This dreamy staple of the Israeli street food scene is delicious. Pretty much everything else in this is do-able in advance. As long as you keep the cooked aubergine slices warm (in a baking tray with foil on it?! In a low oven?) and have someone on pitta toasting duty, you could knock loads of these out for a tonne of people and satisfy a crowd.

Method:

• To make the Israeli salad: chop the cucumber(s), tomatoes and onion into really small chunks, all of a similar size and put them in a bowl. Add the chopped parsley.
• Put the olive oil, lemon juice and salt in a bowl and whisk them together.
• Stick your finger in. Try it. More acidic? Add some lemon. Needs to be saltier, add some salt. Too lemony, add more olive oil – you get the idea.
• Put the vinaigrette onto the salad and toss it all about. Set aside.
• Get a frying pan on with a good lot of olive oil in it (about 2 mm/1⁄16 in deep) and get it medium- hot. Fry the aubergine slices in the oil for 3-5 minutes, until they are golden and soft with zero rawness left in them. (Cooked= golden/oily/squidgy/floppy; Raw = pale/dry/firm/not floppy.) Once cooked, put them on a plate, on some paper towels and give them a good sprinkle of salt.
• Pop the pitta in the toaster and get it nice and hot. If it’s round, crack it open and if it’s oval, cut it in half and build as two halves. Smear hummus all over the insides of the bread.
• Flop two bits of warm aubergine in (or flop one in each half) and drizzle them with tahini.
• Arrange the gherkin slices in a layer everywhere and the same with the boiled egg. Smear/ drizzle amba everywhere, bundle in the Israeli salad getting it right to the bottom and you’re done – mazel tov!

Tinkerings:

I keep thinking how nice some chopped up guindillas (those green pickled chillies) would be in here, but it doesn’t want much messing with, I don’t think. My friend Itamar (of Honey & Co fame) makes his with fried eggs, which is definitely a good idea!

Adapted from Max’s World of Sandwiches (Hardie Grant) by Max Halley and Ben Benton