The owners of Honey & Co show us their collection of honeys, Itamar’s favourite fish slice and a great cookbook for simple food
INGREDIENTS
Honey & Co spice mix
Sarit shows us the spice mix they use at Honey & Co. “It’s our version of a baharat or Lebanese seven-spice, but we have like 15 different spices in there. Cumin, coriander, cardamom, turmeric and cinnamon, and then a lot of small touches of other things. It roasts really well with vegetables like cauliflower, with chicken, fish, lamb, it’s a good one.”
Rooftop Honey »
“Honey is a big thing for us,” says Sarit. “Everyone who goes somewhere brings us back some honey – because of the name of the restaurant and because we consume a lot of honeys.” She lays out a selection for us to try. Rooftop Honey from Melbourne is the one she singles out. “Amazing isn’t it? Like toffee.” Also amazing is a Spanish miel de brezos from El Qvexigal and a jar from Herne Hill Honey. Sarit mentions that they use Regent’s Park Honey at the restaurant.
Karawan tahini »
“This tahini is delicious, we bring it back in a suitcase when we go to Israel.” – Sarit
El Nakhleh cardamom coffee »
This is another delicious item that Itamar and Sarit bring back from Israel in a suitcase. They made us a pot when we visited.
OBJECTS
Spice grinder »
“We grind the spices in a little coffee grinder.” – Sarit
Sveico slotted spatula »
Sarit: Itamar has his favourite fish slice which he’ll probably use in a minute.
Itamar: It’s very useful, you can use it to lift things but also to whisk and strain.
Victorinox knives »
We ask Itamar if he’s serious about his chef’s knives. “I don’t think there’s any point investing in expensive ones because we sharpen them so much, so we just get cheap ones,” he says. “The Victorinox ones are good, but we get whatever is around.”
Le Creuset pots »
Is it worth investing in good pots and pans? “Yeah completely,” says Sarit. “We cook a lot and the Le Creusets have been with us 10 years, some of them, and they’re still alive.”
Jars teapot »
“I like Jars stuff – you know, the French pottery? The teapot is theirs. Their stuff featured a lot in the book.” – Sarit
BOOKS
A Year in My Kitchen, Skye Gyngell »
“When I worked as a private chef, I started using recipes so that my food didn’t get too same-y. It was the first time I ever followed recipes and this was one of the books I used. Everything I cooked from it was a knockout. Delicious food. There was one dressing I used to make with tomato and rosemary. It sounds so simple but it’s so nice.” – Itamar
Prune, Gabrielle Hamilton »
“We met the woman who runs Prune in New York. She was very nice to us but in the book she comes across as a bit of a psychopath. ‘Don’t touch this, don’t move this, if I say this, that’s what I mean.’ Wow! We made it to the restaurant when we were in New York. It’s really good. We use one of their recipes for pickled tomatoes, and now we do their pickled prawns, which sounds weird but is really nice. (The prawns are more marinated than pickled.)” – Itamar
Movida, Frank Camorra, Richard Cornish »
Movida is a highly-regarded Spanish restaurant in Melbourne. “Their cookbook is very good. It’s a little bit foreign to me because we never cook Spanish food but the recipes are great.” – Itamar
The Complete Nose to Tail, Fergus Henderson »
“You see the pages are dirty, we’ve actually used it, not just read it in bed. There’s a tomato dish which is great. We have an obsession with tomatoes.” – Sarit
Shunju, Takashi Sugimoto, Marcia Iwatate »
Sarit: You know which one you cook from? The Japanese one.
Itamar: That’s true. It’s really good, if you want to spend two hours on making a pot of rice.
