Shira Petel’s Shaffa Bar in the heart of Tel Aviv delivers a café experience so picture perfect that I was convinced that I would never eat in a regular restaurant again. Café tables in the street, a slow, meandering stream of foot traffic, colorful meze plates, cotton stalks impersonating flower arrangements, and the best minty spritzer I’d ever had all combined to make that lazy afternoon in Tel Aviv one of my fondest memories. Plus, Shira Petel is a charmer—smart, a great cook, and the perfect host.

I was immediately struck by how Shira’s cooking blended together regional dishes and ingredients. She served her version of lahmajoun, flatbread topped with a beef/lamb mixture, but made it her own with a sprinkling of leaves that looked like cress, drizzled with yogurt. Another regional classic is ful, pureed fava beans, but Shira instead uses lima beans mixed with olive oil, tomato, chili and fresh oregano. Lighter and, to my mind, better. Along with chopped liver and lox, the usual suspects, she also served the dish that was the standout of the afternoon: slow-roasted cabbage with skordalia sauce. The cabbage was charred, creamy and slightly sweet and the sauce, skordalia, is made with either potatoes or bread, and delivers a white, creamy buzz of garlic.

Back at Milk Street, we co-roasted a head of garlic along with the cabbage for the first half hour and used that in the skordalia sauce, which is made from a puree of nuts, olive oil, garlic and lemon juice or vinegar, with a base of, in our case, rustic bread without crusts. We lined a baking sheet with aluminum foil and then wrapped it around the cabbage to steam it. We then finished roasting it uncovered to get the deep char we were after, since it delivers a ton of flavor.

Don’t be shy about deeply charring the two cut sides of the green cabbage. It is the combination of char and sauce that lies at the foundation of this splendid recipe.

Christopher Kimball

Christopher Kimball is founder of Milk Street, which produces Milk Street Magazine, Milk Street Television on PBS, and the weekly public radio show Milk Street Radio. He founded Cook’s Magazine in 1980 and was host and executive producer of America’s Test Kitchen until 2016. Kimball is the author of several books, including "The Yellow Farmhouse" and "Fannie’s Last Supper."