It’s been a rough year for tomatoes. In fact, it’s been a rough year for basic foodstuffs in general. The extreme summer heat decimated produce and pushed down cows’ milk production, while droughts in Russia sent wheat prices soaring. Despite the fact that produce crops in general were destroyed by …
I had the pleasure of attending Sommelier 2010, Israel’s annual wine expo for industry professionals. Fortunately that includes food bloggers, so Irene, who works as a wine steward for the Golan Heights Winery, recommended that Miriam, Sarah, Yael and I attend. And attend we did, sampling wine for six hours …
It’s that time of year — the first autumn rains, which mean the olives are ripe. Admittedly, I haven’t seen more than five minutes of rain in Tel Aviv so far, but it’s been on and off the weather forecast for a few weeks now. I’ve heard rumors that in …
When we were served these sour pink balls as part of a tray of roasted vegetables, no one could guess what they were. That color — like no vegetable we’d ever seen. Was it a very small, pale beet? Dyed baby potatoes? We had to ask the waiter. Maybe the …
This dip won over a self-proclaimed hater of zaatar (my husband) and another self-proclaimed hater of herbs (a good friend). Zaatar is quite popular in this part of the Middle East, and is frequently sold as a dry spice mix, which also includes sesame and sumac (and sometimes salt). But …
It doesn’t get much easier than this. You roast an eggplant, mix it with mayo, and season with chopped herbs. Then you eat it. This is pretty much a Middle Eastern babaganush with a Western twist. The mayonnaise makes it creamier than usual, and the thyme adds an unusual flavor …
I came to the market a little too late on a recent Friday. It was all of 4 P.M., but half the stands were closed. Discarded vegetables lined the path, as greengrocers dumped unwanted produce before the weekend. Piles of lettuce leaves that came to my waist. Boxes of mushy …
I’m not sure I cracked the secret of the secret tahini, but my not-so-secret version is good nonetheless. A few days ago, we were at a vegetarian restaurant called Mezze for the first time. The restaurant isn’t new; how it is that it took us so long to visit a …
On one of my trips through the Levinsky Street market, I happened to have a rather fabulous cooked wheat-bulgur dish at Niso, a Turkish restaurant. I’d never had anything like it, but I could tell that it contained fried peppers and onions, tomato or tomato paste, and some spices. Several …
Yom Kippur is upon us in a few more hours, with its 25-hour fast. The hardest thing about fasting is knowing that you can’t eat. That’s when everything starts to sound appealing. Well, nearly everything. There are still some things I wouldn’t want to eat even if I’d been fasting …
