Fast food around here means whatever I can make in under 20 minutes. So what have we been eating while most of the pots and pans are sitting in boxes that are sealed with duct tape? Weeell…the way I see it, it’s a good time to empty out the freezer.  I’ve been cooking up the frozens that won’t survive a day out. I also have to keep in mind a complication: Husband must be on a special bland diet and he’s been surviving on chicken soup with vegetables in it. I’ve been making a fresh batch every two days.

We move the middle of this week. This is the equipment I kept back to pack the night before:

* 2 sharp knives for chopping and general work (pareve and dairy) and two small chopping blocks, pareve and dairy.

* For cooking chicken soup, 1 pot, 1 wooden spoon, 1 ladle.

* For blending dairy soups and kefir milkshakes, the stick blender.

* The sandwich toaster.

Other dairy tools:

*1 small frying pan and spatula; 1 medium pot. 1 wooden spoon. (You should have seen me draining spaghetti without a colander the other day).

*1 finjan pot for coffee and 1 metal spoon.

*A corkscrew.

That’s it. I’m amazed at how I, the kitchen gadget queen, am getting along with so few tools.

I’ve bought only the chicken and fresh vegetables I need for the chicken soup. It reminds me of The Week Without Shopping, only then I thought we’d run out of food, and now I’m just pleased to see all the food get eaten up. A few meals the Little One and I have consumed, sitting wherever we can around the living room:

*Frozen blintzes topped with sour cream made a quick dinner once, and now they’re gone.

*A bag of frozen peas made a soup, with an onion, a tomato, two carrots, and celery, a bay leaf, and a little marjoram. This was blended with the ol’ stick blender. We had it twice.

*Grilled cheese sandwiches are on the menu for today, based on a loaf of basil bread I’d frozen about a month ago.

*Pre-washed salad mixes topped with cottage cheese and chopped nuts or sunflower seeds (these out of the freezer), or tuna.

*Thawed-out frozen sole fillets, quickly dipped into batter and fried, were tasty hot and good cold. The last of the potatoes went with them, steamed and drizzled with olive oil, s&p, paprika and cumin.

*Eggs – lots of eggs. The last dinner I gave for friends, we were already packing. Appetizer was scrambled eggs studded wtih chives and flakes of a pungent kashkeval cheese; main course was spaghetti with pesto. A big mixed salad with a hasty vinaigrette dressing. That was all. I felt a bit embarassed at the poverty of the menu, but our guests said they hadn’t had pesto in ages and were delighted. I  have polite friends.

*For snacks we’ve been munching on fruit and crackers.

We’re going out for dinner tomorrow night – Husband will probably order a plain tuna sandwhich.

On moving day, I’ll have Husband’s soup all packaged up in a spillproof container and bring it with us in the car. I’ve been gradually taking kitchen things over to the new place (the kitchen is all clean by now) and expect to be able to start cooking at least basic meals as soon as the fridge and stove are plugged in.

We’re all losing weight around here. This is a good thing. Even better, now that moving day is actually in sight, the fog of anxiety is lifting and I’m feeling optimistic about this move, remembering all the reasons I initiated it. We’re a smaller family now. Dad is gone and Mom has moved away. Where we are has too many sad associations; I’m really looking forward to starting again.

I have fantasies of making a celebration dinner next week. Shall I go ahead and knock myself out? Rosh HaShannah is around the corner and we have to start thinking of all those meals…what do you think?

Whipped Berry Pudding. Photo by Yaelian Lee.

My blogger friends continue to support Israeli Kitchen while I’m finishing up my house move. This delicious-looking contribution is from Yaelian, a Finnish blogger living in Central Israel.

Even if you can’t read Finnish, please visit her blog, which has photos from this week’s late-night fair in Tel Aviv’s Carmel market. Wish I could have gone to that fair – I hear it was great, with artisans and food booths open till late at night. I’m glad Yaelian went and shared some images.

I had to chuckle when I read through Yaelian’s recipe – it requires semolina, which as my readers know, I had 5 kilos of at Pesach time. I don’t intend to accumulate so much semolina again, but do intend to make this pudding as soon as I can locate which box my mixer is in. In fact, I wish I could have some of that pudding right now. It’s breakfast time and I’m hungry.

