'Keep it simple and stay sane': Adeena Sussman's cooking tips for a complicated wartime Passover

Mar 31, 2026

Adeena Sussman, cookbook author and Israeli food writer, shares quick, comforting Passover ideas and how to cook simply amid wartime. She talks about playful desserts, shelter snacks, streamlined mains like easy brisket and salmon, and how Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market and daily routines have shifted. Her new book Zariz advocates removing nonessential steps for speedy, high-impact home cooking.

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ADVICE

Keep Passover Simple And Match Your Energy

Keep Passover preparations simple and match them to your available time, energy, and budget.
Focus on one dish you love or a single project recipe, and treat smaller gatherings as enhanced family dinners rather than full-scale seders.

ADVICE

Make Effortless Festive Desserts From Store Macaroons

Use packaged staples for easy elevated desserts when time or morale is low.
Example: smash store-bought coconut macaroons into discs, sandwich ice cream, freeze, dip in chocolate, and sprinkle flaky sea salt.

ADVICE

Stop Cooking Immediately For Alerts Then Resume Safely

Prioritize safety over finishing dishes when alerts sound and expect simple recipes to survive interruptions.
Example: she shut off an oven mid-broil during an alert and returned to a perfectly melted, crisp topping.

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As Israelis continue to run to bomb shelters for protection from deadly Iranian missile attacks, the prospect of hosting Passover meals has felt overwhelming.

On the Haaretz Podcast, acclaimed food writer and cookbook author Adeena Sussman offers her best advice and coping tips and shares recipes that are easy and fun to execute, even in wartime. Cooking for the holidays can be stressful, she said, but in challenging times, becoming immersed in what is happening in the kitchen “can be a little bit of an escape”

“This year, let’s focus on what is meaningful and what will keep us sane,” she suggested.

Sussman is the author of three cookbooks – the first was published as the COVID-19 epidemic was sweeping the world, the second on the eve of October 7. Now her upcoming cookbook is due to be published this month in the shadow of the war with Iran.

This makes her, she says, experienced with “simple cooking for complicated times,” which is the theme of her new book, "Zariz," the Hebrew word for “speedy.”

Also complicated: being one of the most prominent representatives of Israeli cuisine in the U.S. at a time when Israel is such a hot-button issue that mainstream media outlets balk at writing about her work. Despite that, she said, her audience continues to grow, particularly online.

As she prepares to tour to promote her new book, she said, “I'm not trying to hide where I live or who I am, and I'm neither trying to defend nor indict a political situation for which I personally have no control.”

On the podcast, Sussman shares her tales of running an informal “WarBnB” where she cooks for friends and family camped out at their home because of the lack of a bomb shelter where they live, plus the most popular bomb shelter snacks, and how the war has transformed the atmosphere of Tel Aviv's Carmel Market near her home.

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