Cafe Liz

I have a new love. Fortunately, my husband approves, because it’s vegetarian and he can eat it, too. I’ve been eating my way through the Persian restaurants neighboring the Levinsky market. While the market was originally founded by Balkan immigrants, it now has a strong Persian presence. Among the many bags of beans, grains and dried fruit at the market’s stores, you’ll find plenty of signs in Persian sticking out from among delicacies like jujubes, large dried garlic flakes and [...]

I’ve been going through massive quantities of vegetable sticks and dip, particularly since Hanukkah, after eating my weight in donuts during the first few days of the holiday. I think I was starting to feel a little deep-fried myself, actually. Fortunately fresh, crispy peppers and carrots are the perfect antidote, and that probably holds for most holiday excesses. A rich-tasting dip makes the crunchy vegetables seem a bit more decadent, and here the base is tahini. In coming up with [...]

Walking through the Yemenite quarter one Friday morning, I passed an open window advertising fresh lahoh. What more of an invitation do I need? But there was no one there. Peering inside, I couldn’t even see any bread — none of the telltale bags of stacked lahoh or saluf, full of condensation that keeps the flatbreads moist and fresh as they cool. Across the street there was another sign in a window advertising lahoh. Eitan’s lahoh, it said. I’d passed [...]

Cholent season has officially begun. By that I mean it’s raining, it’s pouring, we’ve had nearly half a winter’s worth of rain in about two weeks. This is what an average day has looked like in Tel Aviv, that is, during the hours when it’s not pouring and the streets have turned into rivers flowing more rapidly than the Yarkon at most times of the year.

It took me years to realize that my husband liked Jerusalem kugel. Once I did, I turned it into his birthday cake. This might be because I only recently discovered the dish myself. Wandering through Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market sometime last year, I encountered — let’s be honest — unappealing murky brown slices of God-knows-what wrapped in plastic wrap at one of the deli stands, alongside the various cured fish. After verifying that it did not contain meat, I bought [...]

The night before I was scheduled to visit her in Nazareth, my friend Jida called me. “I have bad news,” she said. “Tomorrow is Eid. Everything is going to be closed.” She added, “I know how much you like the market.” Well, I do like Nazareth’s market, but I was ultimately going to see friends. The date of Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that ends Ramadan, is determined in the most traditional way — based on the sighting of the new [...]

I’ve been on somewhat of an arak kick lately. See, I don’t really like arak — I can’t drink it straight, and I despise licorice. But it turns out that I quite like this anise-flavored liquor as a seasoning. Kind of like vanilla extract. I don’t think I’d like to drink vanilla extract straight up, either. Arak is a local beverage with a storied history, having been made in this region for thousands of years. It’s a close relative of [...]

We have a watermelon problem. You see, we went a little watermelon crazy at the farmer’s market. Watermelon is one of those things I can’t really buy on my own — it’s too heavy. But here I was with my husband at the Tel Aviv port, and here was a stand selling all sorts of watermelons in all different colors — yellow, orange, red and more. They were 20 each, or 2 for 25 — which sounded expensive, until we [...]

This is what we call cucumber season. It’s that sultry time of year when everyone is on vacation and the only thing that’s happening is cucumbers are ripening on the vine. This year we’re having an unusually exciting cucumber season, with the largest social protests in decades, but at least in some regards, it’s cucumber season nonetheless — our little green friends are overflowing from their market stalls and are cheap and abundant for pickling. Pickles are somewhat of a [...]