Wanting to preserve traditional dishes of her ancestors, Cordell wrote Miriam’s Table, a self-published collection of authentic Bukharian recipes. Some were passed down from her mother, Miriam Abramoff, and others inspired by generations of this Jewish cuisine.
The English-language cookbook, published initially in 2017, was among the first to codify these dishes.
The child of an Uzbeki-born Jewish father and a mother from Israel but with Bukharian parents, Cordell grew up in Northwest London eating classic Bukharian dishes — largely rice-based and full of fresh vegetables — whose recipes she only ever knew through intuition.
“Nobody ever had written the recipes down; my mother measured ingredients by saying ‘add as much as it takes,’” she recalled.
When Cordell shared her mother’s pilav recipe with Yotam Ottolenghi for his 2012 cookbook Jerusalem, which included a section on the Bukharian Jewish quarter of his home city, the Israeli chef encouraged Cordell to record more of her family recipes on paper.
So she became a cookbook author. With quantitative help from a dietician friend, qualitative help from her many Bukharian cousins around the globe plus memories of cooking with her mother, Cordell preserved over 80 of her mother’s recipes in Miriam’s Table.
“I took a lot of time making sure that each recipe tasted correct, because I wanted Bukharians to feel like they were being transported back to their childhood,” she Cordell said.
The nostalgic dishes reflect the blend of Ashkenazi and Central Asian flavours and techniques they used, with an emphasis on fresh vegetables and herbs, dried fruits and nuts, hearty stews and plenty of rice-based mains.
Rice-based dishes like buchsh - green rice (right) and osovoh - red rice (left) are staples[Missing Credit]
Among the classic dishes she shares are pilav, a traditional Uzbek dish of rice with braised chicken, carrots and raisins; sholeh, or chicken risotto made with “all the vegetables in the bottom of the fridge”; samouseh, or meat pies; vegetables stuffed with rice or meat; buchsh - green rice, made with minced beef, chicken livers and spinach; osovoh - red rice, made with dried fruit and beef; and techoomi osovoh -brown eggs, simmered overnight in onion skin and traditionally served with red rice.
“Bukharian food is a culture,” Cordell said. “It’s designed to be shared - each recipe is for at least eight people, and you cook it all in one pot.” In her introduction to the book she shares her mother’s memories of growing up in the Bukharian quarter in Jerusalem and how they would often host 40 or more for lunch or dinner. On Shabbat her mother — having started cooking on Thursday afternoon — ready to serve chicken soup, roast chicken and chopped salad plus grilled aubergine (boyjohn) with cold meats, then green rice (buchsh) on Friday night. Shabbat lunch was always brown eggs and samouseh.
Techumi Osovoh - brown eggs, are cooked for no less than 5 hours[Missing Credit]
At last month’s Bukhara Biennial, Uzbekistan’s first international art fair, Cordell was invited to cook some of her familial recipes for an authentically Bukharian Shabbat dinner attended by more than 50 guests, a number pushing the limits of the one-pot “family-style” preparation of Bukharian dishes. But it was a full-circle moment for Cordell, who’s been striving to keep the flickering legacy of Bukharian Jewry alive in the UK for years.
“There's only just a few of us now in London, and I didn't want that tradition to really disappear,” Cordell said. And it’s not just the food; as she fondly described the after-dinner tradition of sitting down to eat sultanas, prunes, cashews and pistachios, drink green tea or vodka and play shesh besh, a Turkish variation of backgammon, Cordell added: “Somehow you didn't need any other entertainment, you never got bored.”
The proceeds from Miriam’s Table, which sold out three times, along with funds raised through cooking demonstrations and dinner events, have amounted to over £20,000 raised for two elected charities: North London Hospice and Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice.
A fourth reprint is planned for March 1 2026 to coincide with what would have been Miriam’s birthday.
The real motivation for the cookbook, however, has always been a nostalgic one.
“It's about the legacy,” Cordell said. “I want the tradition of Bukharian food to keep going.”
Instagram: @bukharian_food