Thank you, Yaelian!

*

I am very happy to guest blog for Mimi, when she asked me. For my guest posting I chose a typical Finnish dessert, which is called Whipped Berry Pudding (Marjapuuro). It is made with semolina and berries. I have not eaten this for years, but thinking about a recipe for the guest posting I suddenly had a great urge to make this dessert. It is quite easy to make.

In Scandanavia, the whipped pudding is usually made with lingonberries. Instead I have used frozen raspberries. This can also be made with cranberries.

Whipped Berry Pudding from Finland (4-6 servings)

Ingredients:

2 cups of fresh/frozen  raspberries (or cranberries)

1½ cups of water

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

a dash of salt

½ cup of semolina

Method:

1. Heat raspberries  in 1 1/2 cups water until it boils; reduce heat. Simmer uncovered for a few minutes.

2. Press raspberries  through a  sieve to remove seeds. This may take some time, as you want to get all the goodness out of the berries, leaving only the seeds.

3. Return the raspberry juice to saucepan. Add sugar, 1 cup water and the salt; heat to boiling.

4.  Add semolina gradually, stirring constantly. Cook until thickened, 3- 5 minutes.

5. Pour into a mixer bowl. Beat on high speed until pudding becomes fluffy and the colour of the pudding turns into light pink, about 5 minutes.

The pudding is served cold, so put the bowl in the fridge for a few hours before serving. Serve in individual cups.

Mimi adds:

Yaelian says that she didn’t have whipping cream at hand when she made the pudding, but that it’s customary to whip some up and top the pudding with it.

Pickled Carrots. Photo by Leda Meredith.

Leda Meredith has kindly offered this excellent post for the readers of Israeli Kitchen. It’s about food preservation without fancy equipment – just in time for late summer’s abundance of fresh produce. For those who would love to keep those ripe, colorful seasonal treats for later in the year, this is a wonderful introduction and worth keeping.

Visit Leda’s Urban Homestead to find out much, much more on eating locally, sustainable living, gardening for food and foraging wild edibiles in city settings. And Leda’s charming, informative memoir with recipes is a treasure for any library.

*

THE EMERGENCY PANTRY: LOW-TECH METHODS FOR PRESERVING FOOD

By Leda Meredith

When the power went out, I stepped into the hallway to discover if it was just my apartment or the whole building. It was my whole building. Then I wondered if maybe it was my whole street. It was still daylight, so hard to tell just by glancing out the window. I went outside and found a small crowd of people gathered around a man who had a battery-operated radio.

This was in 2003, and the power was out not only in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, but across the entire eastern seaboard of North America. The voice on the radio said it might be days in some areas before power was restored.

I went back into my apartment and assessed my pantry. The food in the refrigerator would clearly spoil if the power outage continued for long. The stuff in my freezer might last a bit longer because my freezer was packed full (food in a full freezer stays frozen longer than in a half-empty freezer). But before long the freezer food would spoil, too.

That was the first time I fully appreciated my food preservation “hobby.” My shelves were lined with homemade dried and canned food, as well as ingredients preserved in salt, oil, and vinegar—methods that have been used for millennia. A quick look at my shelves let me know that I would be eating well that night and the night after that, and many nights after that, with or without electricity.

Aside from emergency preparedness, I get a lot of pleasure from “putting up” food. The quality is good because I preserve each ingredient when it is in season and at its peak. I save money because peak season is when each ingredient is also at its cheapest. And there is something satisfying about looking at a shelf filled with colorful jars of food. When birthdays and holidays come around, my jars of preserves make much-loved gifts.

When I bring up the subject of food preservation the first thing many people think of is botulism; scary—and entirely unnecessary. There are a few rules you need to know and stick to in order to safely preserve foods. If you follow those rules, harmful bacteria will not be an issue.

It turns out that harmful bacteria are finicky. They need air, moisture, a very particular PH (not too acidic or alkaline), and a moderate temperature range in order to survive. That’s good news for us because it’s easy to create an environment that is too dry, too sour, too salty, too hot, or too cold for harmful bacteria to exist.

