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We've moved!

Cottage Cheese Revolution

We've just gone through the Arab Spring and everyone's wondering where the next political uprising is going to take place.

The answer, at the moment, appears to be Israel! That Israel would have some sort of political upheaval probably surprises no one. The reason this time, probably will though.

Cottage Cheese.

That's right, Israel is going through a transformational societal revolution because of cottage cheese. Alright, so there is no massive revolution, but people are sure pissed off because of cottage cheese prices.

Upon word that cottage cheese prices would be almost doubled, a Facebook group was created to boycott the product. Word quickly spread, and already stores are reporting a 50% drop in cottage cheese sales. The Knesset is even debating the issue! Cottage cheese is an Israeli staple, with people eating it at any meal. I personally can't stand it, but most Israelis can't live without it. It will be interesting to see how this matter is resolved.

Just imagine what would happen here if hummus prices were to double!

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Cottage Cheese Revolution

Would this work?

Would goat cheese and leek patties with orange zest and Jerusalem za'atar taste good?

This would be a vegetarian play on a traditional prasa recipe, making it super Israeli by adding the goat cheese and Jerusalem za'atar.

Jerusalem Zaatar. Copyright Liz Steinberg

Would this work?

Bisli has arrived in Portland, Oregon!!???

My mom recently called me, quite excitedly, to tell me that the local Albertsons is carrying kosher for pesach Bisli in advance of Pesach. I know that stores in New York and LA carry Bisli, but I was definitely surprised to hear that it has now reached Portland, let alone the kosher for pesach version. Anyways, glad to hear one of the world's greatest snacks (you can see in the pictures that Bamba has made it as well) is expanding beyond the huge US markets and venturing to smaller cities.

Here is the evidence. All photos are copyrighted to my Mom's new iPhone 4. 

Bisli has arrived in Portland, Oregon!!???

Going to Eritrea for Lunch

I went to Eritrea for lunch the other day with my friends Liz and Eitan. At least that's the initial story I've been telling people. Israel is home to hundreds of thousands of "foreigners" from China, Nepal, Thailand, the Philippines, and a variety of different African countries. Their presence and social issues relating to them are one of the more controversial and divisive issues in Israeli society at the moment.

Putting these issues aside, at least in this blog post, these groups have brought their culinary traditions to the country. The area around the old and new bus stations in Tel Aviv is home to many of these groups, and small ethnic restaurants are starting to pop up in the area. I went to eat at one of these places called Yergelum. I had read about Yergelum in Haaretz a few months back, and this article would play a crucial role in my meal as I would later find out.

Yergelum serves traditional Eritrean food, which is very similar to Ethiopian food. Injera, the Teff based bread, is a staple and it is used to scoop up the various dishes served to us. Upon entering Yergelum I received stares from dozen or so Eritreans who are clearly not used to see Israelis walk in to the restaurant.

You order not by the Amharic only menu, rather by pointing to the picture of the dish you want from the newspaper article.

Ordering was one of the highlights of the experience at Yergelum. The menu doesn't have a word of Hebrew or English, and the staff have poor Hebrew and English themselves. This meant pointing to the pictures of the dishes in the original Haaretz article to order. So while the menu had at least 20 dishes listed, I was only able to order from the five dishes whose picture were take for the article.

We ended ordering Shiro, Goat mutton, another vegetable dish, and two other ones I'm still not sure what their names are. Shiro is a mash of garbanzo beans, onions and the Berbere spice mix. I really liked the Shiro, although Liz and Eitan were not the biggest fans. The goat mutton was easily the best dish served. It has a lot of spicy berbere, and has a very rich and deep flavor. I could have eaten a whole injera filled with the mutton. The other vegetable dish was fine, but uninteresting. We also ordered a kind of dough in the shape of a volcano and some boiled dough with yogurt. They were both fine, but also a bit uninteresting.

The Shiro was scooped from the pot and put on the injera bread

The Shiro and mutton, the dishes with the Berbere really had a great depth of flavor and I would be happy to eat those anytime. I highly recommend visiting Yergelum for the experience and learning about a part of Israeli society that is often ignored or shunned. If you happen to know someone who speaks Amharic you might be able to order anything of the menu too. Who knows what great dishes I missed out on!

