For cookbook author Adeena Sussman, moving to Tel Aviv reshaped her kitchen — and her life

(RNS) — It’s like a film plot: A woman working at Gourmet magazine and then celebrity cookbook writing in New York City. Then, after years of being single, she falls in love and moves across the world with her new husband. To acclimate to her new home, she starts writing about it. She becomes a New York Times-bestselling cookbook writer.

Who could play her in the movie?

The real-life protagonist, Adeena Sussman, suggests Bette Midler when she was younger, Teri Garr or Toni Collette — a “good actress with an interesting face,” she suggested in an interview with RNS on Google Chat. Her new locale? Tel Aviv, whose cuisine and the mixtures its intermeshing of cultures produce have given shape to all three of her cookbooks — including the newest, “Zariz: 100 Easy, Breezy, Tel Aviv-y Recipes .” It published in April and has appeared on the Times bestseller list.

During a recent visit to the Pittsburgh Jewish Community Center at the end of her six-week U.S. tour to promote the book, she told the audience that she is proud to be described as “Ottolenghi without the potchke”(fuss or involved work), referring to the Israeli-born British  chef , Yotam Ottolenghi .

Growing up in a…