The scare stories about botulism come from mistakes that occurred when someone didn’t understand the difference between canning in a boiling water bath, which doesn’t require special equipment, and canning in a pressure canner, which does. Certain foods must be canned in a pressure canner in order to be safe. Canning (by either method) is a subject worth a whole post unto itself, and not what I want to write about today (maybe Miriam will invite me back for a guest post on that subject!). What I want to share with you today are methods of food preservation that require no special equipment or electricity. These are the methods that our ancestors used long before there were pressure canners or refrigerators.

I have to add that many preserved foods last longer if stored in a cool, dark place. If the only cool, dark place in your home is your refrigerator and it is working, by all means do store these products there. Exceptions are foods preserved by dehydration or in alcohol, both of which are fine even when stored at a very warm room temperature.

Drying

Dehydrating food is one of the oldest and trustiest of food preservation methods. Dried foods have the advantages of taking up very little space, weighing almost nothing, and having a shelf life of close to forever.

If you care about the appearance of your final product, there are a couple of extra steps you can take that will keep the colors of your food bright: Blanch vegetables in boiling water for 1-2 minutes before drying. Let sliced or chopped fruit sit in acidic water (water with a splash of vinegar or lemon juice added) for 20 minutes before drying. Neither of these steps is essential, but without them foods tend to lose color or darken to brown when dried.

All foods dry best when sliced or chopped no thicker than 1/2-inch. Always be sure to leave space between pieces of drying food so that air can circulate all around them.

A dehydrator is not necessary, but is a worthwhile investment if you plan to dry a lot of food. However, I promised no special equipment, so here are a couple of other methods:

Sun drying is only an option where the weather is dry as well as hot. Here in New York, our summers are hot enough, but far too humid to successfully dehydrate food before it molds. If you are lucky enough to have the right climate, lay a window screen flat in a sunny place. Arrange the food you are drying on it and place another screen on top (to keep out insects). Be sure to bring the food in if it looks like rain, and turn the pieces of food every so often so that they dry evenly. This method works especially well with tomatoes.

To dry foods in the oven, spread the prepared pieces of food on a rack on a baking sheet. Heat the oven to 150˚F. If your oven does not go that low, prop the door open with the handle of a wooden spoon.

My oven is an old one of the type that has the pilot light on all the time. Because of that, I do not even need to turn the oven on in order to dehydrate food. I just spread the food on a baking sheet and leave it in there for a few days.

Herbs can be dried simply by securing the stem ends of 10-12 sprigs and hanging them in a place away from direct light. Use rubber bands, not string: The stems shrink as they dry and tend to fall out of bundles secured with string.

Preserving in Alcohol

Any fruit can be preserved in alcohol. Usually brandy or rum are used, with or without added sugar or honey. Layer fruit in a glass jar, adding alcohol and optional sugar to cover as you add fruit over as many weeks as you like. Store covered, at room temperature, away from direct light. The longer you can bring yourself to wait, the better fruit preserved this way tastes (wait at least three months). Spoon the fruit onto desserts and serve the liquid as an aperitif or after dinner drink.

Preserving in Salt

Any vegetable can be preserved in salt, as can most meat and fish (although usually these are first smoked before salting). Layer vegetables in a glass container, making sure each layer is no more than 1/2-inch thick and completely covering each layer with kosher or other non-iodized salt (iodized salt will discolor the food). Tap or shake the container to settle the salt into all the spaces between the vegetables. Finish with a layer of salt. Cover and store in a cool, dark place. To use vegetables preserved this way, first soak them in water for an hour or two to remove some of the saltiness. Green beans are especially good preserved this way.

Verdurette

This is an excellent way of preserving herbs and odds and ends from the garden.

4 parts finely minced vegetables and fresh herbs

1 part kosher or other non-iodized salt

Combine, pack into clean glass jars, cover, and store in a cool, dark place. Use as a flavorful alternative to regular salt, or as a base for soup. Any fresh herb or vegetable can be preserved this way, so long as you stick to the 4:1 ratio.

