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.)

On Saturday we headed north to Mt. Gilboa which lies right on the border of northern Palestine and Israel.  Paul and I, and Dave and Emily set off at the crack of noon in search of Shirsh Zallouh, also known as Ferula hermonis Boiss…wild mushrooms!

A group from the Embassy went about 3 weeks ago.  We hoped to mimic their trip, simply put:  find and collect mushrooms, sauté them with onions, and enjoy with a great bottle of wine.

This is what we were looking for...not what we found.

The mission was….............a complete failure. 

We got to the site (or what we thought was the site – Mistake #1) at about 130pm.  We were all hungry so we had our gourmet picnic lunch before the hunt.  (It was delicious and a lot of fun.  We had roasted red pepper tapenade, caramelized onions, Jerusalem bread, goat cheese, fresh dates and a bottle of Spanish rioja!)  The guide said to take a basket (like little red riding hood) to put the mushrooms in so the dirt and spores fall back to the ground.  Well we aren’t professionals or anything like that – so Dave carried a reusable grocery bag and Paul has a glow-in-the-dark pumpkin bucket.  Haha.  We spread out and searched the field, all four of us staring at our feet looking for fennel.  Yes, fennel.  Wild fennel.  (These mushrooms grow ONLY at the base of wild fennel plants.)  Mistake #2 – you shouldn’t be looking down for wild fennel.  It is about 5 feet high with bright yellow buds on top and wispy leaves all around.  You can’t miss it.  So if we didn’t see it in the field in the first 5 seconds we should have moved on.  It was like the hunting for sunshine in a cave.

We decided to drive a little further up the road and 5 minutes away Emily spotted a fennel plant (and remembered what they looked like.  The rest of us were basing our search on a google image displayed on a BlackBerry with no concept of scale.).  We quickly parked the car and ran into the field with renewed spirits!  No mushrooms.  This was the last weekend of the season and the Bedouins had probably already been through to collect these mushrooms close to the road…so we pressed onwards into the field.

Israel is usually very brown and dry and dead – but this is winter, or the rainy season, so things are as green as they get right now.  The fields were knee high with random weeds and grasses, some of them prickly, but despite this challenge (and my fear of snakes or other small creatures crawling in the grass where I wouldn’t see them) we persevered.  Emily and Dave and I found an orange tree and – happy to have some fruit to show for our 2 hours of efforts – we picked 6 or 7 oranges.  Mistake #3 – you should try one before you pick the next 6.  There are more varieties than we see in the grocery store and this isn’t Florida.  These were sour like lemons with really tough peels and lots of strings and seeds.

Anyway…no mushrooms in this field so we pressed on to a hill covered in fennel.  Rewind – the fennel in this field was only as tall as the other brush, so you couldn’t see it until you were on top of it.  So we press on.  To conquer this hill which we are sure will have mushrooms, we split up and scour the base of every fennel plant we can. 

Nada.  Nilch.  We are losers.  In my mind, the Bedouins won.  As we turn to leave, giving up our hopes of wild mushrooms, Paul yells out “I found one!”  (So it wasn’t a failure?!)  No…still a failure.  The mushroom was big…and slimy and wilting and full of little bugs. 

Okay…on a more positive note.  The mushroom part was a failure, but we had a great lunch!  It was a lot of fun and now we know where to go and what to look for next year.  And we know that we have to go at the beginning of the season.  The best part – as we were leaving it was close to sunset (but not yet dinner time) and a friend had told us of this great restaurant which happened to be right across the street from our little field.  We thought we’d try it out. 

We walked into this cute cabin with low ceilings and wood all around (which is odd for Israel given the general lack of trees.  Most construction is done with cement.).  After about 10 minutes they seated us outside on the patio, overlooking the valley.  Before they served the food, the sun set.  Beautiful!  The waiter put down a large placemat on our wood table and in English it explained how they use local food that is in season and try to let the flavors of the food shine (not covering them up with sweeteners or sauces) – perfect!  Despite not finding mushrooms, it was a very fun day filled with delicious rich food!  I can’t wait until next year when we can do it again…AND find mushrooms!

