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.

Savor Israel

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