Preserving by Lacto-fermentation

Lacto-fermenting begins as another form of using salt to preserve food. It is the method used to make traditional sauerkraut and dill cucumber pickles, but can be used for almost any vegetable. The way it works is that first the food is immersed in a brine that is too salty for harmful bacteria to survive in it. Fortunately, there are beneficial bacteria that can survive in this alkaline environment. They begin a fermentation process that ends up preserving the food in a lightly sour, tangy brine.

Place raw vegetables in a clean glass jar or ceramic crock. Cover with a brine made by dissolving 1-3 teaspoons of kosher or other non-iodized salt per cup of water. Use the lower amount of salt in cool weather, the higher amount in hot weather. The chlorine in most municipal tap water can interfere with fermentation, so if you are using tap water, filter it. Weight the vegetables so that they are completely submerged in the liquid (a plastic bag filled with liquid works—just be sure to fill it with more brine, not plain water, in case the bag leaks). Leave at room temperature for between three days and a week, daily skimming off any scum that forms on the surface.

You will see some bubbling occur as fermentation gets under way. When that subsides, your vegetables are ready to pack into clean jars. Use a slotted spoon to remove them from the brine, and leave an inch of headspace in the filled jars. Pour over enough of the brine they fermented in to completely cover the food. Secure lids and store in a cool, dark place.

Your lacto-fermented foods should have a clean, lightly sour smell. Discard any that are cloudy or slimy or smell “off.”

Lacto-fermented foods are higher in vitamin C than their unfermented counterparts and have many health benefits thanks to those beneficial bacteria.

Preserving in Vinegar

Recipes abound for vinegar pickles: some dilute the vinegar with water for a milder pickle, others add sugar or honey for a sweet-and-sour taste (think chutneys and relishes). If you want to play around with making up your own recipes, keep these two rules in mind for safety: 1. Only use vinegar that has an acetic acid strength of 4.5% or higher. Almost all commercial vinegars are in this range and list the acetic acid percentage on the label, 2. Never dilute the vinegar with more than 50% water or it will not be acidic enough to safely preserve the food.

Small, hot chili peppers are good left whole and preserved in undiluted vinegar. Prick them with the tip of a knife to allow the vinegar to penetrate. Loosely pack into a clean glass jar and cover with vinegar.

Preserving in Oil

Oil preservation works because the oil prevents air from reaching the food. Unfortunately, if the food was contaminated before being preserved in oil, the oil doesn’t correct that. The following method combines heat and the acidity of vinegar to destroy harmful bacteria with the airtight seal of the oil. The vinegar adds to the flavor of the finished product.

Chop vegetables no thicker than 1/2-inch. Put them in a non-aluminum pot with enough vinegar to cover. Bring to a boil and boil for 5 minutes. Drain. Loosely pack the food into clean glass jars, adding a few herbs if you like for extra flavor. Cover with olive oil, lightly pressing on the food to get rid of any air bubbles. Make sure the food is covered by at least a 1/4-inch of oil. Secure lids, and store in a cool, dark place. Mushrooms, summer squashes, and eggplant work especially well with this method.

Two books I love on the topic of low-tech food preservation are Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz and Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning by the Gardeners and Farmers of Terre Vivant. I’ve also got some simple food preservation recipes in my book Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes.

We’re moving house.  I haven’t been cooking a lot. (That’s why I’ve been posting so little.) To keep this space in the cosmos lively, I’ve asked several blogger friends to guest post, and hope to present you with some interesting reading next week.

Meantime, what am I cooking for Shabbat? Cholent, of course, that solid, comforting, cold-weather lunch. Only it’s hot as blazes out there. What’s with the cholent?

Well, I’ll have the air conditioner on.  Cholent – or chamin for Sephardim – can be assembled in minutes and has almost everything you need in it: protein, starch, fat. I’m going the easy way this Shabbat.

Observant Jews don’t light fires or cook on Shabbat. Over the ages,  we have developed dozens of variations on one theme: a stew that cooks overnight Friday to eat on Saturday after synagogue services.  Vegetarians excepted, cholent is composed of meat, potatoes, barley and beans. Extras like a big matazah meal dumpling, kishkeh, different varieties of beans and spices are put in according to the cook’s tradition or whim.

