[Israel] Food
Jun. 16th, 2008 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidLike last year, food was mostly pre-arranged: during the ride, lunches and dinners were at hotels/kibbutzim, while lunch and assorted snacks were provided by the crew; after the ride, I was lucky enough to be visiting many friends, who made yummy meals.
There was a lot of excellent food; these snippets are just what stuck with me weeks later.
Hotel breakfasts in Israel are huge buffets of all sorts of food (dinners, too, but for some reason, though I ate some very lovely stuff, frequently fleishig, the details didn't stick with me (and strangely enough, I wasn't food blogging during the ride). The last night it was an outdoor buffet, and as all the other nights, after tons of veggies and meat, there were a lot of desserts to sample. I now understand tasting plates!). There's hot food (a couple of forms of eggs, something starchy/potatoes, and so on), but I found myself much more interested in the cold offerings, especially Israeli salad, olives, and Bulgarit cheese (rather like feta). There was fruit, too. I got very used to having salad for breakfast, the olives and cheese giving me salt and protein.
I remain in awe of Manar's breakfasts, though: he'd have a third of his plate with lebaneh (soft white cheese), olive oil, and salad; a third of the plate heaped with green olives, and the remaining third heaped with black olives. This, plus bread, was his usual morning meal. I still can't get over how much salt he consumed each time.
About salt: a couple of times I'd come in to a rest stop, and find myself completely focused on the salty peanuts. There were other nuts (even salted ones), dried fruit, energy bars, and so on, but all I could see were the salty peanuts. Obviously, I needed the salt, because I don't like peanuts!
The second day there was cool watermelon at one of the morning rest stops, the first of the ride, and it was perfect, cool, wet, sweet. It's why I ended up buying a watermelon for Shavuot, the memory of how it tasted after a hot ride (even though the leg just before that was a fun bit of rolling hills that were the right height for me to get momentum).
The first pita of the trip is always particularly yummy. The US has many great breads, but nothing like a really fresh pita (or at least, not where I've found it; even the pretty good Canadian ones don't hold a candle to ones recently made). My general guideline: loaf breads in the US, flatbreads in Israel.
After leaving Ashkelon, Iftach said that we were passing a field of hummus (in Hebrew, hummus is both the spread/dip and the chickpeas themselves), and brought me a pod with a chickpea in it. I have eaten a fresh chickpea!
That night at the kibbutz there were carob trees. I've never seen the pods green before, just dark brown and unapproachable as food (in Hebrew school they'd give us bukser = carob pods on Tu B'Shvat, and none of us ever thought to eat them). Neat.
The Friends-of-Parents I visited in Rishon L'Tzion have a lot of lemon trees in the back yard. The whole time I was there I drank unsweetened lemonade from their lemons, and brought lemons to my next hosts as well. It was very refreshing, especially in the sudden (to me) humidity (going from the desert to near the ocean was a bit of a surprise to my system).
Once I was in Jerusalem, I ended up having the obligatory felafel (at the place at the intersection of King George and Agrippas. Other places had been suggested as better options, but it was there, and familiar.). Instead of getting it in a pita, I had it in a half of an aish tanur, which is now known as laffa (which just makes me want to laugh :-). Last year, I figured out the nomenclature shift, but didn't know why. This year, I learned that aish tanur is the Yerushalmi term for what in the rest of the country is called laffa. There are a number of other Jerusalem-specific terms for things, but I don't remember the others that were mentioned.
I meandered through Machaneh Yehuda (I cannot visit the country without going there, apparently). The most interesting produce to me was fresh mulberries for sale. Here, no one seems to sell them, and the occasional fruiting tree in the city is seen as a bit of a nuisance during the season. I couldn't make my way out of there without getting something, so ended up with Rainier cherries and fresh figs for my hosts.
The last time I stayed with my Jerusalem hosts, I made challah while they were at a wedding Thursday night, though I was going away for Shabbat. This time, there was no wedding, but I offered to make challah again (and again was away for Shabbat). It felt good to have my hands in dough, though strange to be using just white flour. The dough is so much softer and springier. (I did get to try some of the leftovers from their Shabbat, including a lovely cold cherry soup.)
The night before I left, I went to dinner chez Josh and his family. When I arrived, he started the "Israeli stir fry" of chicken, onions, and pale peppers with Israeli rather than Asian spices (no clue which, though). I couldn't help but remember making a stir fry with him back at the beginning of my time in Israel, panicking about how to check for bugs in broccoli. To calm me down, he called his rabbi, then told me the answer: if there are bugs, don't eat them. None of this must-get-a-microscope. Just, if there are bugs, don't eat them. Anyway. This Israeli stir-fry was served with amba on the side, which was perfect. I need to remember to use it more (read: to figure out how to use it more).
The last day in Jerusalem was Yom Yerushalayim, and I spent the day walking all over the city. For lunch, I treated myself to a fancy meal, taking myself out to the place Josh and his wife took me last year, Salina's (on Emek Refa'im), again getting the entrecote steak. It was every bit as good as I remembered. This time there was a tangle of arugula salad on the side, and a cylinder of mashed sweet and white potatoes topped with little brown twigs that turned out to be fried leeks. I sat and savored it all, taking my time (and letting my feet recover :-).
