Photo of Lemon Verbena by Miriam Kresh

Leda Meredith is the the author of The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Local Eating on a Budget. She’s also my good friend. Leda gave us an excellent post on food preservation last year when I was moving house. Now I’m excited to present her ideas on growing herbs in places you might never have considered. Leda, take it away…

When asked, “If I could grow just one edible, what would you recommend?” my first response is always, “Herbs.” They tolerate a wide range of conditions, many are perennials that will come back year after year even in containers, and while a lot of people don’t have enough space to grow the bulk of their food, fresh herbs can enliven their meals daily. As an added plus almost every herb, including those we usually think of as culinary, has excellent medicinal properties.

I’ve grown herbs in window boxes, indoors, on the back steps of my apartment, in hanging baskets attached to a chain-link fence, and even in cracks in pavement.

Growing Herbs in Containers

Almost every herb can be grown in a container provided that it has a depth of at least six inches and—this is important!—drainage holes. It is essential that the plant’s roots do not sit in mud, and the only way to ensure that is to provide a way for excess water to drain out of the container. Use a potting mix rather than topsoil or garden soil. Potting mixes include ingredients such as perlite, which are additional insurance for good drainage.

I’ve made containers out of almost everything, including old vegetable cans that I punched holes in the bottom of!

Where to Grow Herbs

The first consideration is to make sure you plant your herbs (or place their container) in a location that matches the light requirements of the plants. Some herbs such as oregano, lavender, and rosemary thrive in full sun. Others, including chervil, lemon balm, and cilantro prefer part sun or even part shade. Miriam reminds me that in climates that are dry, as well as hot in the summer, even herbs that are usually described as needing full sun might prefer a little shade. Information on the light requirements of individual herbs can be found online.

Windowsills and paved-over areas are obvious candidates for container herbs, but there are other options. I have some potted thyme and cilantro that I grow in pots I’ve hung on a chain-link fence, for example.

Photo by Leda Meredith

Low-growing herbs such as thyme tend to have shallower root systems than larger, upright herbs. These can be grown in the spaces between stepping-stones or pavement. Put a little good potting mix into the space and keep your plants well watered for the first two weeks to give them a chance to start growing new roots (the shallow soil will dry out quicker than in other growing situations.

Photo by Leda Meredith

In addition to hanging containers from fences and handrails, there are many innovative containers available for vertical gardening. The simplest of these looks like those shoe racks that are made to hang in a closet, the ones with lots of pouches on a flat piece of fabric. And in fact, you can use one of the ones made for shoes. Hang the whole arrangement flat against a wall. Cut some small holes in the bottom of each pouch for drainage, fill with potting mix, and plant an herb in each pouch.

If you have no outdoor space at all, some herbs can be successfully grown indoors. I’ve had the best luck with parsley, chives, cayenne and other chile peppers, and cilantro. Indoor herbs require much more light than they do when grown outdoors. If you don’t have a window that can provide at least six hours of direct sunlight, opt for plant lights. There’s no need to buy the expensive ones marketed as being specifically for plants: a cheap fluorescent light works just as well (incandescent light bulbs, however, do not). Make sure that the light is no further than eight inches from the tops of your plants. To make your life easier, you can put the light on a timer (set it to be on for at least ten hours).

I wish you much success with your delicious, aromatic, homegrown herbs…wherever you decide to grow them!

Leda’s book is available at Amazon.com. She blogs about her food adventures at www.ledameredith.com.

This recipe is taken from Elizabeth David’s Italian Food. Mrs. David herself borrowed it from Edmond Richardin’s L’Art du Bien Manger (1913). You’ll see that the recipe needs no adaptation; it’s as good today as it was 100 years ago.

Leaves are sprouting on grape vines now, and it’s exciting to know that there are different ways to eat them than just stuffed with rice. I really enjoyed this recipe, where the vines leaves lend their lemony flavor to the mushrooms, and the mushrooms spread their goodness around to the oil. The only thing is, I can’t give you exact quantities. How many mushrooms and vine leaves will depend on the size of your baking dish.

