Whole eggplant is charred over high heat until flesh inside is so soft it nearly collapses. In one recipe, it’s opened, slathered with tahini and topped with an egg yolk that is singe-cooked by charcoal held in tongs. (This charcoal is closer to wood than the uniformly pressed black lumps.)

“This is the essence of our food, distilled into a single dish,” they write. “It is inspired by the first whole burnt aubergine (eggplant) we ever ate, served with a smattering of grated tomato.”

Man at vegetable market © Patricia NivenMost of the fire-cooked meat is lamb, often skewered, as in their signature Turkish-style Adana kebabs, made of ground lamb. There are two recipes each for beef and pork.

They include a variety of seafood — shrimp, octopus and squid — along with fresh-caught sardines, tuna, bass, salmon and other fish.

While the “birds” in their recipes are usually chicken, there is a recipe for smoked duck breast and one for grilled pigeon, a delicacy discovered in Egypt. More accessible are ground chicken kofta patties with feta cheese, spring onion, dill, oregano and lime zest.

Nearly every recipe has instructions for stove-top adaptation.

We made the chicken shish kebabs with a garlic confit marinade. This involves oil-poaching (frying, actually) cloves of garlic in their skins — a full head’s worth. The skin keeps them from browning, and they soften like roasted garlic, leaving behind an infused oil. About 1/4 cup of the oil is blended into the marinade, along with all the skinned mashed garlic, a small, chopped bunch of parsley, the zest of half a lemon, salt and pepper. Chicken thighs marinate in this blend overnight. They are slow cooked,  flavorful, moist and tender, served with a squeeze of lemon juice.

In the Levant, meals are usually finished with fresh or dried fruit, often dates, the authors note. A special option is their recipe for grilled stone fruits with rosemary and rose syrup. Here, peaches, apricots, plums and cherries are grilled “to loosen their flavor and juices,” then drizzled in a syrup infused with rose and grill-heated rosemary.

Grilled stone fruits with rosemary and rose syrup

Ingredients

4 peaches and/or nectarines

6 apricots and/or loquats

8 small plums

20–24 cherries

Afew sprigs rosemary

For syrup

2-1/2 ounces sugar

1-3/4 fluid ounces water

petals from 2 organic roses (or 1 tablespoon rose water)

2 thin slices lemon

Instructions

1. You can either place all the fruit on the grill in one go, turning occasionally, and take them off as they cook, or start with the peaches as they will need the longest (about 6–8 minutes), then add the apricots (5–6 minutes), then the plums (about 2–3 minutes) and finally the cherries for just a minute to loosen their flavor and juices. Add the whole sprigs of rosemary to the grill for a few seconds to enliven the oils and then put the grilled fruit and rosemary in a serving bowl.

2. Mix the sugar with the water, rose petals and lemon slices in a small saucepan and bring to a boil on the side of the grill. Allow to cook for 3 minutes, then carefully pour over the fruit.

-- From "Honey & Co: Chasing Smoke" (Pavillion, $35) by Sarit Parker and Itamar Srulovich. Photos © Patricia Niven