Cafe Liz

It’s that time of year — the first autumn rains, which mean the olives are ripe. Admittedly, I haven’t seen more than five minutes of rain in Tel Aviv so far, but it’s been on and off the weather forecast for a few weeks now. I’ve heard rumors that in some places, it actually poured. Several times. Likewise, the olive harvest has been in full swing for a few weeks now. The trees are said to give a good crop [...]

These swirly, patterned ribbons would look quite nice hung on my wall. Were they not made of pasta dough, that is. Back story: We are now the proud new owners of a pasta maker. I know everyone says you can make perfectly good pasta by hand, too, but frankly, there's no comparison. We've never been able to roll our pasta thin enough. Plus, the machine is extremely useful when it comes to kneading. Once you have a machine to do [...]

We're used to seeing capers sold in little gourmet jars, and served in gourmet dishes at gourmet restaurants. Capers, it turns out, are a weed. They grow wild around the Mediterranean, and Israel is no exception. Capers are referenced in the bible, and hung from the walls of Jerusalem over the centuries. In fact, apparently they're one of those plants that people have to pull out, because they're just that common.

It’s been a month since my last olive post, and I have results: My latest round of olives is cured and ready to eat (well, part of it). I started with about 2 kilos of black olives. Of those, half were cured in salt, another half were pickled in brine with Mediterranean herbs, and the remainder (really, all this somehow adds up) were prepared in miso paste, like the pickles we saw at markets in Japan.

I started pickling olives quite by chance, when a friend at work brought in his surplus crop, and I found myself with half a kilo of bright green Syrian Souri olives. The results were amazing. Sadly, I think this has turned me into an olive snob, because I can’t eat the soggy things that show up alongside cafe sandwiches anymore.