I used 6 vine leaves and a small basketful of champignon mushrooms.

Cèpes a la Gènoise – Mushrooms Baked in Vine Leaves

Ingredients:

Fresh, unbrined vine leaves to cover the bottom of the baking dish

Olive oil

Fresh, plump mushrooms – any variety

Coarse salt

Garlic cloves

Pepper

Method:

Preheat the oven to 325° F -160°C.

1. Clean the mushrooms by your favorite method: brush the dirt off them, cut away any unattractive spots, or rinse them. But dry them gently.

2. Slice the stems away, cutting them into chunks. Reserve them.

3. Sprinkle the mushrooms with plenty of coarse salt and put them in the oven “to dry out” as M. Richardin says. In my experience, they don’t dry out, they release a little juice. Never mind.

3. In the meantime, line your baking pan with vine leaves. Pour enough olive oil to cover the leaves well.

4. Place the baking pan over a low flame and let the vine leaves cook in the oil till they change color. It shouldn’t boil, however.

5. Now place the mushrooms, stem side up, on top of the vine leaves.

6. Bake for 30 minutes, uncovered.

7. Take the baking pan out and sprinkle the reserved, chopped mushroom stems over the cooked dish. Tuck at least 4, if not 7 or 8, unpeeled cloves of garlic in the corners and around inside.

8. Bake a further 10 minutes. Grind some fresh pepper over the dish and serve right away, with bread for mopping up the juice and olive oil mixture.

Eat the vine leaves, too. They are addictively delicious.

Save the oil and juices for the next time, or for cooking something else. I can imagine a vegetable soup or a chicken dish flavored with this mushroomy delicate oil.

The photo from my previous post is worth repeating – if only because it’s the only decent one I have of this dish.

So I took a bus out to the shuk yesterday, in the middle of a sandstorm. It was eerie. A thin fog of yellow dust hovered everywhere, clinging to the skin and the lips, blurring the outlines of trees  in the middle distance, almost erasing distant buildings.  Now I know how African dust tastes, because this blew in from the Sahara. The radio broadcast warnings: pregnant women, small children, and asthmatics, stay home today.

Well, I’m none of those. And I needed to buy food. So off I went into the yellow distance, intent on tomatoes for slow roasting,  leafy greens, and ground turkey.

Of course I bought the shuk out.

Who can walk past a display of fresh, purple figs and refrain from buying a box? Not I. Who can resist the allure of glistening fish, red of gill and bright-eyed, on their beds of ice? Or of firm, plump mushrooms?

Oh woe, not I. Even the humble cauliflower seemed to be calling my name.

And everything so much cheaper than at my neighborhood supermarket.

So I bought, and bought, and soon had five or six bags dangling from my fingers. But one thing I was longing for wasn’t to be found. The herb vendors gave me funny looks when I asked if by chance they had grape leaves.

I’d seen them in the Shuk HaCarmel, I explained. Oh, that’s a different clientele, they said.

I was sad. Those mushrooms cooked in grape leaves were so good, I’d had the taste in my mouth all week. I already had the mushrooms, all I needed was some grape leaves.

I was also already out of money. Just as well, I said to myself. If I had more money, I’d keep buying. Now for the trip home with all these bags.

Just on the edge of the shuk, a few old people sit on the sidewalk and sell produce from their own gardens. It’s always worth casting an eye on what they have. Usually it’s just bunches of green onions or spinach – one of them used to sell gat but I think he’s been, er,  discouraged to do so by the authorities. I shlepped past, in a hurry for the bus.

Then out of the corner of my eye, I sighted grape leaves.

A little old lady with glasses like bottle bottoms and a long braid down her back was sitting patiently on a stool, bundles of grape leaves on her lap.

Oh, help. And me out of cash. I stopped in front of her, disentangled myself from my bags, and asked the price. NIS 5 for a smallish bundle. All right. Maybe I can dig 5 shekels out of my purse somewhere. You know how it is with purses – they tend to trap little coins in their corners. If you’re persistent, you can usually excavate a few out.