The Shiro, goat mutton, and veggies on the injera

Going to Eritrea for Lunch

Olive Harvest Update - Olive Waste

This past October I particpated in an olive harvest of my friend Yarden's olive trees. You can read about the harvest here, which ended up producing 50 liters of oil. One thing that intrigued me at the olive press was the huge mound of waste that was created as result of the process. Outside the factory was a massive mount of olive pulp. It looked like dark wood pulp shavings from a distance, but smelled like a great olive tapenade. I asked a few people what became of the olive pulp, but nobody had a definitive answer for me.

I forgot about the olive waste until I recently read an article in Haaretz about an Israel company that is turning the olive pulp waste into a heating source. The olive pellets created, according to owner, do not release harmful gases when burned, and can also be used as a fertilizer. Today, most of the pulp is brought to a landfill or is not moved at all becoming a pollutant.

I don't have a fireplace, but for those of you who do, consider by olive pulp pellets instead of wood this winter.

Close up on tons of olive pulp

The pulp is spewed onto the mound throughout the day

Olive Harvest Update - Olive Waste

New Year's Leftover Matzah Ball Soup

January 1st this year, in Tel Aviv at least, was a cold and rainy day. The perfect day to make a soup out of leftovers around the house. As it was too rainy and cold for even the five minute walk to the store I started rummaging through the fridge and pantry to see what I had lying around. In the fridge I found a veal shank bone from some osso bucco I had made the other day. I had saved the bone to make some stock. I had a few veggies in the fridge too. However, it was only after looking in the pantry that the meal came together. From last Pesach I had a package of matzah ball meal.

Preparing the stock with onions, celery, carrot and veal shank bone.

I immediately started working on the stock. I diced the carrots, onions and celery and started sweating them in a big pot on the stove. I generously seasoned with salt and pepper. After about seven minutes I added the veal bone and thyme sprigs to the pot and sauteed for another minute. At this point I added a few cups of water and let the stock simmer for an hour and a half.

In the meantime I made the matzah balls by beating two eggs and adding the packet of matzah ball meal and a generous amount of spicy paprika. I mixed it together well and let it cool in the fridge while the stock simmered and developed. After the stock had been going for the hour and a half I strained the stock and eliminated the veggies and veal bone. I returned the broth back to the pot and brought it to a strong boil.

The matzah balls cooking away

I gently rolled out matzah balls and put them in the boiling stock. I like my matzah balls large and fluffy, so rolling them ever so lightly and as little as possible is critical. If you roll your matzah balls until they're compact you will have heavy and less tasty matzah balls. I let the matzah balls cook for about seven to eight minutes and the soup was ready.

The soup was really tasty, perfect for a cold, rainy day and a great start to 2011.

Yummm!

Recipe: Leftover Matzah Ball Soup

Ingredients:
1 Veal Shank Bone
2 carrots
2 onions
3 sticks celery
2 eggs
1 package matzah ball meal
Paprika
Salt and Pepper
Thyme

Instructions: See description above

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New Year's Leftover Matzah Ball Soup

Nadav likes Bisli

My cousin Nadav was visiting Israel for the past few weeks on a high school program. As he was packing and getting ready to head back to the airport I saw he had bought a bag of candy and other foods for the long flight back to L.A. He had skittles, other candies and a big bag of Bisli. He boldly stated that not only is Bisli his favorite Israeli snack, but his favorite snack period. I am very proud!

Nadav likes Bisli

Caption Needed!

On one of the tours yesterday this car was spotted and photographed. It has got a ton of parsley on the hood of the car. Captions please....

Caption Needed!

Happy New Year and Israeli Egg Production!

Happy New Year to everyone! I hope 2011 is a great year and start to the decade for everyone. I'm expecting 2011 to be a fun, interesting, and successful year for Savor Israel.

To get the year started off I have a short blog post about egg production in Israel. Most people, including myself, take it for granted that there will be eggs in the grocery store and I don't put in much thought about the process that goes in to their production. That's not the case for the Poultry Farmer's Association which institutes yearly quotas on the number of eggs that can be produced. Egg production, apparently, is not a profitable industry, so strict quotes are imposed. Interestingly, 2011 will the be the first year that Arab egg producers will receive part of the quota. Their portion will amount to be around 6 million eggs per year, determined by a complex system that gives quota priorities to communities in outlying areas. Check out the whole article here.

