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Ravioli with mulukhiya and sweet potato

A decidedly local green has started poking through the mass of exotic mushrooms, Thai eggplants and other cultivated specialties at the Carmel Market -- shoots of mulukhiya, a Middle Eastern specialty somewhat strangely known as Jews' mallow. In some markets around Israel, especially those catering to a more mixed Arab-Jewish population, it's quite common -- at the Ramle market, you can get cultivated mulukhiya even when it's out of season, as fellow blogger Sarah told me -- but in Tel Aviv it's a good deal less common.

Mulukhiya, also written mloukhieh, is the Arabic name, which is also used in Hebrew; some sources say the name comes from the similarly written Arabic root for "royal." It's a member of the jute family, corchorus, a word that means, somewhat less elegantly, "mucose."

Uncooked mulukhiya has a smell that somewhat reminds me of asparagus; the cooked stew has gumbo-like properties that will please people who like okra in all its gooeyness. While obviously the number of ways to prepare mulukhiya varies along with the number of cultures (households? cooks?) who call the dish their own, but one traditional, fairly common means of preparation calls for plucking the leaves from the long, spindly stems and quickly boiling them into a viscous stew, flavored with fried garlic. This is the Egyptian method, and can also be found in Israel, as I confirmed with some of the friendly market sellers.

I picked up a bunch from the stand behind the juice-seller on Yihyeh Street (parallel to the main Carmel strip), who also offered me a few fresh chickpeas and tiny sour plums to try. I picked up about 400 grams at 10 shekels a kilo, which isn't bad, although you only use the leaves, not the stems (which make up the bulk of the weight). Since then, I've noticed mulukhiya being sold at some of the greens stands inside the main Carmel strip, too.

Since making my mulukhiya into a stew would have been too obvious, I decided to incorporate it into a filling for ravioli, mixed with sweet potatoes. After all, why not? Continue reading Ravioli with mulukhiya and sweet potato ...

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Orna & Ella’s sweet potato pancakes

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Latke bonanza, part 2

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