I found 15 shekels. Oh, joy! The lady handed over three bundles, which turned out to be a fair amount because grape leaves are so thin. And I went home to cook my mushrooms and photograph my purchases for you.

What would you make from these ingredients? You know those TV cooking shows where chefs have to produce a meal out of a few dissimilar ingredients – in ten minutes? Tell me what you would make – it doesn’t have to cook in ten minutes.

From left to right, top row: Ground turkey and fillet of chicken breast. On top, coriander. Tomatoes, figs, Swiss chard.

Middle row: champignon mushrooms, grape leaves, bass fish.

Bottom row: Portobello mushrooms, pine nuts, basil, and in the corner, sliced dark Russian bread.

I’ll tell you one of the things I did make, and that was mushrooms baked in grape leaves.

Recipe follows, next post.

Chef Moshe Basson, a quiet-spoken middle-aged man with skinny braid falling over his shoulder, took up a bunch of silver-grey leaves leaves and put them in a food processor. I was watching, along with about thirty others, at a Biblical cooking class in Eucalyptus, Basson’s Jerusalem restaurant.

Za’atar pesto. Why not?

Dried za’atar as the main ingredient in an oily dip, yes. Crumbled and sprinkled over pizza or roast chicken  – all the time. But now I know I can make pesto from the fresh leaves with the juice still in them.

This is really a seasonal pesto, because fresh za’atar is available only for a few weeks. That’s now, towards the end of winter in the Middle East.

The next time I was in the shuk, I went from stand to stand looking for za’atar. No vendor had the familiar small round, light-green herb, but one picked a bunch of dark, spiky leaves out of a heap and  bruised a few to release the odor. It smelled strongly of za’atar.

Consulting with chef Basson by phone, I learned that it’s winter savory – in Hebrew, tsatrah. He says that it’s part of the thyme family, as is za’atar. I decided to make the pesto as I’d seen him make it. I didn’t know what else to do with the leaves except hang them up to dry.

My notes from the cooking event weren’t exact, so I improvised the recipe out of the basic procedure I’d scribbled down. It took about 5 minutes to make, including toasting almonds, washing and drying the za’atar leaves, and peeling  garlic. This pesto has the unmistakable taste of the Middle East in it.

Za’atar Pesto

Ingredients:

1 cup blanched almonds

2 cups fresh za’atar or winter savory leaves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon sumac powder

3 garlic cloves

1 cup olive oil

1/4 cup lemon juice

Method:

1. Quickly toast the almonds in a dry frying pan. This should take only two minutes. Shake the pan a few times to distribute the almonds. Take it off the flame when they release a nutty, toasted aroma.

2. Rinse the za’atar leaves. Path them dry.

3. Into the food processor, put the almonds. Whizz them for half a minute.

4. Add the za’atar leaves. Process again for a minute.

5. Add the remaining ingredients and process till you have a rough sauce.

Recommended: spread some of this chunky, pungent pesto on slices of toasted baguette; top with feta cheese and put the slices into the oven so that the cheese melts.

The ancient town of Ramleh (Ramla) has had a  long, colorful, and troubled history – and how not? It has existed under one government or another since the 8th century.  It has survived war and earthquakes, drastic population changes, glory, and decline.

Apparently Ramla’s golden years happened a long, long time ago.

9th-century historian Al-Muqaddasi describes it as a prosperous, agreeable town surrounded by stout walls, enjoying varied agriculture without those walls and bustling commerce within. Last week, hopping off the sherut (collective taxi) to meet Sarah of Foodbridge, the impression I had of Ramleh was that of a town struggling to rise above poverty and neglect.

Although there are some charming, up-dated buildings.

We were there to explore the funky shuk, where Arab vendors sell produce we don’t see in bigger towns, like these purple carrots

and heaps of local greens. The leaves, from left to right, are za’atar, chicory, and Turkish spinach.

I bought Jerusalem Sage, a broad leaf that doesn’t resemble or taste like culinary sage. People stuff it with rice and roll it up. When I cooked it, I stuffed it with a mixture of rice and leftover picadillo. Extra leaves, I sliced into soup. Here the vendor weighs out a bunch.