Happy New Year from Savor Israel!

Update: It turns out that Liz, who writes the Cafe Liz blog, and guides for Savor Israel, did some research and translated for this article.

Happy New Year and Israeli Egg Production!

Thanksgiving in Israel

I had the best turkey of my life this past Thursday.

The Turkey on the smoker.

I'll get back to the Turkey in a paragraph or two, but first a little background. Thanksgiving is easily my favorite US holiday. Ironically, Yom Kippur is now my favorite holiday, but only in Israel. I love that nobody drives, the air is clear, and that I can take bike rides on major highways without fear of being run over. Thanksgiving though will always be a special day for me, even in Israel, and every year that I've lived here I've made a point of making a full on turkey dinner. I use my mother's excellent Paul Simon recipe. I call it that because it calls for putting chopped Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme under the skin of the bird. It is a great recipe and the turkey always comes out well.

7 hours later...it is the best turkey I've ever had

This year I decided not to make a turkey or host a dinner, and was kindly invited by my friends Susi and Dave to their house for dinner. I made the trek out to Jerusalem, and just entering their house you could tell something special was going on. Susi and Dave decided to smoke their turkey, and I had never tasted smoked turkey before. The turkey was smoked on low heat for over seven hours, and the result was amazing. Instead of trying to use a dozen different superlatives to describe the taste, I'll just use three. It was just the moistest, juiciest, tastiest turkey I'd ever had. The smoke flavor really came through, and it was just an awesome, awesome turkey.

A lot of happy people

Every once in a while I get a culinary eye opening, eureka type moment. My first time at Abu Hassan, Adora's foie gras baklava, tasting cold pressed olive oil from olives you picked a few hours earlier are some of the recent ones from the past few years. This turkey definitely goes on this list if not going straight to the top of it. The whole night was a lot fun between the tasty turkey, good friends, and lots of wine. Thanksgiving lives on in Israel quite strongly for me and I'm already thinking about next year's smoked turkey.

Thanksgiving in Israel

Burikot - Hebrew for "great fried food"

Recently I went to Or Yehuda with my friends Ran and Ilana to have Burikot (plural for Burik or Burika), a traditional North African dish that is basically a filled triangle of fried dough. Ran had been telling me about this place for sometime, and we finally found the time to go try them.

The thin dough is filled with either a potato filling, that has the consistency of mashed potatoes, or an egg. The dough is then folded over the filling to make a triangle shape and then deep fried. The dough gets a great fried crisp, while the filling is cooked enough to heat it up without overcooking the filling. The potato has a great taste and consistency, while the egg is perfectly poached. My favorite version was the egg, which was cooked really nicely in mine. The Burik can be eaten on its own or made into a sandwich with hot pilpel chuma (or just chuma) sauce spread inside.

Our burikot being fried

A perfectly cooked egg burik

The dish is considered North Africa, specifically being attributed to Tunisia and Libya. I'll let the Tunisians and Libyans fight over who is the real originator of the Burik. The use of pilpel chuma would tend to lend credence to the Libyan claim. However, chuma is so similar to Tunisian Harissa, that its really difficult to say.

Our sandwich bread and chuma sauce waiting for the burikot

Stacks of burikot dough and chuma sauce

Or Yehuda has a bad reputation amongst many Israelis. It is a poor town, and it suffers from higher rates of crime and other societal ills than lets say...Northern Tel Aviv. However, Or Yehuda does have a strong representation from a variety of different ethnic groups. Jews from Georgia, North Africa, and Ethiopia, amongst others call Or Yehuda home and Burikot are only one of the culinary reasons worth visiting if you have the time.

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Burikot - Hebrew for "great fried food"

New Cooking Technique - Octopus

On our tour yesterday I learned a new technique for cooking octopus that I want to share. A couple on the tour told me that their landlord in Cyprus, after killing the octopuses/octopi, puts them in a washing machine and turns on the spin cycle (no water) for 15 minutes to tenderize them. So next time you buy a new washing machine, don't throw away the old one, rather keep it as an octopus tenderizer.

