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Archive for November, 2008

The Anjou pears of The Colors of November were pretty, but rather dry and not very sweet. Looking around the kitchen, I saw a bottle of summer fruit wine that was half-full. To use everything up, I made a wine syrup and made Poires au Vin, and everyone was glad I did.

Pears in Wine

6 servings

Ingredients:

Ingredients:

6 large, firm pears

3 cups dry or semi-dry wine

1 1/2 cup white sugar

1 stick of cinnamon

Method:

Choose a pan into which the pears will fit with a little room to spare. In it, pour the wine and the sugar. Add the cinnamon. Simmer the wine and sugar for 10 minutes, uncovered.

Meanwhile, peel the pears, leaving the stem on. It just looks pretty that way.

Gently place the pears in the wine syrup. Cover the pot and tilt the lid to let the steam escape. Cook the pears over a low fire for 30 minutes or till tender, turning them over 15 minutes into the cooking so that they absorb the syrup all over and come out colored evenly. If you use a red wine, they will be almost burgundy.

Chill the pears and serve each one in a small bowl with some of the syrup.

Even small children like this simple fruit dessert.

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Al Kiddush HaShem

A candle for the victims of the Mumbai massacre.

May G-d comfort their families and avenge their spilled blood.

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Sometimes a woman knows she’s going to be too busy to cook next day. Sometimes she’s going to be making wine instead. I know that once I start working on wine, it’ll take too much time and concentration for me to think of What’s For Lunch. So last night I made pumpkin soup and prepared the croutons to heat up again at lunchtime today. With an omelet and a salad, lunch is on the table in 15 minutes.

This is a simple winter soup. Savory garlic croutons complement the slight sweetness of pumpkin and corn, and release their buttery flavor into the soup as you spoon it up. If you decide not to make croutons, swirl a tablespoon of butter into the soup just before serving, for creaminess.

Pumpkin Soup

6 servings

Ingredients for the soup:

2 Tblsp. olive oil

500 grams pumpkin

1 medium potato

1 ear of corn

1 medium tomato

1 onion

1 leek

1 bay leaf

1 liter  – 4 cups – water

salt and  white pepper to taste

1/4 cup cilantro or parsley

Ingredients for the garlic croutons:

1 1/2 cups dice of fresh, or day-old bread

1 clove of garlic, chopped

2 Tblsp. butter

2 Tblsp. olive oil

1 tsp. salt

A pinch of black pepper

A pinch of thyme.

Note: you can add as much black pepper as you like, but refrain from adding more thyme, which is a strong aromatic. It can dominate and mask the delicate flavor of the soup.

Method:

1. Chop the onions.

2. Cover the bottom of a large saucepan with the oil. Turn on a low flame. Add the onions and bay leaf.

3. While the onions are starting to cook, peel and chop the potatoes, clean the leek and chop it, peel the pumpkin and chop it.

4. When the onions in the pan are soft and starting to turn golden, add the potatoes, leek, and pumpkin cubes.  Bring the flame up to medium. Stir.

5. Cut the kernels off the ear of corn. Chop the tomatoes. Add these to the pot.

6. Cover the pot and cook the vegetables for 20 minutes They will release some of their juice, but lower the flame if necessary to keep them from scorching.

7. When the vegetables are soft, add the water and stir. Cook 1/2 hour on a low flame.

8. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the chopped cilantro or parsley.

9. Cook another 5 minutes.

Now you can either serve the soup in its clear native state, with all the chunks of vegetables

Or blend it. Blended is the only way I can get Daughter to eat pumpkin, so that’s what I do.

To make the Croutons:

In a frying pan, melt the butter together with the olive oil. Add the garlic and allow it to infuse in the butter/oil mixture, over the lowest possible flame, for 15 minutes. Watch the pan. If the garlic looks like it’s going to burn, the flame has been too high – remove the pan from the heat. If you can’t make a lower flame, just heat the garlic through for a few minutes, but the flavor will be much lighter.

Add the salt and pepper and thyme. Stir.

Have the diced bread in a bowl. Dribble the garlic butter over and along the sides of the pile of bread dice, mixing gently with a wooden spoon. Bake the coated croutons in a hot oven for 20 minutes, turning them over twice.

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Yesterday I saw these apples at a discount. They were big and awkward looking, with peels that bore tiny nicks and sunspots, even a few bruises. I looked at them and thought: Chanukah is coming up. I’m going to be needing plenty of applesauce for latkehs. So I brought them home and went to work. It’s risky buying class B fruit, but these apples were firm and sweet inside.

Applesauce

Yield: 4 3/4 -5 cups

Ingredients:

1.5 kg. apples. Tart green apples are best, but any variety will do.

