Ana Sortun and Maura Kilpatrick’s new cookbook takes its name from their cozy west Cambridge restaurant, a neighborhood fixture since its 2008 opening. “Soframiz” means “our sofra,” and sofra, explained Sortun, “is the name for what you put on the table, everything you put on the table — food, plates, candles — everything that sets a table.”
Sortun (right) and Kilpatrick first heard the word while traveling in Turkey and soon learned that its meaning is both flexible and significant. “Every time we asked somebody what it meant, we would get these sort of slightly different answers,” Sortun said. But everyone smiled when they tried to define it: “It’s very much a hospitality word.”
Of Sortun’s three restaurants — Oleana in Cambridge and Sarma in Somerville are the other two — Sofra is the smallest has the most moving parts, featuring “a bakery, café, retail, catering, CSA pickup spot, cooking class space,” she said.
Sortun, a James Beard award winner, and pastry chef Kilpatrick began writing “Soframiz” a few years ago, pulling together recipes and stories.” It’s not like a cookbook where, you know, here are 100 recipes you can do really fast,” Sortun said. “It’s more of the story of what we do at Sofra. It’s a lot of recipes from what we do there every day, and the story of how Maura and I work together and interpret our representation of this Middle Eastern style of eating.” Among Sortun’s favorite recipes are flatbreads, various meze, green apple fattoush, “a lot of really simple things, all sort of spice-driven.”
The food of Turkey and its neighbors, Sortun added, is all about spice, “a great way of eating — food that tastes good but doesn’t weight you down.”
Sortun will read 7 p.m. Friday at Wellesley Books, 82 Central St., Wellesley (event includes a tasting, please contact Wellesley books for tickets).
Kate Tuttle, a writer and editor, can be reaached at kate.tuttle@gmail.com.