Ask an Ashkenazi, and she’ll tell you that if it’s not heavy with beef and marrow bones, it’s not cholent. Americans often douse cholent with ketchup. Ask a vegetarian, and she’ll say that it’s easy to make a delicious hot-pot with potatoes, barley, and chickpeas or beans. A Sephardic housewife will describe the chamin she learned from her mother, where turmeric, cinnamon, chillies and cumin flavor beef or chicken,  wheat grains, and eggs in their shells. Yemenites have breads that stay hot all night – very delicious, although greasy. There must be hundreds of recipes, each reflecting the culture and history of the cook.

The rare times I make cholent in summer, I keep it  light. The basic combination of meat, potatoes and barley goes into the pot, but instead of beef I use dark turkey meat, and leave the beans out till winter returns. I like to add plenty of spices and some olive oil, as otherwise the turkey will taste bland. Sweet potatoes make a foil to the sharp spices and combine deliciously with the wine that makes up the liquid. Here’s the recipe.

Mimi’s Summer Cholent

printable version here

serves 4 generously

Ingredients:

Olive oil to cover the bottom of the pot (plenty, to compensate for fatless turkey)

2 onions, sliced thickly

2 large bay leaves

1/2 head of garlic (or an entire one if the cloves are small) – washed but not peeled.

1 Tablespoons soy sauce

1 Tablespoon salt

Black pepper to taste – I grind about 6 turns over the pot.

1 tsp. turmeric

1 tsp. ground cumin

1 small chillie pepper or 4 black peppercorns (in which case don’t use any ground pepper).

1 Tablespoon paprika

1 tsp. dried thyme or sage

1 kilo – 2 lbs. – of skinless dark turkey meat. Best to use large pieces.

4 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into halves. No smaller, or they will disintegrate.

1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cut into thirds.

3/4 cup of pearl barley, rinsed

3 – 5 whole eggs, shells rinsed

Water to cover everything.

Optional and very good: use all dry red wine instead of water, or half wine, half water. Or add beer to the water.

Method:

1. Over a low flame, heat the olive oil in the cooking pot. Add all the dry spices except salt and ground black pepper.

2. Heat the spices gently for 1 minute. Add the sliced onions.

3. Fry the onions till soft, turning them over a few times.

4. Add the turkey meat. Raise the flame to medium and let the turkey brown on all sides. Add the soy sauce.

5. Add the potatoes.

6. Add the barley.

7. Add the salt and pepper.

8. Add water/wine to cover the meat and barley. The potatoes will stick out – that’s fine. They’ll develop a delicious chewy crust overnight. Poke around the stew to make sure that the liquid drains down. Stop adding liquid when it covers the meat and barley by an inch.

9. Nestle the eggs in around the meat and potatoes.

10. Cover the pot and bring the cholent to a low boil. Allow it to cook for 30 minutes. The cholent is now ready to be placed on a hot-plate to continue cooking overnight. It won’t hurt to keep it simmering for several hours either. It has to be hot when you put it on the hot-plate, in any case.

The old-country way is to put the pot, tightly covered, in a low oven all night. I prefer it this way myself. The flavor is finer when the cholent is baked instead of steamed all night.

When serving, put the meat in a platter and the soupy potatoes and barley in a deep bowl. Eggs should also have their own bowl. Some people like to put the whole pot on the table and serve that way, but this way everybody gets only what they like.

The photo below is a little faked, because I took it before Shabbat. After cooking for 18 hours, the stew is a rich, golden brown.

Always serve a colorful leafy salad  with vinaigrette dressing (lettuce, aragula, cherry tomatoes, sliced bell peppers), to lighten and balance the meal. A refreshing side dish is sliced cucumbers with no dressing but a sprinkling of salt.

Shabbat Shalom!

There were magnificent fireworks every night at 10:00. That delighted me – I can never get enough fireworks. But in the street I saw two local children about 7 and 8 years old get hysterical over the booming noises. Post-trauma stress  from the 2nd Lebanon War, when a sharp ripping noise followed by a boom meant destruction and death close by. Their dad couldn’t convince them to look up and see that it was only fireworks. They put their hands over their ears and screamed, begging to go home. He gave up and almost carried the two kids back.

