There are soups for every season. This is a soup for winter. We are in the midst of Israeli winter at its most intense. It rained for three days straight, and oh, what rain! Some places even had a bit of snow. Fine, laugh. I know it’s not exactly winter …
One day when I was feeling particularly stir-crazy, I packed the baby into the carrier and took a bus down to the Levinsky Street market. There, we made our way through the narrow, crowded streets to Salimi, arguably the area’s best little restaurant for Persian food. Just the two of …
This hot soup segues between seasons, combining the warm comfort needed for winter’s swan song with the bright zest of tomatoes and basil. Is it spring yet? Technically yes, although all the winter colds and flus are yet to receive the memo, and we still have some rain in the …
There’s a little restaurant in the Yemenite quarter with a wide-ranging menu with flagship dishes from at least four ethnicities — including jachnun, kubbeh, couscous and hummus — and it excels at all. How could this be? Generally, when I walk into a restaurant that offers both, say, pad thai …
Lentil soup may have been one of the first things I learned to cook. No, this wasn’t even that long ago — I haven’t been cooking my entire life. It was back in college, when I didn’t really know what I was doing in the kitchen and I definitely needed …
Fresh chickpeas and fresh green wheat — pale green springtime in solid form, infused in a soup of fresh tomatoes. How could you go wrong? These were my finds from the markets of Jerusalem, where unshelled chickpeas are out in abundance. Crispy and fresh tasting, at this stage they’re more …
This soup says spring — delicate in flavor and appearance, with a lovely mix of the season’s latest offerings. With fresh fava beans, fennel and leek, their sweetness enhanced by fresh basil, this is a light soup for these days of intermittent rain and warmth.
I guess you could call this winter. It’s been raining on and off for days. Drops pitter-patter on my windows. The streets are perpetually wet. The sky is gray. My patio planters are soaked through. The once-dusty ground is full of fresh green growth. Well, we take what we can …
It’s easy being green if you taste this good: Bright-green hamousta meets green wheat in a gentle twist on a local favorite. Hamousta is a Jewish-Kurdish soup generally served with kubbeh, which are stuffed dumplings. While kubbeh are fabulous, they’re also quite time-consuming to make, and in any case, I …
I had a particular Persian meatball dish in mind when I made this — meatballs stewed in a broth of dried fruit. Fruit plays a central role in savory cooking in Persian cuisine. While dried fruit is more commonly associated with another holiday, Tu Bishvat, Passover also happens to fall …
