ingredient
“What would you eat if you hadn’t eaten in a week?” my husband asked the waitress. That’s how I feel sometimes. The day slips by, so many things need to be done, and by the time I finally find the time to eat, I’m so hungry I don’t even know …
Pilafs are a lovely, easy way to make a quick meal — a wide range of ingredients meld together into a coherent whole. So I’ve been making a lot of them lately. The base here is black rice — not wild rice, which can cost as much as 60 shekels …
One of the ironies of the Israeli summer is pumpkin. Because when it’s so hot that you want to crawl out of your skin, there’s nothing more appealing than a steaming bowl of pumpkin soup. Or stewed pumpkin. Because this is when pumpkin (and other so-called “winter squashes”) are in …
I had unfinished business with this rice. I was heating the last leftover serving in the microwave when my glass plate shattered into a thousand shards — why does this always happen when I’m reheating rice? I had to dump the whole thing into the trash. I was actually more …
New varieties of carrots started showing up here over the past several years, with the advent of farmers markets. Purple, red, yellow, white, you now can find them in upscale locations like the Tel Aviv Port. But actually, purple carrots aren’t new to Israel, and they’re certainly not the reserve …
I have a new love. Fortunately, my husband approves, because it’s vegetarian and he can eat it, too. I’ve been eating my way through the Persian restaurants neighboring the Levinsky market. While the market was originally founded by Balkan immigrants, it now has a strong Persian presence. Among the many …
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 …
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 …
If I’m stuffing foraged mallow leaves, I might as well stuff them with foraged nettle. I acquired both my mallow and my nettle through the not-so-socially-acceptable (or should I say hippie trendy?) method of picking them from the city’s streets. Both have a long culinary history, but most people aren’t …