The Jewish Bucharan baker stamps his breads with beautiful designs.

I enjoyed strolling around, getting a feel for the place.

The majority of the town are Jews, albeit of many different origins. Muslim and Christian Arabs are large minority groups. The feeling in the shuk was straightforward and business-like; none of the overt hostility between peoples that has discouraged me from visiting the Arab shuk in Jerusalem’s Old City for many years.

Here Ethiopian and Russian immigrants shop in the narrow Shuk streets.

A vendor allowed me to photograph him.

At a kosher bakery, I sampled sambousak (fried pastries filled with a spicy chickpea mixture). Greasy, but delicious.

Another vendor sells hot, flaky bourekas that are meant to be split open and filled with choumous and a sliced hamine egg. Not a bad breakfast, any time.

More pastries, fried and glistening with sugar syrup…

On our way out, I glimpsed pickles for sale…a good idea for recycling empty soft-drink bottles.

It was fun. I’d like to visit Shuk Ramla again. Each shuk has its unique character, and I liked the feeling of this one, where a church clock strikes a tinny note as you gaze up at a minaret tower and munch a kosher sambusak. It’s old, it’s funky, the people shopping there are working-class and there’s nothing upscale about it.

It feels close to history, and close to the land.

Edible weeds are popping up all over Israel now. Nettles, young plantain leaves, sow thistle, milk thistle, chickweed, and mallows are just a few of them. Earlier this week I explored an empty lot close by, and found a huge quantity of mallows among the wild foods. Some of the leaves were big enough to stuff, like vine leaves.

Before I go on to the recipe, let me tell you about mallows. They grow all over the Mediterranean, North Africa, Europe, and parts of the U.S and Central America. I don’t know if they grow in South America, Australia/New Zealand or the Far East – but I wouldn’t be surprised if they do. I can tell you though, that once they take hold, they will cover an area.

Mallows are related to okra, hollyhocks, and hibiscus – all edible and medicinal plants. I like to harvest the small young leaves to eat raw in salads, and the big leaves for stuffing. Sometimes I’ll just chop up a big bunch and make soup from them, or stir them into a stew, or into rice, as I do with nettles. I wrote an article about mallows for Henriette Kress’s Herbal Homepage, which you can see here. It includes a recipe for mallows soup.

And every year, I hang bunches of them upside down by their stalks, to dry for cooking when they’re out of season. If you store them in a glass jar, away from light, the leaves will last a year. If I need a soup in a hurry and don’t have much in the fridge, I just reach into my jar of dried mallows (or nettles) and crumble some into the pot, adding instant flavor and nutrition to the food.

I love the striped pink flowers of our native variety, Malva Sylvestris. If I find myself in a field of flowering mallows during one of my foraging walks, I pick as many blooms as I can, to dry for a medicinal tea. This tea soothes the respiratory system and helps to control cough.

You can read much more about the edible and medicinal properties of mallows in the awesome Plants for a Future site. That page doesn’t mention that the mallow roots are edible and medicinal too – so if you happen to uproot a few when you’re out gathering, just scrub them clean, cut the stalk away, and chuck them into soup too.

For stuffing, pick big leaves, at least as big as your outstretched hand. Small leaves are too fiddly to work with.

Check each leaf carefully. Discard any that have lots of little holes in them, or orange spots indicating insect activity. Or other  mallow eaters, like this little guy:

See the rusty orange spots around the Fuzzy One? Discard any leaves with that.

The recipe assumes that you have about 20 large, washed mallow leaves. It’s better to have a few extra because they are tender and some will inevitably rip. Snip off any stalk bits to make rolling them up easy. Keep the leaves shiny side down.

Now for the recipe itself.