New Cooking Technique - Octopus

Review of army food

I just got back from milium (reserve duty) this past week and I have prepared the following review of the food I ate:

"It's not so good."

Having said that, there was enough food, nothing served was inedible, and I have no complaints. 

Review of army food

Olive Harvest 2010

I made olive oil for the first time this past weekend, and its been a bittersweet experience. Picking olives all day and seeing the fruits of this labor in the form of truly incredible olive oil is an exceptionally gratifying experience. On the other hand, you can only really do it once every two years. Perhaps that makes it more special, but it really does suck to have to wait too.

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My friend/cousin/older brother Yarden lives in a small town called Shaked in northern Shomron/Samaria overlooking the Jezre’el Valley. He has three olive trees in his front yard, and his relatives who live in Shaked have a few more trees as well. Beyond these trees, he has a piece of land just outside Shaked where he has already planted over 130 olive trees and his goal is to have a thousand. These trees are too young to bear fruit, so we only picked olives from his front yard. This was quite enough, because between the six trees from various places in Shaked around 250 kilos of olives were picked. It is awesome, but tiring as one can imagine. You can shake the trees all you want, and a lot of olives fall this way, but you still have to go branch by branch and get what is left. A ton of olives don’t fall on the mats you lay on the ground, so you have to pick those up to. Its a very tiring job.

By Saturday afternoon we had all of our olives and we went down the hill to a nearby Arab town, Kfar Qara, where there is an olive press where you can make olive oil. Making olive oil has gone high tech for some time now. Initially you put the olives in a vat, where they are led up a conveyer belt. The olives go through a deep wash before they are crushed. The oil, juices, and other olive liquids go into a series of machines that use  some kind of centrifugal force process (my physics knowledge is not the best) that separates the oil from the rest of the liquids. The end product is an amazing oil that I’m not going to even try to describe in this post. The 200+ kilos we picked ended up being 27 liters of oil, and this might last Yarden and the Shaked family a year.

Picking olives and making your own oil is something I really recommend to anyone who has the chance. You can only do it every other year, as olives trees only bear fruit every other year, so don’t pass up any opportunity you have.  So this is all I have to say about olive oil until 2012…

Olive Harvest 2010

Olive Time!

Every two years I make olives. Olives only bear fruit, or at least only bear the most fruit, every two years. It seems like all the olive trees in Israel seem to be on the same clock, because people only get excited about the olive harvest on the same second year.

The first time I made olives in Israel was while I was in the army. There were some olive trees on my base and I picked all the olives and made some really good varieties. My army buddies hated the base we were serving at so much they refused to eat the olives, but they missed out on a good batch. The second time I made olives I picked the olives from Ramat HaNadiv, near Zichron Ya'akov. Those also came out very well. This year I picked olives from my friend Yarden's olive trees at his home in Shaked. Yarden actually has an olive orchard just outside of Shaked, but they're young trees and won't bear fruit for a few more years. I have no doubt they'll be excellent olives when they'll be ready, but in the meantime the trees in his front yard are just fine.

Making olives is really, really, really easy. First, just pick them. Then, in order for them to soften and soak up flavors you have to make a slit in each one or crush them. Most people take their olives to a place with a crushing machine. These machines make slits in the olives automatically. I like to punish myself, so I make a slit in each one on my own. It takes a bit of time, but you feel more of a connection to each olive this way;-)

Once you've made a slit, somehow, in all of the olives put them in a bowl and cover them with water. The olives will start turning from the bright green color they are on the trees when ripe to the darker olive green color one is used to seeing when eating olives. This will take about a week to two weeks and you need to replace the water each day during this time.

Once your olives are the right olive green color you get to flavor them. Put them in an airtight jar and cover them only to the top with water. For each cup of water needed add one spoonful of salt. At this point you can add whatever you want to them. Lemon and garlic, hot pepper, red wine, balsamic vinegar, rosemary, and the list can go on forever. This year I'm keeping it simple with just lemon and really hot peppers that I also picked from Yarden's garden. Once you have everything mixed around together cover the jar so its air tight and put it in a cabinet for at least 3 weeks and even up to a year. The longer the better. I usually wait a couple of months at least before opening them up.