There was a lot of excellent food; these snippets are just what stuck with me weeks later.
Hotel breakfasts in Israel are huge buffets of all sorts of food (dinners, too, but for some reason, though I ate some very lovely stuff, frequently fleishig, the details didn't stick with me (and strangely enough, I wasn't food blogging during the ride). The last night it was an outdoor buffet, and as all the other nights, after tons of veggies and meat, there were a lot of desserts to sample. I now understand tasting plates!). There's hot food (a couple of forms of eggs, something starchy/potatoes, and so on), but I found myself much more interested in the cold offerings, especially Israeli salad, olives, and Bulgarit cheese (rather like feta). There was fruit, too. I got very used to having salad for breakfast, the olives and cheese giving me salt and protein.
I remain in awe of Manar's breakfasts, though: he'd have a third of his plate with lebaneh (soft white cheese), olive oil, and salad; a third of the plate heaped with green olives, and the remaining third heaped with black olives. This, plus bread, was his usual morning meal. I still can't get over how much salt he consumed each time.
About salt: a couple of times I'd come in to a rest stop, and find myself completely focused on the salty peanuts. There were other nuts (even salted ones), dried fruit, energy bars, and so on, but all I could see were the salty peanuts. Obviously, I needed the salt, because I don't like peanuts!
The second day there was cool watermelon at one of the morning rest stops, the first of the ride, and it was perfect, cool, wet, sweet. It's why I ended up buying a watermelon for Shavuot, the memory of how it tasted after a hot ride (even though the leg just before that was a fun bit of rolling hills that were the right height for me to get momentum).
The first pita of the trip is always particularly yummy. The US has many great breads, but nothing like a really fresh pita (or at least, not where I've found it; even the pretty good Canadian ones don't hold a candle to ones recently made). My general guideline: loaf breads in the US, flatbreads in Israel.
After leaving Ashkelon, Iftach said that we were passing a field of hummus (in Hebrew, hummus is both the spread/dip and the chickpeas themselves), and brought me a pod with a chickpea in it. I have eaten a fresh chickpea!
That night at the kibbutz there were carob trees. I've never seen the pods green before, just dark brown and unapproachable as food (in Hebrew school they'd give us bukser = carob pods on Tu B'Shvat, and none of us ever thought to eat them). Neat.
The Friends-of-Parents I visited in Rishon L'Tzion have a lot of lemon trees in the back yard. The whole time I was there I drank unsweetened lemonade from their lemons, and brought lemons to my next hosts as well. It was very refreshing, especially in the sudden (to me) humidity (going from the desert to near the ocean was a bit of a surprise to my system).
Once I was in Jerusalem, I ended up having the obligatory felafel (at the place at the intersection of King George and Agrippas. Other places had been suggested as better options, but it was there, and familiar.). Instead of getting it in a pita, I had it in a half of an aish tanur, which is now known as laffa (which just makes me want to laugh :-). Last year, I figured out the nomenclature shift, but didn't know why. This year, I learned that aish tanur is the Yerushalmi term for what in the rest of the country is called laffa. There are a number of other Jerusalem-specific terms for things, but I don't remember the others that were mentioned.
I meandered through Machaneh Yehuda (I cannot visit the country without going there, apparently). The most interesting produce to me was fresh mulberries for sale. Here, no one seems to sell them, and the occasional fruiting tree in the city is seen as a bit of a nuisance during the season. I couldn't make my way out of there without getting something, so ended up with Rainier cherries and fresh figs for my hosts.
The last time I stayed with my Jerusalem hosts, I made challah while they were at a wedding Thursday night, though I was going away for Shabbat. This time, there was no wedding, but I offered to make challah again (and again was away for Shabbat). It felt good to have my hands in dough, though strange to be using just white flour. The dough is so much softer and springier. (I did get to try some of the leftovers from their Shabbat, including a lovely cold cherry soup.)
The night before I left, I went to dinner chez Josh and his family. When I arrived, he started the "Israeli stir fry" of chicken, onions, and pale peppers with Israeli rather than Asian spices (no clue which, though). I couldn't help but remember making a stir fry with him back at the beginning of my time in Israel, panicking about how to check for bugs in broccoli. To calm me down, he called his rabbi, then told me the answer: if there are bugs, don't eat them. None of this must-get-a-microscope. Just, if there are bugs, don't eat them. Anyway. This Israeli stir-fry was served with amba on the side, which was perfect. I need to remember to use it more (read: to figure out how to use it more).
The last day in Jerusalem was Yom Yerushalayim, and I spent the day walking all over the city. For lunch, I treated myself to a fancy meal, taking myself out to the place Josh and his wife took me last year, Salina's (on Emek Refa'im), again getting the entrecote steak. It was every bit as good as I remembered. This time there was a tangle of arugula salad on the side, and a cylinder of mashed sweet and white potatoes topped with little brown twigs that turned out to be fried leeks. I sat and savored it all, taking my time (and letting my feet recover :-).