Jerusalem Letter: There are few aspects of life in Israel that are not infused with politics, so why should food be exempt? I dined recently with a group of friends including a Palestinian-American at a restaurant in Jerusalem owned by a highly regarded Israeli chef.
As we scanned the elegant menu, I asked if anyone knew what the dish Sambousek was. The Palestinian-American explained that it was a traditional Arab half-moon-shaped stuffed pastry. "But I bet they will claim that it's a traditional Israeli dish," he added sniffily.
When the waitress came to take our order, I inquired about Sambousek. Right on cue, she pleasantly explained that it was a traditional Israeli filled pastry.
We smirked at each other behind our menus.
In the interests of journalistic objectivity, I did some research and found recipes for Sambousek in both a Palestinian cookery book and a Jewish one, which said that Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, Turkey, North Africa, Iraq and Iran eat such pies at weddings, bar mitzvahs and on the Sabbath.
Not satiated by this result, I sought out the opinions of two noted Middle Eastern food writers, who stated that the pastry turnovers are of either Persian or Arab origin.
The waitress may have been confusing Israeli cooking with Jewish cooking, which, because it is the food of a migratory people, bears many different influences. In this young state of immigrants from many continents, it is hard to pin down any particular dish as uniquely Israeli.
The diet here is a healthy fusion of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern staples, with the only apparent unifying factor being the huge portions.
A Middle Eastern dish (probably of Arab origin) which Israelis have enthusiastically adopted as their own is hummus, a seasoned chickpea and sesame-paste spread. The world-famous puree is to Israelis what Vegemite is to Australians and peanut butter is to Americans.
Israelis consume on average about 8kg of hummus a year, with recent market research showing that more than 95 per cent of Israeli homes have a container of hummus in their fridges at any one time. Two years ago the Israeli capital Tel Aviv hosted the world's first international hummus festival.
Every Israeli has a strong opinion on where the best hummus in the land is to be bought. And almost all bow to the superiority of the Arabs, who for generations have passed down the secret of their recipes. Even Israeli companies which manufacture mass-produced hummus use Arab names for their product to make it somehow seem more authentic.
My favourite hummus comes from Abu Shukri, a small restaurant near one of the stations of the cross on the Way of Sorrows in Jerusalem's Old City.
The dense puree is served in a shallow dish topped with a drizzle of lemony-garlicky olive oil, flecked with flat-leaf parsley and some whole chickpeas. Its taste is sharp and rich, its texture slightly grainy - and just thinking about it has got me salivating.
It tastes nothing like the anaemic paste that Ireland's supermarkets serve up in plastic pots.
The richest and most crucial ingredient in hummus is raw tehina, a pale liquid made from crushed sesame seeds. To Israelis, the West Bank town of Nablus is best known as the "terror capital" of the occupied Palestinian territories, but it is also famed among hummus fanatics for the quality of its stone-ground tehina, which has been manufactured there since Ottoman times.
Israeli-owned hummus restaurants from Tel Aviv to New York use only tehina manufactured in Nablus, a supply which can be sporadic due to the sporadic Israeli closures of the territories.
A few years ago a debate raged in Israel about whether the ancient Israelites ate hummus. If so, then modern-day Israelis could stake a claim to the delicious dip. However, at a recent food conference in Jerusalem a leading biblical researcher said Israelis had no historical claim on hummus's heritage.
While the tribes of Israel liked their pulses (in Genesis, Esau sold his birthright for a "potage of lentils"), chickpeas, and particularly chickpea spread, were not on the menu, Israeli scholar Tova Dickstein told the audience.
A dish which Israelis could legitimately stake a claim to (but probably wouldn't want to) is manna, the mysterious heavenly substance which the Bible tells us the Israelites lived on during their 40 years in the desert following their exodus from Egypt.
The children of Israel gathered the white and fluffy substance and made cakes from it, but it wasn't long before they got bored and complained about it. And little wonder, because scientific research shows that manna was most likely the dried secretion of sap-sucking aphids, which tastes sickeningly sweet, with no fibre and little nutritional value.
Whole grains, fish, fruits, vegetables, olive oil and modest amounts of meat and wine are the basics of the biblical diet. Anyone for some lentil potage?