Trendy western baked goods meet traditional local flavors in these rose-scented cupcakes – a delicate whiff of rose gives these cupcakes a dreamy, Middle Eastern flavor where you least expect it. Rose and pistachio, a combo frequently found in baklava, mesh seamlessly with the buttery crumb, and create an elegant …
Limonana is the quintessential drink of the Israeli summer. Simple and ubiquitous, there’s nothing more refreshing than freshly squeezed lemons and ground sprigs of mint, whether served on ice or blended into a smoothie. In the summer, limonada becomes my social drink of choice — the drink that captures the …
It’d been a while since we dared to enter the Carmel Market on a late Friday afternoon. At that hour the shook is packed, so crowded you can barely move. The first sign it was late in the day (as if we needed one) was when I went to my …
Much like we westerners like Japanese food, but alter it to suit our tastes, Japanese people like western food, but often with a Japanese twist. At the Uomo subway station in Tokyo, there’s a little bakery full of western-style breads (OK, there are actually tons of such bakeries), where you …
“If you show me how to make a cheesecake, I’ll show you how to make a Spanish yogurt cake,” my friend Arturo said. After his first Shavuot in Israel, he’d developed cheesecake envy. And how could I refuse an offer like that?
A decidedly local green has started poking through the mass of exotic mushrooms, Thai eggplants and other cultivated specialties at the Carmel Market — shoots of mulukhiya, a Middle Eastern specialty somewhat strangely known as Jews’ mallow. In some markets around Israel, especially those catering to a more mixed Arab-Jewish …
They say that people either love licorice or hate it, and the licorice battleground happens to fall right through the middle of our household. Since fennel has what I would describe as a licorice flavor, I’ve never been a big fan. But this recipe, which I’m blatantly, um, borrowing from …
In the back of my fridge is a slowly shrinking bag of green mush that I’ve been guarding jealously. It’s the remainders of the half-kilo of handmade green curry paste that we purchased from our favorite restaurant in Chiang Mai, longer ago than I should probably admit (OK, it was …
All it takes is one ingredient to turn loquats (or any other stone fruit) into a sweet, alcoholic concoction: sugar. This fabulously simple preparation comes from my sister-in-law Ora, who got the basic concept from the Encyclopedia of Country Living. Ora presented us with little containers of brandied loquats for …
These biscotti have a tendency to vanish. Biscotti are twice-baked cookies, once into a loaf, and the second time after being sliced, and until crunchy. Something about the denseness means they don’t lose much — if anything — from being made with matzo meal instead of flour, and thus kosher …