The last Klezmer I attended was 7 years ago, when I still lived in Tsfat. There had been a bus bombing in nearby Meron just a few days prior to the festival, effectively sabotaging it. I remember the dark, almost empty streets at night, with a few vendors turning out their wares in hopes of a sale. Most of the performances were indoors and almost no tourists came. This year, contemplating the huge crowds, I did think a few times about a possible terrorist attack – as I’m sure many did. But the small town was swarming with security, both plain-clothes and uniformed. The tentative political quiet prevailing right now favored us too.

Staged concerts went on till 1:00 AM.

But  knots of informal performances kept going wherever it pleased folks to stay up.

The Lubavitcher Mitzvah-Mobile was out.

And just in case you forgot, a sign reminded you to “Love Thy Neighbor as You Do Yourself.”

*

By the third night, I’d had enough of the streets and the crowds. A group of friends got a car convoy together to go viewing the Perseids – meteor showers of the Swift-Tuttle comet, which were at the peak of visibility that night. We needed to be away from light pollution, so chose to view the sky on a hilltop about 15 minutes away from Tsfat. We drove out and upward till asphalt gave way to a dirt road, and parked by a dark field.

We’d brought sky maps, flashlights covered in red cellophane, sandwiches, tea in thermoses, and wine.  Some had brought big mats and sleeping bags, which we spread out on the thorny dirt. We settled down, talking but little as the dark and the silence, broken only by crickets and distant drumming from an Arab wedding, settled around us again.

In central Israel, I am surrounded by buildings every day. I’ve gotten used to missing contact with nature, and gasp to see a few stars on a clear night. That night, lying on my back in a thorny field and freezing, I let go of time and just lived. A great Hand had flung the white veil of the Milky Way, sprinkled here and there with radiant dots, across the dark heavens; constellations were so close they seemed to walk over us. Brilliant Jupiter presided, apart.  Whenever a shooting star crossed the multitude in the sky, we on the ground oohed in unison.

At 10:00, we heard distant booms and sat up – it was the fireworks in Tsfat. I’d never seen fireworks from far off. The showers of colored lights took up hardly any space in the sky and looked contained, compared to the wildness of the spreading galaxies above them.

It broke up our silence, and we began to talk quietly. Some of us recited poetry. (I was cultured and gave “The Owl and the Pussycat” – the only poem I know by heart.) We talked about the great plantings of new vineyards in the country, and if it was good for the soil. Others told stories. Eventually, a yellow half moon rose and hung low on the horizon, shedding light, absorbing some of the star’s display.

At about 1:00, we packed up and returned to Tsfat. I was regretful. Although I’d been uncomfortable in the cold, I would have stayed longer. But my friends weren’t on vacation like me and had to get up as usual next day. It had been a wonderful, soul-satisfying thing to do.

*

Any time I go back to Tsfat, I take photos. Here are some daytime picture I took (my night-time ones are lousy, I know).

A painted sign outside the Sanz synagogue reminds you to give charity.

R. Yerushalayim, the main street of this small town, post-Klezmer.

R. Tarpat, where we stayed.

Out-of-towners set up a “Hookah Tent,” where I suppose they put other things than tobacco in their bubbling hookahs. What is this craze for the hookah, anyway, I ask. As a non-smoker, I can only suppose it’s pleasant.

Wild grapevines thrive in Tsfat, spilling black fruit over walls everywhere.

As do figs and pomegranates.

There is an extensive artist’s quarter, and lots of galleries.

But sometimes art just happens spontaneously.

And someone scrawled this little graffito:

The Yosef Caro synagogue is smack in the middle of the Artist’s Shuk.

It’s worth visiting to see the ancient Torah scrolls and to breathe in the atmosphere.

We didn’t eat out much on this trip. I had free run of my hostess’s kitchen and permission to entertain other friends, so I shopped on arrival and cooked. Actually I roasted 4 chickens and made a great stew of potatoes and sweet potatoes with onions and herbs. As guests came, they brought salads and drinks. I also baked: an improvised walnut bread. Here it is. If I can remember how I did it, I’ll post the recipe.

