Experimenting with Israeli Fruits

 

It is part of life in the foreign service, but a part that we haven’t yet experienced.  Our first departure.  Not ours, but our friends.  They were the first friends that we made here and they are moving on to Afghanistan.  I don’t know if it has fully set in that my friends are moving away, but the “normal” reaction to a friend moving away is slightly different.  For one, we knew when we met them that they’d only be around for a year.  Two, they are going to Afghanistan and there is a chance that we could overlap with them there by a month of so next year.  Three, they are also Latin Americanists, so if we all had our way we’d be serving in Latin America in the future (there are many posts there and they all know each other pretty well…so we could likely be neighbors again).  And finally, there were our neighbors in DC!  We didn’t know them then, but they only lived 1 block from us, and there is kind of this general feeling that someday all of us will be living in DC again.

So they are really great people because they are always happy and optimistic.  No one here (besides Paul) has encouraged my cooking and baking as much as Liz because she is so complementary of everything I make.  It may not be amazing or professional, but she thinks it is!  I will also always remember the eloquent soliloquy Liz gave on a long car ride professing her love of all things Israeli.  And so, for one of their final nights here we are having them over for a dinner including our best Israeli dishes.  It will pay homage to Liz’s passion.

Paul is making his delicious hummus – and though the Israeli’s don’t put additional flavors in their hummus (that is an American thing), we are probably going to make it a roasted red pepper hummus.  The red peppers are from Israel…so it is still pretty Israeli.  For dinner Paul is making shakshuka.  Friends and family that have come to visit have had this great dish!  It is a spicy tomato base with poached eggs on top.  We serve it with this great olive or onion bread from the “bread guy” in the market. 

Dessert – that is my specialty.  But I don’t do Israeli desserts.  Primarily because they aren’t good .  But the theme of this dinner is Israeli so I thought I might do a modern (improved) take on an Israeli dessert, or make an American dessert with distinctively Israeli ingredients.  So I went to the market and got two fruits that I’ve never even tasted before.  A challenge!

My safe starting point for dessert is a cheesecake.  I have a great recipe and I happen to have cream cheese, thanks to my recent visit to the States!  (You can buy cream cheese here, it is just $7 or $8 for a 6oz box.)  I’ll not describe the cheesecake process to much except to say that a.) I don’t understand the Israeli dairy isle and I may have used Greek yogurt instead of sour cream, and I forgot to read one VERY important line of the recipe.  Nonetheless, the batter tasted amazing when I cleaned the beater so I’m sure it will taste amazing!  (It is just slightly more golden brown on top.)

While making the cheesecake I kept feeling these tiny but very painful pricks in my hands!  I wasn’t too surprised because (as Paul likes to say) “everything in Israel has thorns.”  So the first fruit I choose is from a cactus.  It is sometimes called a prickly pear.  With some quick internet research I discovered that you are supposed to wear gloves until you’ve peeled it – that would explain the teeny tiny white splinters in my hands!  If you look closely at the glove in the picture you can see the finger is full of them.

 The other…interesting…thing about the prickly pear is the taste.  I knew to stay away from lychees (which aren’t in season now anyways) because they taste like a cross between a grape and a watermelon.  Well, the flavor of prickly pear is described as a.) pear, b.) watermelon, and c.) green beans.  I don’t know.  I really don’t know.  After I peeled the prickly little sucker the fruit was juicy with lots of little hard seeds.  So I decided to make prickly pear syrup – sans pricklies and seeds.  The final product turned out well…but I probably won’t be buying them again.

 The second fruit was much more enjoyable and I only learned the name of it this morning:  eskadenia (in English I think it is a loquat – which is actually Japanese, so we’re going to stick with the more Israeli name).  Since I could find no information on “small Israeli peaches” last night, baking with them was a total shot in the dark.  Let me jump to the conclusion:  they are delicious!  Or at least:  my eskadenia Bordeaux glaze is delicious!!  On their own they look and taste like mini peaches with a slightly softer, lighter flavor.  They are slightly firmer, so I figured they’d hold their shape if I diced them.   

Then, I decided to make a syrup/glaze topping, but they aren’t really juicy.  I didn’t have juice on hand, so I threw in some Bordeaux (a tangy slightly dry wine).  I topped this off with some sugar – it is a dessert – and reduced the concoction (intensifying the flavors of the wine).  It was pretty good, but to really knock some socks off, I added a splash of vanilla.  Oh…my…gosh.  It was so good I made a second dish of it.  (6 pitted and diced eskadenia, ¼ cup sugar, ½ white wine – bring to a simmer over medium heat and reduce for about 20 minutes until there is about ½ of the original liquid left and it is slightly syrupy.  Let it cool and then add a dash (3 drops maybe) or vanilla.  Stir and use as a topping.)

"Cat Pee White Flower Tree"

“Something smells like cat pee.”  This is how our conversation started a few months ago.  We don’t have a cat.  Our neighbors don’t have a cat.  And despite the thousands of stray cats in Tel Aviv, we are more than 4 stories up so it couldn’t have been them.

After a short investigation (us smelling everything in the apartment and on the patio) we discovered the rancid smell was coming from a flower.  Yes, a flower.  When we moved into the place there outside gardens had lots of flowers, vines and small trees that had just been planted.  Because of our love of vegetable gardening we uprooted one of the small trees, transferred it to a big pot and moved it inside in March.  In June the rancid flowers appeared.

As biology was NOT my favorite subject, in July I called my favorite cousin-in-law who loves stinky flowers, Mitch.  Holding the video camera close to the tree to show Mitch the flowers we noticed small green balls!  A lime tree!!!  We were so excited. Throughout July and most of August about 10 limes appeared…but they were all tiny and hard and 8 of the 10 fell off the tree.

Then…when Jonathan was visiting we were excited to show him our odd little lime tree.  We put more soil in the pot and carefully watered it to make sure it would be healthy. – only to discover our limes were turning red!  No joke.

Internet searches surprisingly returned few-to-no results for “cat pee white flower tree.”  It wasn’t until mid-August that we made the greatest discovery yet of our little cat-pee tree:  the fruit is DELICIOUS!!! One day, while pinching the red limes which we now thought were mini-pomegranates, the soft fruit fell off the tree.  I picked it up from the ground, blew off the dust (my house is clean but this is right by the door), and popped the little guy in my mouth!  Not really – I washed it in the sink and then cut it in half.  The inside was white and there were a few round seeds.  The taste was like a strawberry, the texture like a pear, and the size like a grape.  “What an odd little fruit!”

After enjoying 6 of 9 fruits which appeared on the tree in the past 2 weeks, I finally brought one into work to ask the locals what it was. “Ma ze?”  Passion fruit.  A berry.  Cherry.  They were all wrong.

On my last attempt to “ask the locals,” one replied “Strawberry” (which is clearly is not; look at it!) and the other replied “Guava” (which is much larger and not red).  So instead of googling “cat pee white flower tree” I googled “Strawberry Guava.”  And wouldn’t you know it…it is a strawberry guava tree!  (There are also pineapple guava trees.)

The bad news about strawberry guava trees is that they grow like weeds.  The good thing about strawberry guava trees is that they grow like weeds – and taste DELICIOUS!!!  Hopefully I’ll be more successful in growing them next time!  This fruit rivals raspberries as my favorite!  While I can’t make a raspberry pizza or raspberry cheesecake with strawberry guavas, they supposedly taste great in drinks, by themselves or in ice cream – and I just happen to have become an expert at making Julia Child’s frozen custard.  Frozen strawberry-guava custard…Mmmm.