Stuffed Mallow Leaves

yield: 20 stuffed leaves

printed version here

Ingredients:

20 large, clean mallow leaves

1 cup of  rice cooked in salted water

1/2  cup pine nuts

1 large tomato, peeled and chopped

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 small onion, chopped fine

2 Tablespoons diced fresh mint or crumbled dried mint

juice and zest of one lemon

2 Tablespoons chopped parsley or celery leaves

1 tsp. salt

pepper

2 large tomatoes, sliced

4 cloves of garlic, peeled and whole

1 teaspoon sugar

2/3 cup olive oil

2/3 cup water

Method:

1. Mix together the rice, pine nuts, chopped tomato, crushed garlic, chopped onion, mint, lemon zest, parsley, salt, and pepper to taste.

2. Line the pot with the sliced tomatoes. This adds flavor and keeps the stuffed leaves from scorching.

3. Mix the olive oil, water, sugar, and  lemon juice in a bowl. Set aside.

4. Fill and roll the leaves.

Keep the shiny sides down, stem part towards you.

Just where you snipped the stem off, there is a long, horizontal wrinkle in the leaf (see 2 photos up, the one with the scissors). Put a teaspoon of filling, in a long strip, just above that wrinkle.

Roll the filled edge up once. Fold the sides of the leave over it.

Roll again, making a neat little package. Secure the edge with a toothpick.

I wish I had more and better photos to show the filling process, but I would have needed three hands to do it.

5. Place the stuffed leaves on top of the sliced tomatoes in the pan, stem sides down. Place the whole garlic cloves here and there among them. The following photo shows  a bell pepper in the pot with the mallow – because I wanted to use up leftover stuffing. The flavor of the pepper didn’t hurt the stuffed leaves at all.

6. Pour the oil/water mix over the the contents of the pot. Place a small plate, or a pot lid that fits,  inside the pot to prevent the leaves from unrolling as they cook. Cover the pot with its own lid. Simmer over low flame for 45 minutes. Mallow leaves are tender and release a beneficial mucilage (goopy liquid), so there will be plenty of liquid in the pot. They don’t need to cook as long as vine leaves, which need an hour or more.

7. Allow the leaves to cool down entirely before you remove them from the pan. Serve them cold.

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.

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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.

That’s interesting, I mused. What do people eat on Shabbat, here in Petach Tikvah, June 2009? It sounded like the couple was expecting to host family or friends, and from what I heard of the menu, the food was going to be traditional. I should have stopped and just shamelessly interviewed them, but they looked to be in a hurry and even I have my limits. Still, I was headed towards the town’s biggest food supplier – the shuk. People who deal with food all week should have some great Shabbat menus, I thought. I’ll ask the vendors.

But first I popped in to ask Meiron, who deals in second-hand objects and clothing from India. His little store has always intrigued me. On the sidewalk, there are racks of thin cotton blouses; in the shop the shelves display a mix of old Judiaca, toys, tea sets, mass-produced paintings, strings of worry beads and fine crystal. Meiron is a thoughtful reader and a gourmet. We’ve sometimes talked about the cooking classes he attends with his wife. I figured he’d have something interesting to tell me about dinner, and he did.

“We made a ragoût of beef,” he said seriously. “Then I diced eggplant, deep-fried the cubes, and scattered them over the dish. A dusting of finely-chopped parsley. That’s dinner tonight – probably with pasta.”

I swallowed my saliva. “Sounds wonderful,” I said, and sallied forth again. What would the vendors in the shuk have waiting at home?

There’s a group of elderly folk who sit at the edge of the shuk and sell garden produce and home-made food. This Yemenite gentleman was selling hilbeh and zhug (fenugreek relish and hot sauce). He allowed me to take his photo but out of modesty, closed his eyes. When I asked him what’s on for dinner, he laughed and said, “Chicken soup.”

Yemenite chicken soup is deep yellow and fragrant with hawaij, a spice blend where turmeric marries black pepper and a few other spices. I could almost taste that soup as I stood talking with him..

Some vendors were cagey and wouldn’t talk about their Friday night menus. I’m sure they thought I was nuts. This lady said,

“When I get home tonight, I won’t want anything except some Nescafé (instant coffee) and some cake.”

Moshe, the fish vendor, didn’t mind my asking.