Our magical three days in Tsfat are behind us, but I did bring home a renewed appreciation for the slower pace of life there, the shedding of an almost obligatory tension that you feel in the industrial center. Long may it last.

The three-day Klezmer Festival in Tsfat occurs each year in August. Musicians come from Europe, the States, and all over Israel to make music and fun. The music is  traditional Jewish – Ashkenazi and Sephardic. I love Tsfat, music, the night, and being in a happy crowd. We got all plenty of all that during the festival.

We – my husband, the Little One and I – arrived in the early afternoon. The city was barricaded against car access; we shlepped our duffel bags all the way across town to our friend’s house. She lives in the heart of the Old City, on the edge of the Artist’s Quarter, and close to all the shows. How lucky we were.

What we usually do when we go up to Tsfat as a family is split up. My husband is free to meet up with his friends, I with mine, and the Little One with hers. We meet at breakfast and once more till next day, staying in touch by cellphone. As soon as we put our things down and caught our breath, we sallied forth, Husband to his pals, the Little One and I to watch the festival begin. We ladies had dates with our girlfriends for later on.

At HaMeginim Square, one musician was tentatively tootling already.

The little ones got excited and started to dance.

Tsfat was still quiet, not too many out on the streets. The shows only started at 8:00 PM. But vendors were setting stands up, the afternoon was waning, and there was anticipation in the air.

Night fell and hundreds of people appeared in the streets, drifting and following the music.

We heard some good Klezmer farther down R. Yerushalayim, so we moved closer and saw this band. They were really good, playing old Yiddish crowd-pleasers – Beryl Mid de Feedle, By Mir Bist Du Shein, a weepy version of the Shabbat opener, Shalom Aleichem.

The street food looked pretty good. There were vendors selling crepes – the smell of vanilla floated around them.

Another popular snack was corn on the cob.

There was BBQ too.

Restaurants and cafés were jammed. I’ve never seen Tsfat so full – in fact 300,000 visitors had been expected.

Tsfat is a poor town, and Klezmer time is the year’s biggest opportunity to make some money. All kinds of food stands were on the streets and sidewalks. Some folks had simply bought bakery cakes, cut them up and put them on trays to sell by the slice, with hot coffee. Then there were more elaborate setups like this Asian food stand.

Me, I’m a fan of Faigy’s restaurant, The Tree of Life,  in Kikar HaMeginim – her cheesecake is just sweet enough, a little lemony, very good. And we ate vegetarian couscous there twice over the three days we were in Tsfat; it’s that good.

The shows started, all over town. Every corner had its little musical group; every square and park had a performance going on. My favorites were the Paris Klezmer trio, surprising because all the members were obviously Sephardic. They snuck a little flamenco and tango in there…I wondered how far they’d depart from the traditional Klezmer format.

And the fabulous Nashot Chava, a Klezmer/jazz/ethnic quartet, all women. I didn’t have my camera to take a photo of them, but here’s a YouTube link. I love Nashot Chava – they just rock.

And now I find that it’s almost Shabbat. I’m going to post this right now. Sunday, more Klezmer and some photos of mystical Tsfat in the daytime.

Shabbat shalom!

The Jerusalem Wine Festival has taken place at the Israel Museum since 2003, but last week was the first time I went. It was so well-organized and pleasant, I’m just sorry I hadn’t gone before.

Several friends and I got together and drove up. As one of us wasn’t able to drink much alcohol for medical reasons, we had our designated driver (and a good thing, too). We arrived at 9:00, when the event was already in full swing and there was almost nowhere to park. Circling around the grounds, we found that the olive grove to the right of the Museum had a few cars parked there,  so we stopped the car under a friendly tree.

We stepped out into the cool Jerusalem night and inhaled – the smell of Jerusalem. It’s a subtle smell, almost just a feeling, and the memory easily lets go of it till the next time you arrive. Then you recognize it again, with emotion. A faintly sweet, dusty fragrance of olive trees, Jerusalem stone exhaling the heat stored up over the day into the cool darkness, then the sharp odors of pine and rosemary. Oh, Jerusalem. The round-faced Man in the Moon smiled down on us, with Venus winking alongside. Why did I ever leave Jerusalem?