The olives with the lemon, hot pepper, salt and olive oil. They're ready to soak up flavors for the next few months. 

Next weekend I'm going back to Shaked to harvest olives for oil. Stay tuned for my post on that. Also....stay stuned for my post in a few months when the olives are ready.

Olive Time!

Shana Tova from Savor Israel

I want to wish you all a belated Shana Tova and hope everybody had a great start to their new year, and if you're not Jewish that the past few days have been great for you in any case. My holiday has been full of great food, relaxing in Tel Aviv, seeing friends that have become like family to me and enjoying the unique atmosphere of the holidays in Israel.

Be sure to check out the yearly Rosh Hashanah food article Joan Nathan writes for the New York Times. This year's article about North African Jewish cuisine meets her regular high standard of excellence and there are some great recipes too.

Finally, I also want to share my friend Liz's blogpost about our trip to Ramle a few weeks ago to explore the area's food. Savor Israel has just started a new tour, Ramle and Schunat HaTikva, and this trip helped me solidy the trip's itinerary.

Shana Tova from Savor Israel

Atayef

It is currently the month of Ramadan, and the other day a co-worker brought the whole division some incredible Atayef that his wife had prepared. Atayef is a pancake-y type dough that is folded over and filled with various fillings. The Atayef that I had at work the other day were filled with walnuts, honey and coconut. Custard filling is common in Atayef, and you can pretty much make whatever you want. I'm generally not a fan of sweets, but Atayef is so light, because of the pancake type dough that I really enjoy eating them.

You can click on the following links for two different Atayef recipes.

Atayef Recipe #1

Atayef Recipe #2 (Hebrew)

Image from: http://images.muxlim.com/raduan/dsc04562/

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Atayef

A Gazan Cuisine Cookbook

I just stumbled across this blog documenting one woman's ongoing trip to the Gaza Strip researching Gazan cuisine in order to write a cookbook.

It appears that she just crossed in to Gaza via Rafiah the other day so it will be interesting to follow her trip as she posts on her blog. I'm also interested to see how politics will play in a role in her cookbook. I may not agree with her view of how politics affects the culinary reality today, but it will be interesting to read nonetheless.

A Gazan Cuisine Cookbook

Israeli Sangria Recipe

In honor of this week's wine festival I'm posting a recipe for Israeli sangria. Sangria is typically red wine, mixed with lemonade/sprite and various cut up fruits. You mix all of the components together, let it all sit for a while, and and it tastes really, really good.

To make sangria "Israeli" my first thought was to replace the lemonade with limonana. Limonana (Hebrew for lemon and mint) is a very popular drink in Israel that is basically lemonade with lots of mint added to it. The mint makes the drink very refreshing, and its one of the better coping mechanisms for the summer heat.

The fruits I would use for the Israeli sangria would be determined by the season. Plums, oranges, nectarines are all classic fruits for sangria and you can't go wrong with them. To mix things up a little you can also add Lychee, a seasonal summer fruit in Israel. While overall a sweet fruit, the natural small amounts of acidity in the Lychee add a nice element to the drink.

Sangria is a great drink with almost any meal and will sure to go over well at your next summer picnic.

Copyright: http://www.spanish-food.org.uk/2010/06/sangria-drink-spain/

Israeli Sangria Recipe

Ingredients:
Bottle of dry red wine
Lemons
Mint
Sugar
Plum
Orange
Nectarine
Lychee
Instructions:
1. Cut up one plum, one orange, one nectarine, and a handful of lychees. You can make a small dice or keep them as larger sized pieces.
2. To make the limonana squeeze the juice of four lemons into a liter and a half bottle. Add 10 mint sprigs and 3 spoonfulls of sugar. Fill the bottle with water and add a tray of ice cubes. Chill.
3. Mix a whole bottle of wine, half a liter of limonana and fruit together. Let sit for at least 2 hours and up to overnight in the fridge.
4. Sangria is best served chilled, but you can let the temperature return to room temperature if that's your preference.
5. Once it runs out, make some more!

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Israeli Sangria Recipe