Cafe Liz

This is a play on a classic charoset — a Sephardi-style nut/date spread with a decidedly new-world twist. Cranberries are a new-world fruit, so it’s highly unlikely that they started appearing in any traditional Jewish cuisine too many centuries ago. But hey, it’s been 500 years since Columbus sailed the ocean blue and the world is increasingly globalized, so there’s no reason not to give our holiday “mortar” an extra cranberry tang. Beyond the cranberries, there are the pears and [...]

Now is the season to pick grape leaves. Not that I have access to a grapevine; but plenty of other people do, it seems. One of them apparently dumped a pile of fresh leaves next to the scales at some stall buried deep in the Carmel market this past weekend. Now, stuffed grape leaves take a lot of time to prepare, and I didn’t really think I’d have that much time this week, but what can I say? I was [...]

Strangely enough, I guess you could consider cranberry an exotic fruit around here — the climate is way too warm to grow cranberry bushes. This means I made this granita out of cranberry juice, which is readily available.