Cholent season has officially begun. By that I mean it’s raining, it’s pouring, we’ve had nearly half a winter’s worth of rain in about two weeks. This is what an average day has looked like in Tel Aviv, that is, during the hours when it’s not pouring and the streets …
It took me years to realize that my husband liked Jerusalem kugel. Once I did, I turned it into his birthday cake. This might be because I only recently discovered the dish myself. Wandering through Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market sometime last year, I encountered — let’s be honest — unappealing …
The night before I was scheduled to visit her in Nazareth, my friend Jida called me. “I have bad news,” she said. “Tomorrow is Eid. Everything is going to be closed.” She added, “I know how much you like the market.” Well, I do like Nazareth’s market, but I was …
I’ve been on somewhat of an arak kick lately. See, I don’t really like arak — I can’t drink it straight, and I despise licorice. But it turns out that I quite like this anise-flavored liquor as a seasoning. Kind of like vanilla extract. I don’t think I’d like to …
We have a watermelon problem. You see, we went a little watermelon crazy at the farmer’s market. Watermelon is one of those things I can’t really buy on my own — it’s too heavy. But here I was with my husband at the Tel Aviv port, and here was a …
This is what we call cucumber season. It’s that sultry time of year when everyone is on vacation and the only thing that’s happening is cucumbers are ripening on the vine. This year we’re having an unusually exciting cucumber season, with the largest social protests in decades, but at least …
This is a stuffed vegetable for the summer, cool and refreshing. The season’s best produce meld into a light green salad of melon, mint and wheat bulgur, while the baked squash shells add another layer of flavor and turn the salad into finger food.
The fundamental premise of a recipe is that individual ingredients may be improved if you combine them in various ways. And thus the Israeli summer presents the recipe writer with a dilemma — the summer fruits and vegetables, at the peak of their season, are so full of flavor that …
Grandma’s rice is the only dish I remember my Grandma Bea ever making. She wasn’t cooking much by the time I was born, and as it was, she never learned to make the labor-intensive burekas, bulemas and boyos of her mother’s generation. That wasn’t her era. While her aunts gathered …
No people, this isn’t a winter vegetable, at least not in Israel. Indeed, its vibrant yellow flesh sings of summer. And what better way to serve a summer vegetable than stuffed with fresh herbs? These little acorn squash — known as chestnut squash in Hebrew — are not among the …
