It is an error that needs correcting that in the near-20 years of plugging recipes into this url, only a few truly star cucumbers — and highly unrepresentative too, given that we are probably eating some format of cucumbers at half the nights of the week with dinner, and snacking on them throughout all of the other days. Crunchy, cold, hydrating, inexpensive, and taking well to any region of ingredients you wish to apply, I don’t need to sell you on their appeal, especially as we slog through our nth heat wave of the summer. I suspect that the lack of cucumber representation in the archives has more to do with the fact that little about cucumber salads brings out my inner obsessive recipe finetuner; usually I’m just throwing it together.

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I was thrilled when Sami Tamimi told me he was coming to Paris. Sami recently released his third book, Boustany: A celebration of vegetables from my Palestine, so I invited him into my kitchen to make a recipe from it with me. And the weather was so nice, we decided to prepare it outside.

Get Boustany!

Sami is the co-founder of the Ottolenghi restaurants and delis, and the author of Falastin, one of my favorite cookbooks, which explores his Palestinian heritage through stories and recipes from his homeland. Boustany focuses ore squarely on the vegetable dishes of Palestine.

Sami’s book features a bounty of recipes that focus on vegetables, such as salads like the Fridge-raid fattoush, and there are beautifully verdant Gazan fava bean falafels. I’ve never made falafels, but his recipe and the gorgeous photo that accompanies it make me want to. Other recipes that I’ve bookmarked are the spicy Shatta condiment, Bulghur wheat dumplings & lentil soup, and Ouzi phyllo parcels, which are individual dishes filled with rice, orzo, vegetables, nuts, and spices.

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Where does chocolate fit in? Well, like tomatoes and squash (which are lavishly featured in the book), chocolate is also technically a fruit. And besides, who doesn’t love chocolate?

Since I’ve been in the chocolate mode, thanks to The Great Book of Chocolate coming out, I was glad Sami was up for doing some baking and showed up ready to make his Tahini, Halvah, and Coffee Brownies.

Pan-baked tahini, halva & coffee brownie
(Qahwa w Halaweh brownie)

Reprinted with permission from Boustany: A Celebration of Vegetables from my Palestine by Sami Tamimi, copyright © 2025. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House

Serves 6

“Imagine yourself sitting in one of many coffee shops dotted around the souk in Jerusalem’s old city, having a piece of chocolate and a strong, sweet Arabic cardamom coffee. One mouthful of this dessert can almost definitely transport you there. It’s a dessert meant for sharing, to be spooned straight from the pan. A great, easy, chewy and fudgy brownie which can be ready in under 20 minutes. It hits all the right spots for chocolate lovers like me.”

Rounded ½ cup / 150g tahini paste

½ cup / 120ml lukewarm water

Heaping ½ cup | 3% oz / 110g granulated sugar

2 large eggs

½ cup / 20g unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tbsp instant espresso coffee

¼ cup / 1 oz / 30g all-purpose flour

½ tsp ground cardamom

½ tsp ground cloves

½ tsp baking powder

salt

1½ oz / 40g dark chocolate chips or chocolate roughly chopped into ¼ inch | ½ cm pieces (70% cocoa solids) (½ cup chopped)

For the toppings

1½ tbsp sesame seeds

1½ oz / 40g dark chocolate chips or chocolate roughly chopped into ¼ inch | ½ cm pieces (70% cocoa solids) (½ cup chopped)

⅓ cup | 70g plain or vanilla halva, broken into chunks

vanilla ice cream

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Grease a 8-inch | 22cm square baking pan or dish with sunflower oil and set aside.

Put the tahini and water into the bowl of a stand mixer, with the paddle attachment in place, and mix on medium-high speed for 2 minutes, until pale and smooth. Reduce to low speed, add the sugar, then the eggs, one at a time, and mix for a further 2 minutes.

Sift all the dry ingredients, using a fine sieve, and add them to the tahini mixture, along with aheaping ¼ teaspoon of salt and the chocolate. Mix for a minute more. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Sprinkle the top with the sesame seeds and chocolate and dot with the halva. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the edges are set and the center is not runny (it needs to be slightly wet). Set aside for 10 minutes before serving.

Serve with vanilla ice cream.

The brownie can be stored in the fridge for up to a week.

Visit Sami's Website

You can also watch me and Sami make the Chocolate salted butter caramel lava cakes (below) from The Great Book of Chocolate here.

Get The Great Book of Chocolate

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Thai Basil Mock Duck is one of my favorite dishes to order out at a Thai restaurant. I’m no vegetarian, but I love the way the savory mock duck tastes alongside Thai Basil, Thai soy sauce, and vegetables!   Our go-to Thai restaurant charges $19 for a small plate of their Thai Basil Mock Duck stir-fry. […]

Well hello there!

Oh boy — I’m late with this dispatch because our water heater pooped out yesterday. It was basically on its 10th birthday. We tried trouble shooting it and eventually called the plumber, who labeled it planned obsolescence. We’re switching to a top-of-the-line tankless Navein unit which he says is energy efficient and lasts a very long time so long as we do regular maintenance and repairs.

Before sharing today’s recipes, I’m spotlighting cool ideas from PTFSers!

PTFS community tips

I’m thrilled whenever you send me a great tip. Here are ones from this past week!