“What’s my wife cooking for tonight? Fish.”

I laughed and he said, “No, really. Denise (sea bream) baked in sauce. All kinds of fresh salads. And three kinds of rice. Plain white rice, lentils and rice, and red rice. What makes it red? I don’t know. I get home, I sit down, and I eat. My wife cooks. She’s a marvelous cook; makes everything by herself.”

For those who would like an English/Hebrew chart of the names of fish, here is one.

But the man who runs the well-known Maadaniyat HaGissim (The Brothers-in-Law Deli) gave me the most fulsome description of his Friday night meal.

“All my children come, and bring the grandchildren,” he said. “We usually seat about 15 people on a Friday night. We’re Turkish and my wife cooks all the traditional dishes from scratch. Bouri fish (grey mullet) in tomato sauce. Moussaka – but beef, not lamb. All the salads – chopped Israeli salad, choumous, stuffed vine leaves, pickled eggplant, eggplant with techinah, coleslaw, salad of marinated bell peppers, potato salad…Then she makes bourekas filled with ground beef, shnitzels, and rice. And of course the challah. Everything she makes by herself, from scratch. She is a fabulous cook.”

I looked at him with awe. “Can I meet your wife and take some lessons from her?”

As a friend of mine remarked, I think I’d have a nervous wreck if I had to cook like that every week.

By now my shopping wagon was full and heavy. Apricots, plums, string beans, fish, white cheese, choumous, big laffah pittot. Time for me to stop interfering with people’s private lives and go home to finish cooking my own Shabbat meals. So I did.

Oh, and we had chicken soup, roast chicken glazed with mandarin preserves, curried rice, string beans and almonds, beet salad, and for dessert, peach cobbler.

The Old Town has an atmosphere mixed of history and artist’s colony.  I like the mysterious stone houses that peer at the street from their screens of  trees and flowers.

Big bass chimes in front of the wind-chime store sound a curiously solemn, reverberating note as the breeze moves them. It makes me feel a little lonely.

But I recover my good humor viewing a nearby house whimsically covered in clocks of all sizes.  I take my time on the cobblestone streets and wind up sitting in Baron Rothchild’s hilltop garden to breathe the cool air and let my mind empty out.

Eventually my stomach starts feeling empty, too, so I make my way downhill to Pinat Ochel.  It’s a small restaurant set in a house built by the Ottomans, who ruled in Israel from 1516 to 1917 (with a few interruptions from Napoleon and Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt). The British conquered Ottoman rule here in 1917 and used the solid stone structure as the regional Customs House.

You walk in and see bunches of thyme hung up on the walls to dry,

and local honey for sale.

Here’s Adir, the owner.

He told me that the building has housed a restaurant since 1967. Looking for a new business enterprise about six years ago, he took over ownership of Pinat Ochel and made it kosher.

“The menu is what has evolved in Israeli home cooking,” Adir said. “Some of the dishes I brought from my Tunisian family’s traditional cuisine, and some are just popular Israeli foods. We get a lot of tourists buying take-away for meals at their B&Bs. On Fridays we turn the whole place into a buffet.”

There are more sophisticated restaurants in town, but I like the simple, generous, home-style cooking at Pinat Ochel. The food is always fresh and tasty; the atmosphere is old-fashioned and busy; and everything is very clean. Prices are popular, too, and that’s because all the ingredients are locally grown or raised.

When I was visited, there was chicken in sauce, grilled breast of chicken, peppers stuffed with rice and ground meat, liver in sauce, farfel, potatoes, zucchini.

Other times the menu has varied some; I guess it depends on what’s available that day. There’s a good salad bar featuring the colorful, flavor-packed greens so beloved to the Mediterranean palate.  Salads of lentils, cabbages, carrots, eggplants, beets, tabouli, techinah, houmous…

So I filled a plate with salads first.

I chose stuffed peppers afterwards,

and then had room only for an espresso.

I particularly liked the lentil salad.

Adir gave me a real down-home style recipe for it: cook the lentils, blend herbs and spices with olive oil and lemon juice, and pour the dressing over the lentils. Add some fried onions. Hm. Looks like I’ll have to make this at home today. I’ll post the results.

