You may be famil­iar with Tsion Cafe, an Ethiopi­an Israeli fix­ture of the Harlem neigh­bor­hood of New York City. Known for its tangy injera, piquant shak­shu­ka, pip­ing hot malawach anoint­ed with pats of but­ter and rivulets of hon­ey, Tsion is unique among kosher estab­lish­ments in Man­hat­tan and a fan favorite. If you can’t make the trek to Harlem, you are in luck because Tsion Cafe’s own­er, the for­mi­da­ble Bee­jhy Barhany, has gra­cious­ly encap­su­lat­ed the spir­it and fla­vors of the restau­rant in her first cook­book, writ­ten with Elisa Ung. 

Gur­sha: Time­less Recipes for Mod­ern Kitchens, from Ethiopia, Israel, Harlem and Beyond is named for the Amhar­ic word that means ​“mouth­ful” and refers to the prac­tice of feed­ing those you love from your hand to your loved one’s mouth. The book is at once an inti­mate auto­bi­og­ra­phy and a refresh­ing cook­book. It begins with essays describ­ing Barhany’s child­hood in Ethiopia, a tem­po­rary stay in Sudan, and her family’s ulti­mate, hard-won entrance to Israel. Although the sto­ry of Ethiopi­an Jews’ jour­ney to Israel is one many might know in the abstract, it is a too rare an occur­rence to hear it from a per­son­al per­spec­tive like the one Barhany gen­er­ous­ly offers in Gur­sha. We learn of her child­hood eat­ing dabo bread and spend­ing Shab­bat deeply con­nect­ed to her com­mu­ni­ty and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in Ethiopia. Barhany then takes us to her family’s stay in Sudan, where they had to hide their Jew­ish­ness but took risks to observe Shab­bat ful­ly. Next, we learn of the taste for spices and sweet, yeast­ed doughs she devel­oped as a young per­son in Israel, the home she longed to go to as a girl. Barhany also, how­ev­er, describes the exclu­sion and sus­pi­cion she faced as an Ethiopi­an arriv­ing in Israel. Through­out, Gur­sha is stud­ded with the recipes she was born into and brought with her to Sudan, then Israel, and now Harlem. Spliced among her recipes are pro­files on fam­i­ly mem­bers, friends, and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers — sto­ries that rival Barhany’s recipes in their depth. 

Although I would have been sat­is­fied with Barhany’s fam­i­ly sto­ries and pic­tures alone, her recipes left my mouth water­ing and my palette decid­ed­ly refreshed. Gur­sha is a com­bi­na­tion of recipes from dif­fer­ent eras of Barhany’s life. There are Ethiopi­an restau­rant clas­sics like the chick­pea flour stew, shi­ro, and the Shab­bat sta­ple chick­en dish, doro wat. There are recipes in line with day-to-day Ethiopi­an home cook­ing like a nut­ty sun­flower seed dress­ing tossed through a sim­ple, bright sal­ad; and Israeli sta­ples like bab­ka and shak­shu­ka. My favorite sec­tion of the book is her dessert sec­tion, a decid­ed­ly unex­pect­ed com­bi­na­tion of African Amer­i­can and Israeli prepa­ra­tion styles fused with Ethiopi­an fla­vors. Recipes for lega­mat (fried Sudanese dough­nuts) Barhany picked up while liv­ing in Sudan, a car­rot coconut gin­ger cel­e­bra­tion cake inspired by her husband’s Caribbean roots, and a shahi-spiced pra­line bab­ka all caught my eye. Any one would go well along­side a cup of spiced Ethiopi­an cof­fee, bunn, or hon­ey wine. 

Gur­sha is a wel­come reminder that Jew­ish food exists beyond hum­mus and mat­zo ball soup. Rather, as Gur­sha con­fi­dent­ly and com­pe­tent­ly reminds us, Jew­ish food refers to a con­stant and glob­al fusion of fla­vors, char­ac­ter­ized by the ubiq­ui­ty of Jew­ish move­ment and the speci­fici­ty of each place Jews have called home.