We bought our tickets at a reasonable NIS60 and received our gift wine glasses.

At first I thought there wouldn’t be room to circulate – there must have been a thousand people treading the gravel in the Sculpture Garden, making a circuit around the 33 winery booths. The smell of fine wine was in the air, noticeable the minute you stepped into the grounds.

But with a little give-and-take and counting on everyone’s good mood, it wasn’t hard to get to a booth and put your glass in front of one of the attractive young people serving. At every booth, a different winery offered tastes of at least two white wines and two reds – some more.

A “taste” was one or two ounces, although everyone grew  less exact towards the end of the evening. Let me tell you – it looks like such a little, just a couple of swallows…you swirl, stick your nose in the glass, finally take some into your mouth and let the wine talk to you …and go on to the next, blissfully ignorant of the number of delicious wines yet to taste. The festival managers estimate that over 30,000 liters of wine are drunk over the 3-day festival – well, I must have been responsible for at least one.

A band played soft jazz standards in the background. I suppose they were told not to make the music too hot, because the focus should be on the wine. Maybe next year the music will be more compelling, because there is no reason to suppose that it would take over the wine.

I don’t normally enjoy sweet wines, so I can’t report on those. But of the wines I drank (kosher, mostly reds),  there were some that were wonderful. The Barbera from the Dalton winery stands out in my mind, and the Shoresh wine from Tzora, which is a Cabernet Sauvignon. Among the whites, the 2007 Viognier Reserve from Dalton was one I favored. I’m a fan of those wineries anyway. I didn’t count how many booths I visited, but it must have been around 15, and most of the wines were enjoyable.

There were some clunkers: some overly tannic reds that might improve in a couple of years, but were so tannic as to be bitter; a port that was so oxidized I couldn’t make myself drink it because the smell put me off.  I wonder why a winery would even present too-young or inferior wine at a festival; you get the impression that they don’t know what they’re doing. Unless I see a favorable review from a critic I respect, I’m going to avoid one or two wineries I encountered that night.

Part of the fun was being able to compare many different wines, in a semi-organized way. Three wineries presented their Barberas, for example; it was great to taste and compare one against the other. Not keeping a great variety of wines at home, this was a good chance for me.

Problem is, once you’ve tasted 5 or 6 wines, your memory won’t hold more for a while. So you take a break – chat with people you’ve just met, or with whom you met up, and have a nosh. Cheese platters were on sale, and many did buy, placing their platters on tall bar tables placed here and there. There were also fine chocolates (chai masala-flavor was outrageously good). Each booth also provided mineral water for rinsing out your glass and mouth, or just to stay hydrated.

It was fun to watch the crowd loosening up over the evening as the tasting went on. Couples walking with their arms around each others waists  – four girls sitting down on a low wall swayed together, singing – a man with serious stuff in mind writing down tasting notes as he went from booth to booth. A small video crew was interviewing and filming notables.  Folks standing with glass in hand, thoughtfully rinsing the wine around the mouth.  I found myself drifting along, a little separated from my friends, tasting here and tasting there, feeling anonymous and free of self-consciousness. The cool night, the heady atmosphere, the band stretching a number out for 10 minutes, the well-behaved crowd drinking Israeli wine under a fat yellow moon in Jerusalem. I did feel privileged. I didn’t wish to drink more, but wished we could all stay longer, much longer.

But the event ended at 11:00.  I rejoined my f riends at the concession, where we picked up a few bottles to take home.

That’s going to be sometime next week for me; I had truly reached my limit and I’m not used to it. Even two days later, I find the thought of a long, cool lemonade more appealing than any wine. I drank maybe a liter of water when I got home. Took a couple of multivitamin pills too. My good husband, who doesn’t indulge at all, was amused. But who has time for a hangover next morning?  There’s always too much to do. Another two liters of water when I woke up, and I was good to go again. The buzz is gone, but I won’t forget the magic of wine and the Israel Museum.

Please read this NY Times essay by Michael Pollan on how watching TV food shows fulfills our desire to cook. The ultimate question is, does cooking matter?