LOS ANGELES ISRAELI SALAD WITH YOGURT ZA’ATAR DRESSING
That’s why the go-to break fast meal is light: smoked fish, sweets, vegetables. You want to slowly awaken your senses, not put a blow horn next to their ear.
Ingredients
- 2 cucumbers, peeled and diced
- 3 tomatoes, diced
- 3 radishes, chopped chopped
- 1 avocado, peeled and diced
- 1/2 cup plain yogurt
- 2 tsps za’atar
- 2 tbsps good-quality olive oil
- Salt and pepper
- 1 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice, or to taste
Instructions
- In a large bowl, gently fold together all ingredients. Adjust seasonings to taste. Refrigerate until serving.
Notes
Here you can go one of two ways. Order a lox platter or make one yourself. My favorite lox these days comes from Wexler’s Deli in downtown L.A. Like everything Micah Wexler prepares there, it’s made in-house, smoked low and slow over applewood, and sliced so thin you can read a machzor through it. Wexler’s (which is not certified kosher) has smoked fish platters that are expensive, but, hey, you’ve just saved a day’s worth of food bills.
Alternatively, smoke your own. My single best food-related purchase of the year has been a Traeger barbecue, which uses pure hardwood pellets. It doesn’t maintain a low enough temperature to make lox, which needs to be cold-smoked at around 70 degrees, but it does hot-smoke cured salmon into something more deeply flavored and substantial. Serve with an Israeli salad with yogurt and za’atar dressing and some late-summer ratatouille, and you will feel the hunger dissolve, the weight of atonement lift, and the promise and joy of a new year to come.