1/4 cup sugar. Use brown for a deeper taste, white for a lighter color

1 stick of cinnamon

1 slice of lemon if apples are sweet rather than tart.

Method:

Peel the apples, if you are so minded. As I blend them when done, I just pare away anything unslightly and leave the most of the peel on for a chunky texture.

Dribble a tablespoon or two of water into the cooking pot. This is just to keep the apple slices from scorching initially.

Put the apples in, and put the sugar, cinnamon and optional lemon slice on top.

Start cooking over a medium flame. About 5 minutes later, you’ll hear a dry, scorching sound. Just stir a few times to help release juices.

Cook, turning the apples over ever so often, for 15 minutes. It will start looking soupy in there, but the apple pulp will re-absorb the juice eventually.

Taste for sweetness, and if it’s not sweet enough for your taste, add sugar by tablespoons. Remember, it will taste sweeter when it cools down. Cook a further 30 minutes.

Remove the optional lemon slice, and allow the applesauce to cool. Hunt for any stray apple or lemon seeds; remove the cinnamon stick.

Blend or mash the applesauce. If the apples weren’t peeled, it’s best to blend in the appliance of your choice.

Serve as a topping for latkehs, or yoghurt, or rice pudding, or next to cake, or just alone in a bowl, with a sprinkling of powdered cinnamon.

*

It often happens that when I buy lots of one ingredient, I’ll need two or more recipes to use it all up. The recipe above used 1 kg. of apples, but I had 2 1/2. so I made lots of applesauce, froze some, and saved a cup for these satisfying, not-too-sweet muffins. This recipe can be doubled easily.

Applesauce Oatmeal Muffins

Ingredients for Muffins:

1 1/2 cups oatmeal (mine wasn’t fast-cooking, so I whizzed it in the food processor briefly)

1 1/4 cup flour

3/4 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 cup applesauce

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 Tblsp. oil

1 egg, beaten

Ingredients for topping:

1/4 cup oatmeal

1 Tblsp. brown sugar

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1 Tblsp. melted butter

Method:

Preheat the oven to 375F, 190C

1. Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

2. In a medium bowl, mix the oil, the milk, and the beaten egg.

3. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour the liquids into it. Mix well, but briefly – just enough to get everything wet.

4. Fill muffin cups 3/4 full and top each muffin with the dry oatmeal topping.

Bake 15-20 minutes. Allow to cool 5 minutes, then remove the muffins to a rack.

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I’ve been saving this post for a cold, rainy winter day, to remind me of a searingly hot June morning in Beersheva this year. But the rains have made only a reluctant appearance so far, and the weather is maddeningly bright. Never mind – it could be hotter. As it was that morning in the Beduin shuk.

The shuk opens on Thursdays. Now it’s contained inside a parking lot just outside of town, but people told me it once rambled over a much larger area. It has an impoverished look, compared to the  hustling, colorful open-air markets in other parts of the country.

There are covered parts where stands display clothes, cheap trinkets, and household goods, but many vendors just spread their wares on the ground and hunker down next to them. This vendor sells spices, herbs, and lupine seeds boiled with turmeric. Spilling out from the red bag in front is some tired-looking sage.

I got a closer look at another vendor’s goods. Bulk-bought seeds: cardomom, flax, nigella, fenugreek. Spices: za’atar, ground turmeric, dried black lemons, more that I can’t identify. There are sacks of bulgur, rock salt, and pebbles which are meant to ignite and be used in incense.

I was struck by all the contrasts. Tentlike black tarps across the umbrella advertising Nestle ice creams – the low, shambling shuk at the foot of modern residential towers in the background – and extreme modesty in clothing next to convenient shorts paired with low-neck tops. A modern Orthodox woman, dressed somewhere in between, walks behind the leggy girls.

There wasn’t much to be seen by way of interesting food or hand-made goods. I think most of the merchandise, including the clothes and these uninspired pastries, is bulk-bought and simply re-sold.  If an enterprising person sold fresh coffee and tea made in a showily traditional way, folks would buy, especially tourists.

Seeds and nuts, with a stand selling brightly-colored candies in the back.

Desert fashion…

The Galabeyah robes for women are mostly black background with embroidery. I used to see hand-sewn embroidery on Galabeyah in Jerusalem’s Arab Shuk, years ago when I still felt safe walking around there, but I understand that much modern Beduin clothing has machine embroidery glued or sewed on. This is all new: the clothes I’d see in Jerusalem had clearly been worn and needed dry-cleaning before you could wear them. This site shows many tribal variations on Galabeyah, one of which is positively spooky.

Two ladies with covered faces turning the merchandise over.

I have never seen so many women wearing Galabeyas and burkas, in Israel. These ladies are very shy and are horrified of the camera. I had to sneak these photos. They drifted around the shuk like ghosts in black, speaking softly if at all, avoiding eye contact.