A Culinary Anniversary

I love surprises - but I admit, I am difficult to surprise.  Because as much as I love being surprised - I love figuring out what the surprise is! So when Paul left "for an early morning run" on our anniversary, I knew something was going on.  As he was leaving I curled up under the covers and closed my eyes...once the door shut, I sprung out of bed and began rapid work to finish the scrapbook I'd been working on for quite some time. 

An hour or so later, when I "woke up," I found flowers and coffee waiting for me in the kitchen! After a relaxing breakfast (and some cleaning and prep for our huge Thanksgiving dinner), we headed to the park for a picnic lunch like frequently did during DC summers (although, it is impossible to find prosciutto here, so beef jerky was substituted - haha).  The most enjoyable part of the picnic was reading on 1st Anniversary bottle of wine.  At the wedding, in lieu of a guest book, we asked our friends and family to write on wine bottles to be opened on our 1st, 5th and 10th anniversaries.  Surprisingly, there were many wishes in Spanish, Portuguese and Gaelic.  The picnic and well-wishes really took us back!

For dinner we went to this great wine bar in Jaffa which specializes in meat and truffles! Hmmm :) Now, I don't want to say "I love Israel," for this could be misinterpreted, but...lets just say the waiter served his country well.  The cave-like restaurant was mostly empty (being a Sunday night), save for the owner, the manager and a few waiters.  After a delicious meal and a glass of the house wine, we were chatting with the guy about our anniversary and the great bottle of truffle oil we got for Christmas last year. "Ah, yes, Christmas," he said with a smile, as if realizing we were in some way different. 

Just before we left he brought over a little to-go box and said "I forgot to bring you your side dish." I thought I he meant the massive mound of butter (read the next post) until he winked at us and said quietly "It's not the butter." Though we wanted to know what it was, we clearly couldn't open the box in front of the owner or the manager. "Don't open until Christmas!" was the last thing he said as we paid the bill.  Israel is still below Argentina on my list of favorite foreign countries, and I'm not saying I can be bought off with a bottle of truffle oil...but it does go a long way! 

Easter...?

Let me start talking about Easter by saying that today is the second day of Passover and we live in Israel.

I was browsing through the New York Time’s Style Section (which is one of my favorites, after world news) and came across the abundance of Easter Recipes and it hit me – this is EASTER! We have been so focused on Passover – it’s odd days off of work and lack of bread - that I’d forgotten it was Easter! (Last night we even made a Jewish, “Passover kosher” dinner from our Israeli cookbook that was delicious and oh so rich!..but that is beside the point.)

So thinking about my memories of Easter dinner I started looking for “honey baked ham recipes! I’ll pair that with cheesy potatoes, oven-hot rolls and maybe we’ll try the NYT’s hot crossed buns for dessert. Oh! And Easter Eggs! We’ll do those tonight. Whewww, we’ll still have Easter!!”

And then it hits me: today is the second day of Passover and we live in Israel. What does this mean?
a.) Not only will I not find honey baked ham…I won’t find any ham..or bacon (which I dreamt about last night)..or any other pig products. So cross that one off the list.
b.) It is Passover…so as I said before – no bread. The grocery store isles really are covered with tarps. No Bread, no pasta, no cereal, no baby food or dog food – and no Easter rolls.
c.) Cheesy potatoes may be possible, but modified since I won’t find the exact ingredients we used at home.
d.) Easter Eggs – this one is sad. First, there are no "Easter Egg Dying Kits" in the stores here. Second, the NYTs mentions a dozen eggs are about $1.20 (and that is NYC!) – try $3 - $7.50 for a dozen eggs here. And Third, don’t tell anyone, but I’ve never boiled an egg before. This sounds like a relatively expensive experiment in natural egg coloring that will surely make us sick.

So we are back to the second day of Passover in Israel – trying to think of ways to make it more like Easter. Don’t tell Paul but I’ve already staked out a candy store and I’m working on the basket and lack of Easter grass, but he may still get an Easter basket!