It doesn’t sound like the most unusual dish — tomato sauce with greens and cheese, pretty standard, right? Well, it is and it isn’t. My greens happened to be mallow and wild beet, and my cheese was a traditional Arab sheep cheese known as “jibneh,” which, quite creatively, means “cheese” …
Wadi Nisnas is more than a small Christian Arab neighborhood in the northern coastal city of Haifa — it’s a place full of culinary wonders. When I lived in Haifa seven years ago, I would make regular pilgrimages to Conditory Oriental for knafeh, a pastry of oozy goat cheese topped …
Every so often, us city dwellers get a craving for a little bit of country, and go scouring the countryside for a place that meets our bucolic idyll. One such place is the Schwartzman family dairy on Moshav Bat Shlomo, a few kilometers north of Zichron Yaakov. The dairy sits …
Here I am, making zhug, even though I’ve never really been a big fan. Not liking something has never kept me from trying to make it myself. Plus, I find something intrinsically interesting about making condiments. Things like mustard and mayonnaise, they’re usually considered ingredients in their own right, something …
Brunch is beyond a tradition in Tel Aviv — it’s a culture. Every self-respecting restaurant offers a breakfast menu, which invariably includes “Israeli breakfast” — generally speaking, some form of eggs, a leafy or chopped vegetable salad, assorted white cheeses, a few other spreads, some bread, coffee and/or fresh juice. …
My friend Kazue is visiting from Japan, and her favorite food here just happens to be hummus. So I whipped up a batch or three. Hummus is quite possibly one of the simplest things to make, full of rich, creamy flavor — so long as you use fresh chickpeas. That …
We’re used to seeing capers sold in little gourmet jars, and served in gourmet dishes at gourmet restaurants. Capers, it turns out, are a weed. They grow wild around the Mediterranean, and Israel is no exception. Capers are referenced in the bible, and hung from the walls of Jerusalem over …
For the past few weeks I’ve been working on a side project, and it’s finally been published. The whole thing started after I noticed a few lonely bunches of white asparagus at the Carmel market, as if the sellers were testing the waters to see if anyone would buy. This …
Now is the season to pick grape leaves. Not that I have access to a grapevine; but plenty of other people do, it seems. One of them apparently dumped a pile of fresh leaves next to the scales at some stall buried deep in the Carmel market this past weekend. …
Tonight is Lag Ba’omer, the bonfire holiday, and the air will soon be thick with the smell of smoke. One of the possible interpretations for the holiday is that it marks the Bar Kochba rebellion in 132 C.E., which failed and led to the Romans destroying the Jewish settlement in …