Some of the Beduin women spoke Hebrew and were comfortable talking to me; others, more primitive, seemed as out of place as wild gazelles in a traffic jam. This shapely Russian stares fascinated at the Beduin woman, who is firmly holding her husband’s hand and totally covered in black.

By contrast, look at the body language of this man. Even from the back, his stance proclaims confidence and power. Yet this field report claims that Beduin women are fulfilled in their subservient roles.

The report is in English, but for those who read Hebrew and might be interested, the rest of the site is worth reading too.

This family, composed of mother, young married daughter and her children (there is a nursing baby in her arms) seem comfortable under the tarp tent and not at all concerned with sales.

You can read more about the Beduin who inhabit the Sinai desert here.

And this is a fascinating report on the foodways of the Negev Beduin.

We left the Beduin to their foodways, and went looking for something we could eat. Near the train station and close to the government buildings in Beersheva there’s an excellent kosher restaurant called Jeruzalem, on Rechov HaTikvah 4. There we feasted on tajine of lamb with apricots

and pargiot – chicken breast meat grilled and poised in a stack over grilled eggplant and bell pepper slices.

I’d like to return to Beersheva and visit the “regular” open-air market. Now that the temperatures are milder, maybe I will.

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Harry Rubinstein complimented Israeli Kitchen on the 21c Israelity Blog and says he’s inspired to blog about food himself.  Click on de link. Thanks, Harry and 21c Israelity!

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These cookies have inspired cooks all over the Blogosphere. I took the recipe from Chanit’s blog, My Mom’s Recipes and More, but doubled it because the original doesn’t make enough to keep the family happy. They are made with margarine to keep them pareve.

The cookies couldn’t be simpler to make, and they are extremely, meltingly, delicious.

Tehina Cookies yield: about 3 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

200 grams soft margerine

1 cup sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

1 cup tehina. If there’s a layer of oil floating on top of the jar, stir in back in.

2 cups plus 4 Tblsp. flour

1 tsp. baking powder

optional: 2 Tblsp. pine nuts and powdered sugar

Method:

Preheat the oven to 160 C – 325 F.

1. Cream the margerine and the sugar together.

2. Add the vanilla and the tehina and blend again.

3. Combine the flour and the baking powder; add to the tehina mixture.

4. Form balls the size of walnuts and place them on a baking sheet protected with baking paper. The dough is dry and crumbly, so squeeze it together to make the balls.

If adding the optional pine nuts, do it like this: form one cookie ball; take 2 or 3 pine nuts into your left palm, and with your right hand, press the ball onto them. Reverse it onto the baking sheet. If the ball crumbles slightly, just squeeze it back into shape with your fingertips.

Some of the cookies looked like little caricatures. My family has given up wondering why I laugh when I’m alone in the kitchen…

Bake for 13-15 minutes. Do not bake longer. The cookies need a little moisture to retain their shape and not crumble.

Cool the baking tray on a rack, and don’t touch the cookies for at least 5 minutes. If they’re handled while hot, they will fall apart.

Dust with powdered sugar if you wish, when they’re cool. Hide a few for yourself before you offer them to family and friends.

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I was in the Carmel market this week, taking photographs. Among the colorful fruit displays, there was one stand that was decorated with hanging pineapples.

That put me in mind of two things. One, my husband, who loves pineapple. Second, Guarapo de Piña. “Guarapo” is a fizzy, slightly alcoholic drink made from fruit, and Guarapo de Piña is based on pineapple rinds. I learned to make it when I lived in Venezuela.

I left the shuk pineapples alone, but bought a nice ripe one from the greengrocer close to home (who store has a kashrut certificate). My husband and Little One devoured the fruit, but I kept the fragrant rinds for my own treat.

Guarapo de Pina – Venezuelan Pineapple Cooler

Yield: approximately  1 1/2  liters

This is a really folkloric recipe, using no yeast but the natural wild yeast on the rinds. So to make Guarapo, repress your civilized instinct and don’t wash the rind. Just cut away any spoiled or moldy spots.

Equipment:

A glass or ceramic jar with a 3-liter capacity, and a long-handled spoon.

A clean plastic soda bottle of 1 1/2 liter capacity

Make sure everything is well-washed with detergent and hot water.

Ingredients:

1 medium pineapple. Cut the peels off, keeping a little of the fruit on them. DO NOT WASH THE PEEL before cutting it away; you need the wild yeast on it. Trust me, it’ll be OK. Cut up the fruit, saving any juice from the process. Eat the fruit and put the unwashed rinds plus residual juice into the jar.

