Cafe Liz

Greens of the season: What’s in your yard, what’s in the market — and what’s off-limits

The winter rains bring with them an explosion of green growth, much of which filters its way into our markets -- well, some of them, at least. For whatever reason -- wealth? -- many of the wild greens do not play a role in most people's diets. And it's a pity, because native plants are an excellent way to embrace the land, eating local at its best.

However, you can still find them. A few of them may be in your yard, or growing alongside parking lots, or next to roads. Well, any of them could be there -- these are wild plants, after all. But you can save yourself the trouble (and potential danger) of identifying them yourself by buying them after someone else did the foraging -- Arab and interracial locales, as well as less well-off places, are a good bet for this.

There's a potential catch, though. Some plants that have been part of the culinary tradition for hundreds of years are now protected by law due to overpicking, but they're still being sold in the markets. Most likely it's a matter of ignorance. However, there's a reason they're protected -- they've become endangered by the harvesting habits, which in many cases prevent them from reproducing.

Here's a list of what's what -- the plants I've identified around my house (mallow, sorrel, nettle), the delights in various markets (wild beet, chicory, mustard, and Jerusalem sage) a few that were there but shouldn't be (cyclamen, tumbleweed). Last but not least -- some simple recipes that highlight the vibrant freshness of the season.

But before we begin, a warning: If you're not 100 percent sure you know what you're picking, don't eat it. People have died over misidentifications. At the very least, this guide will give you the satisfaction of knowing what's in your yard. Knowing how to identify the urban flora makes your environment a little bit more familiar -- especially when you see your friend the mallow bush peeking out at every opportunity.

Now, let's go. Continue reading Greens of the season: What’s in your yard, what’s in the market — and what’s off-limits...

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Happiness is stuffed vegetables when it’s raining

Nothing like a cold, rainy day to make me want to turn on the oven and whip up a massive tray of stuffed vegetables of all shapes and sizes. It takes about an hour to bake, and you’ll find me here, huddled next to the oven door the entire time.

You can stuff way more than just peppers — I started with six peppers, then moved on to two zucchini and four tomatoes. You could give onions the same treatment; I just wasn’t in the mood. Baking all these vegetables together in the pan adds flavor to the entire dish, though.

There they are, hot out of the oven and overflowing with rice Continue reading Happiness is stuffed vegetables when it’s raining…

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Rice pudding ice cream

Yes, really. I could just call it rice ice cream, but then you’d think I’m weird. If you think about it, rice ice cream is pretty much just cold rice pudding — the cooked rice takes on a chewier texture, and the dairy-based pudding forms a soft, creamy ice cream. After all, rice pudding contains all the ingredients you’d put into a basic vanilla ice cream, plus rice.

I can’t take credit for this idea on my own.We encountered it at an ice cream shop, Arkino, on north Dizengoff. I don’t recall what exactly Arkino put into its rice ice cream, but it was quite good, and unfortunately, not one of their regular flavors. Well, no better excuse to borrow an idea. Continue reading Rice pudding ice cream…

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Grape leaves stuffed with cranberries, garlic and rice

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 intrigued, since I’ve never worked with fresh grape leaves before, only pickled ones.

As it turns out, there’s not much of a difference between fresh and pickled, especially not once they’ve been cooked for a very, very long time. This very long cooking is crucial, since many a stuffed grape leaf has failed me by coming out too tough to chew after only, say, an hour on the stovetop. But this time around, I figured out a new and improved way to make my grape leaves perfectly tender: the pressure cooker. Continue reading Grape leaves stuffed with cranberries, garlic and rice…

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Spiced noodle rice

This is the kind of dish you could find served as a side at the various Middle-Eastern style “workers’ restaurants” — the places that serve home cooking for the office crowd. I learned the recipe from my roommate Naifeh in Haifa. We would eat it alongside stews, and sometimes just salads. I consider it a kind of easy majadera.

Naifeh’s version got its flavor from the spices listed below, along with a few spoonfuls of powdered soup mix. I admit that mine did too, until I opened up my soup mix container and found things living in it. Gross. I was looking for an excuse to make this with more natural ingredients, anyway. Continue reading Spiced noodle rice…

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Savory roasted loquats and plums

I’m always sad to see the various fruits fade out of season, to return only in a year. Fortunately, others are always arriving in their stead. At the neighborhood greengrocer today, as I was mourning the present passing of the citrus fruits, soon to be followed by strawberries, I was pleased to see that plums and loquats were ready to fill the gap. Well, not really. All fruits have their own special place, at the very least in my heart and appetite.

Loquats, or shesek (שסק) in Hebrew, have been coming into season for a few weeks now. I put off buying them until now, as the price dropped from 20 shekels a kilo to … well, I admit I didn’t actually check the price when I bought them today. In any case, shesek season is now in full swing, so expect more loquat recipes. Continue reading Savory roasted loquats and plums…

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Majadera

I learned how to make majadera from Naifeh, one of my roommates when I lived in Haifa. Majadera is a relatively simple dish — it has very few ingredients, which happen to combine to make a whole protein.

Majadera is prepared in stages — first you fry the onions until they’re nearly burnt. This is what gives the dish its flavor. Then you cook the lentils until they’re soft. Finally, you add the rice, which absorbs the rest of the water (if you’ve measured your water properly). This is why the premade majadera mixes sold at our health food store give me pause — you really can’t mix all the ingredients together in advance. I react the same way to restaurant majadera where the rice is white. If it looks like they cooked the rice, lentils and onions separately, and mixed all three together after the fact, it may come out looking tidier but it just won’t have that much flavor. Continue reading Majadera…

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Purim special: Mochi hamentaschen

When we were in Japan, one of the things we ate on a daily basis was mochi -- the squishy, sticky, gooey sweetened rice snack, generally filled with azuki beans. That was one of the things that we missed, since you can't get it anywhere in Israel, so lo and behold, what did we bring back from our last trip to the U.S.? Mochi from Chinatown.

Anyway, lucky for us, I've since learned that mochi is pretty easy to make. The word mochi refers generally to a sticky rice snack. The rounded, filled dumplings we found at the corner grocery store and enjoyed on a daily basis are called daifuku, while the triangular cinnamon treats in Kyoto are more accurately known as yatsuhashi. However, the dough is more or less the same.

Come Purim, and it turns out that the mochi dough lends itself quite well to making hamentaschen-shaped treats. I admit that I didn't originally intend for my Japanese desserts to resemble Haman's hat (or ears, depending which story you believe). But for some reason, I utterly failed to make rounded bean-filled dumplings, and a tri-cornered creation was the most elegant shape I could come up with. Hence, mochi hamentaschen. Continue reading Purim special: Mochi hamentaschen...

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Mango sticky rice

Poor me, I have three ripe mangoes that need to be eaten very soon. What am I going to do? Continue reading Mango sticky rice…

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