Ada Yonath at the table

In Israel, meals aren't served in courses — starter, main, dessert. Instead, the table is covered with small plates — salatim — that everyone picks at together: hummus, vegetables, eggs, pickles, all sopped up with bread. This is mosaic cuisine, a blend of diasporas (Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Yemenite) gathered on the same tablecloth. Bread and sesame appear everywhere, and coffee closes almost everything.

A paste of ground sesame seeds, a cornerstone of Levantine cuisine. It appears savory in hummus and sweet in halva: one ingredient, two faces. For Ada Yonath, who spent her life revealing the hidden structure of tiny things, this sesame ground into cream is a nice wink.