Lunch over, I stepped outside and stopped to admire an old eucalyptus tree planted around with flowers and the herbs people here love to steep in their tea: mint and rue.

I’ll be visiting again.

Ilana-Davita has a recent blog entry in which she wonders what folks eat for breakfast.  Funny she should mention it – I was just preparing a post about the breakfast I recently enjoyed at a favorite  sidewalk café.

It was about 8:30 AM and I was hungry. An errand had taken me downtown early, with no time to eat, but I knew I could count on a generous, satisfying, healthy breakfast at any one of six nearby cafés.  Even inferior restaurants (of the dairy variety) serve good breakfasts, generally. But I like this little one on the midrachov – street mall – for its spic-and-span cleanliness and very good, fresh, home-baked pastries. Which I rarely order anymore, as they tend to insinuate themselves into your waistline and stay there.

I’ve sat there often with the ladies of the family. It’s the kind of place ladies like. The menu is old-fashioned, not very large but all the food prepared with care. You sit outdoors under a big shady awning, sipping coffee, tucking into breakfast, relaxing and looking around.

Folks were starting their day, having a word with a neighbor…the morning air was soft and a pleasant calm prevailed.

The café breakfast isn’t even the biggest you can get. Restaurants and especially hotels offer astonishing breakfast buffets, with a huge variety of cheeses, fish, vegetables, rolls both sweet and savory, fruit, veg…. But it was enough for me. Two sesame-sprinkled rolls, butter and jam (I was good and ignored them). Five kinds of vegetables, 2 scrambled eggs, a generous dollop of soft white cheese, and olives. Good, hot coffee with milk. It was fine.

I wasn’t actually alone either; Israel’s modern heroes kept me company. See the picture of Joseph Trumpeldor on the sugar package above? I turned the package over and there was a little biography.

I took a handful of these sugar packets and fanned them out. Authors, politicians, founders of cities, soldiers, leaders of movements.  Oh – there’s an important man, not a Jew, either: Orde Wingate. The amazing Henrietta Szold was there too.

Their antique faces looked up at me through the distances of history. In this setting, they put me in mind of the kibbutz breakfasts I used to have when I first arrived in Israel, 32 years ago.

We kids would fall out of bed at 5:30 AM, grumbling and rumbling, and shlep our way over to the communal dining room for a cup of coffee and a slice of bread and butter with jam. Pickup trucks that took us out to the orchards were ready in the parking area; we’d climb aboard silently. With the cool morning air blowing around our heads as we bumped along the little roads, and the fresh-smelling fields stretched out on all sides, we’d wake up and feel more cheerful. A little chat would pass between the guys and the gals. We set to work right away,  picking pomegranates and olives. By 8:00, when the breakfast truck arrived, we were good and ready for the breakfast feast. In a clearing between rows of trees, long tables stood loaded with all the sliced bread, pittot, white and yellow cheeses, olives, pickles, eggs, fruit, vegetables, jams, coffee, tea, and  juices that we could possibly cram in. It was divine, eating in the open air with mild sunshine filtering through trees all around and the good red dirt under our feet. Our hunger had a healthy edge brought on by the physical work. Everything tasted so good.

Sometimes the kibbutz hired the women of a nearby Moroccan-founded moshav to help out. The ladies, short and dark with colored head kerchiefs, would share hot pittot baked in their own taboun ovens. Big, flexible pittot crisp on the outside and tender inside, with that ineffable aroma of yeasty fresh bread…oh help, how we did eat. We had to stoke up for the next four hour’s work, right?

Truth is, most mornings I get by on one big cup of coffee and either a kefir smoothie or some toast and cottage cheese, with a fruit as an afterthought. It’s better than what most Israelis eat these days – cold cereals or just coffee on the run, with a pastry or bourekas at the ten o’clock break.  A  “typical Israeli breakfast” doesn’t consist of the sort of lush spread you get in hotels.  But I do like to indulge in an café breakfast once in a while.