• and I are obsessed with artisanal Tin fish sauce from Vietnam. Its producer dates back centuries and the flavor is excellent — smooth and not too intense. My mom loves it too, not just because it’s from Phan Thiet, where my dad once served as provincial governor. If you’re in the Bay Area, Maia spotted it at the Costco on Almaden. It is imported by the Lee’s Sandwich people, I’m told, so I was also able to buy it at Lee’s Supermarket in San Jose after the local Costcos quickly sold out.

• used my Kewpie Dupe Mayo recipe to make a dupe of Duke’s mayonnaise! Duke’s is delicious and unavailable in many parts of the U.S. It’s got a cult following in the American South. Get Steph’s tips in the comment section of the Kewpie Dupe mayo recipe (🆓 at le blog!)

• shared an article about 10 must-Try Vietnamese foods. Bánh xèo (sizzling rice recipes) is on the list. Nina took my recent best bánh xèo class and commented that the crepe in the article did not look as good as the one from my recipe. ☺️ My response is that now, she’s making them better than many cooks in the world! 😉 I love being an enabler — especially whenever people make my recipe theirs.

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5 Cool Asian Noodles

Speaking of making a recipe your own, I recently test drove a cold soba dish that’s just sensational. It’s not the classic zaru soba, which always leaves me feeling hungry. This sesame soba is super satisfying yet light and special tasting.

It’s Goma Dare Soba (Cold Sesame Soba) — a cold noodle that’s served with lots of veggies and seasoned by an umami-rich, nutty sesame-soy milk broth. A pop of wasabi at the table enlivens the whole thing. It’s hearty but light. If soba isn’t handy, make it with different noodles or even a capellini or spaghetti (but change the name into something like “Cold Sesame Ramen”).

The recipe comes from Japanese Comfort Cooking, a great new book by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat. I made minor tweaks and took their cues to play with the toppings. The recipe uses dashi so you can now make more of the wondrous Japanese broth! Slurp up the 🆓 Cold Sesame Soba recipe at my blog.

Cold or Cool Noodles?

Ya know, such Asian noodle dishes are never served super cold or even coolish, though they are cooling. They are room temperature.

But compared to a steaming hot bowl of ramen or pho, Japanese goma dare soba and Vietnamese bún are ‘cold.’ If you’re dealing with diners who like to split hairs, stick with the dish’s native language name to avoid misleading them.

Or maybe is has to do with Japanese and Chinese cultures?

In Vietnamese, we don’t have the “cold” or “cool” notion of noodles like in other East Asian cuisines. Certain noodle dishes feature supple tangles of noodley carbs at room temp or slightly warm. If you chill rice noodles, they break! Identifying the temperature of the noodle isn’t important to identify a dish. We want to know what noodle is served. That’s why a ‘cold’ noodle dish like bún chả is just about the noodles and the other main feature.

With that in mind, we are deep in grilling season so it’s time to lean into Vietnamese bún rice noodles. They’re on repeat at our house for rice paper rolls and bún salad bowls.

Just last week, my mom served us Hanoi-style bún chả grilled pork and rice noodles. Southern California was having a minor heat wave and the noodles comforted us without adding to the heat of the day. Make my traditional bún chả recipe with pork or take the veggie path with my meatless version. Heck, combine the two, like I have!

Want to freestyle your bún bowls? Play with my bún rice noodle bowl template to create your own (lots recipes and tips included in the 🆓 post on my blog!).

That said, Viet people are not wedded to their noodle dishes. My mom requested the Taiwanese sesame noodles for her birthday luncheon last week! She made most of her 6-course meal but wanted me to add the noodles. In East Asian culture, noodles symbolize long life and she wants to stick around to eat more good food!

My grand nephew asked to help out with the cooking so I let him put on the final touches. He’s three years old. His parents took leftover noodles home for dinner.

My mom’s a formal lady and I was surprised that she was so smitten with these casual noodles from Taiwan. She loves them and so does the rest of our family. Make the Taiwanese sesame noodles for an easy one-dish meal, or include it in a party menu — present it on a communal platter and ask someone at the table to toss and serve! Along with other dishes, each batch will serve 8.

Meet me at upcoming Cooking Thai events!

Cooking Thai releases soon on August 25. If you haven’t checked out the book, the early assessments and praise by heavy hitters like Yotam Ottolenghi, Ruth Reichl, David Lebovitz, Dorie Greenspan, and Hetty McKinnon are stunningly positive. I’m thrilled, totally stoked.

Event-wise, things are unfolding and thus far, I’ll be joining Pim at these events:

• Wed, Aug. 12, 9am PT virtual talk, free and open to all, register to get the Zoom link

• Tues., Aug. 25, launch dinner @ Nari restaurant, SF, get details and tickets on Resy

• Wed., Aug. 26, 6:30pm book talk @ Omnivore Books, SF, pre-order your copy if you can’t make it in person

• Tues., Sept. 1, 7pm, book talk and tastings @ Bookshop Santa Cruz, pre-order your copy if you can’t make it in person

Coming next weekend for paid subscribers is a stupendous pandan roll cake that I’ve been tinkering with for months. It wowed my family at mom’s birthday party. My taste testers (the neighbors!) love it just as much. I hope you do too!

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