Cafe Liz

It’s not so common that I find something new and surprising at the shook, which makes it all the more exciting when it does happen. Poking my nose through one of the herb stands last week, I found a new, unfamiliar leaf. It looked like tarragon. I asked what it was. “Zaatar,” the seller told me. But it doesn’t look like zaatar, I responded. “Taste it,” he said. So I did.

Late Thursday night, I received an e-mail from cookbook author Joan Nathan, telling me she’d canceled her plans for Friday. Would I like to visit the Tel Aviv farmer’s market and Bnei Brak with her? Geez, what a question! Of course I would. But there was a catch. There’s always a catch. She gave me a call the following morning, and we made plans to meet in half an hour. Did I know where we could find good Ashkenazi food [...]

I attended two weed walks last week. Both had been delayed due to rain. Coincidence? Not at all. We’ve had several years of drought, and the rain came late this year. But once it started, it didn’t stop. When the winter rains begin, the dusty earth quickly comes alive with fresh green growth. Flat brown yards and parking lots fill up with massive packs of mallow, and green shoots peek from between cracks in the pavement. Many of the country’s [...]

Jachnun is one of those dishes that everyone in Israel loves but few actually make themselves. These rolled sticks of dough are a Yemenite Jewish food. The dish is one of many slow-cooked Jewish foods invented to be prepared a day in advance and baked all night long, so that there would be hot food on the sabbath, when lighting fires is prohibited. Brought over by Yemenite immigrants from Aden, jachnun was warmly embraced by Israeli society as a whole. [...]

In a nondescript junction in neighboring Givatayim sits a legend of a shop known as Oved’s sabich. Oved rose to fame not due to the quality of his sabich — fried eggplant — but due to his playful use of the Hebrew language. If someone asks, “Have you been to Oved?” the appropriate answer is yes. Admitting that you haven’t brings incredulity. Admitting that you’ve been there only once is passable, but still surprising. Oved is such an institution that [...]

Does Israel have a beer culture? Well, kind of. A young one. One that’s perhaps largely imported. What it does have now is a beer expo. To be precise, Israel has had one beer expo to date — yesterday was the day for professionals, and today it’s open to the public at large, all those beer drinkers who want to get to know the country’s importers and microbrewers.

You can buy your pine nuts for 120 to 250 shekels a kilo. Or you can pick them off the ground in a public park or your backyard. OK, maybe that’s a little flippant. It’s quite a lot of work to find them yourself, let alone to find enough to cook with. But they’re there, dropping from indigenous pine trees, and lying dormant in the ground for years — until an enterprising bird or human digs them out, or until [...]

Green wheat is one of the oldest methods of eating grains known to mankind. It’s been grown and prepared in this region for thousands of years. It was used in biblical offerings. Before there was rice, there was green wheat. In fact, unlike rice, green wheat is grown and processed locally. When I go to the market, the barrel of green wheat came from the Galilee — not from another continent, like most of our grains and legumes.

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 [...]

When we were served these sour pink balls as part of a tray of roasted vegetables, no one could guess what they were. That color — like no vegetable we’d ever seen. Was it a very small, pale beet? Dyed baby potatoes? We had to ask the waiter. Maybe the mystery is part of the excitement, because most of the people with us at Hamitbach Shel Rama that night agreed that those pickled, roasted radishes were one of the highlights [...]