3/4 cup sugar

2 slices of fresh ginger root

2 liters water

Mix them all up together, stirring well to dissolve the sugar. Cover the jar with a clean cloth or a paper towel secured with a rubber band. Remember to push the rinds down 2-3 x daily; this is important to prevent mold forming as fermentation pushes the rinds up to the surface and they come into contact with air.

Let it ferment for 3-5 days. It will smell a little funky when fermenting. Just have faith and wait it out. When the liquid is a deep yellow color, clear, and pleasant-smelling (this will depend on the temperature in your kitchen), strain it -

and funnel it into the clean bottle. I  advise bottling in clean plastic bottles because fermentation will continue, even if you keep the guarapo in the fridge. It once happened that I opened a bottle that had been keeping cold for a couple of weeks, and the guarapo fountained out of it, ruining my plate of spaghetti, dammit.

Below is a photo of a batch I made last year, 4 days into fermentation. The head of foam is totally normal. It means that the wild yeasts are busy converting sugar into alcohol.

It’s somewhat alcoholic.  I can’t tell you how much ABV  because it varies from batch to batch. Not that I’ve ever measured. That would be, as they say in Caracas, anti-folklorico. The level of alcohol will rise as the guarapo keeps fermenting, but you can’t let it sit around for more than a week, or you might have lovely pineapple vinegar instead of guarapo.

Such a light, refreshing, fragrant drink…

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Fern, of Life on the Balcony, asked some cogent questions in a comment relating to my post about Leda Meredith. My reply was so long I thought I’d best post the dialogue here.

Fern said:

I would imagine being a locavore is pretty in Israel, right? When your country is just under 300 miles long, 85 miles wide, and most of the population lives roughly in the middle of the country, almost the entire country is within a 100-mile radius.

Does Israel import a lot of food? I would think that would be the only serious hurdle unless you live in the extreme north or south.

Israel does import a lot of food. I would like to know more about the subject, but the little information I found in newspapers is that close to 80% of our foodstuffs are imported (maybe my Net searches weren’t precise enough, but I found almost nothing there). For one example, we do have flour mills, but the wheat is imported. For another, all dried pulses and grains come from abroad.

We can choose locally grown fruit and veg, both fresh and frozen, honey, poultry and eggs, milk products (tons of those), some preserved and canned foods, some beef and lamb, some fish, some spices. There’s more, of course, but this is what I can remember, off the top of the hat.

There is ample transportation, and you can get whatever you need in markets from the Golan down to Eilat.

As I’m writing, I’m mentally breaking down today’s lunch into imported and exported. Let’s see: turkey wings (local) braised in leeks, tomatoes, onions (all local), garlic (local, because I buy 10 kgs. green garlic each spring and dry it; otherwise I’d have to rely on imported), wine (home-made from local grapes, but the wine yeast was imported), salt (local), pepper (imported), tamari (imported), sage (home-grown), thyme (local). Then there’s rice (imported). Broccoli and mushrooms – local. Olive oil for cooking – local.

You see here that the fresh stuff is Israeli and the dry or fermented depends on imports. If I were to go to a bakery and buy a few sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts), I’m not at all sure what percent of the ingredients would be local. I am assuming that the ingredients, bought cheapest in bulk, are imported. The flour: imported wheat. The yeast: imported dry, although we do make fresh. The jelly: I’m guessing imported. The oil in which they were fried: imported soy or canola.

Heck, even the cranberry-walnut muffins I baked this morning couldn’t be done without imported ingredients. I’ve had to ask myself if I should stop baking, which is silly. Of course I’ll keep baking, but since discovering how heavily my baking depends on imports, I take more care to recycle anything that goes stale. Half a pan of cornbread became stuffing for peppers and fish – like that.

Israelis are turning more and more to fast, convenient, packaged foods. At this time of year, the supermarket dedicates an entire aisle to instant soups and noodle/ rice meals to which you only need add hot water (yich). The freezer section is loaded with imported fish, meat, fruit and veg, right there next to the local. Not to mention the omnipresent soy patties, which are feeding a whole generation of kids whose mothers are too busy to cook real food. These foods are, I estimate, at least 80% import-dependent.

(I have a particular grudge against those soy patties, in spite of all their “healthy” vegetable additions.  First, the soy is imported and, if reports are correct, genetically modified. Then, two nine-year-old girls I know of have developed adult-sized breasts, and their pediatricians blame this on heavy consumption of soy “shnitzels”. The only soy I allow in my family’s diet is fermented: tamari and miso. No soy shnitzels, no soy milk, not even tofu. But I’ll stop this rant and return to the subject at hand.)

You can reduce dependence on imported foodstuffs here if you shop consciously. Depends on your priorities. If it comes to choosing between Spanish olive oil or local; Norwegian salmon or one of our Israeli fish, you know what I’m buying.

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