Going to Jerusalem? Shlep up Agripas street towards shuk Machaneh Yehudah, and your eyes are immediately drawn to this mural. Don’t you love how the painted sky in the arch exactly matches the real sky?
Hurry up and get there! Only one more Monday night left!
Every Monday in July, shuk Machaneh Yehudah throws a huge street party. It’s the rowdy Balabasta festival. The punning name celebrates basta (produce stand), ba’al ha’basta (owner of the stand), balabusta (housewife), and the culture of the open market in Jerusalem.
I went to see it for myself this week, just me and my camera. The shops and vendors were doing great business.
Here and there bands played and people gathered to listen. In one little space, youngsters sang old songs of aliyah and Eretz Israel. I loved this red-haired girl, who sang in a fresh alto and blew a mean trombone too.
A rooftop concert rocked the crowd (pictured above).The band is called Acharit HaYamin, and sounds were rock, reggae, psalms set to heart-banging Yemenite/jazz fusion – all Israeli, punctuated at intervals by enthusiastic ululations from the crowd or the rooftop stage.
Yes, it was crowded. But it was a friendly crowd, everyone giving way to old folks or women pushing strollers, everyone intent on just having fun. It felt safe, it felt homey.
This band was playing an amusing, cool-jazz version of the “Pink Panther” theme.
Something for everyone: whimsical fairytale figures to entertain the kids
I stood slightly to one side, taking photos and moving with the music and watching the people.
One delicatessen intelligently set up a stand of cheeses and wine by the glass. It was fun to stand in the middle of the shuk and the noise and the surging crowd, savoring Cabernet Sauvignon.
I felt an multi-layered emotion I couldn’t describe.When the musicians sang of peace, of our longing for peace one day, and the people shouted “Amen!” I stood like a fool among all those people, with tears in my eyes.
Sweaty heat and the cooling Jerusalem breeze as the evening set in. Loud, cheerful music, Jerusalemites dancing in the ancient street, the stone buildings that have seen so much of struggle, war, and the everlasting everyday. Smells of fresh bread, sewage, something acrid and smoky, grilled meat.
I longed to suspend the moving, living moment like a scene in a movie. Soon it would dissolve into memory, and our transient wonder and enjoyment, placed fleetingly over the eternal, were already becoming the past.
It came to me so clearly then, how we are born, live, and die, and Jerusalem – Jerusalem is forever.
Get an excellent, printable, English map of the shuk here.
Jun 192011
Ashdod had a small-town feel when I first used to visit there, back around 1977. My parents had just come to Israel and were living in the absorption center, studying Hebrew. There was a relaxed, seaside feeling when we’d saunter out in the late afternoon to enjoy the breeze, stopping to drink coffee at one of the many sidewalk cafés. Lots of Moroccan and Egyptian-accented French spoken in the street, in shops. Tiny eateries with three or four tables where my folks and I would order fish couscous. There was a small artists’ colony – a few cozy, rundown houses near the beach. We visited a painter my parents knew and found him waving his arms and explaining a large, colorful canvas to a group of admirers.
We’d sit and sip coffee and people-watch. Clusters of dark Bnei Israel women in saris would pass by, chatting in Malayalam with their handsome husbands and kids. Russian immigrants, newly arrived and still bewildered, cautiously getting the lay of the land. Jews wearing crocheted kippot, wearing black hats, wearing colorful embroidered Georgian caps. Sailors cocking eyebrows at every nice pair of legs. Ashdod is a port town, after all, and has been for thousands of years.
As today and as always, sunshine, heat, and the sea.
I went back to Ashdod last week to visit friends and hit the shuk. The town has grown very much since I knew it. Its small-town character has changed. Thousands of new immigrants from Russia and Ethiopia and a thriving ultra-Orthodox community have displaced the old, European-influenced Middle-Eastern culture. New neighbohoods and tall, sleek buildings have risen. I no longer knew my way around.
It seemed a less friendly town than the one I remembered. But it was probably just me, awash with nostalgia as I walked through the old places. My parents were younger than I myself am now. We would stroll together, three abreast, through the shabby, colorful streets or on the peaceful beach… How strange to realize that ordinary moments become rich memories.
But the bustling sea-side shuk forced me back into the present, and gladly I went. Wednesday is shuk day in Ashdod, and it takes place next to the beach promenade. Rising above the crowds is the sundial clock tower.
A multi-cultural crowd moved among the hundreds of stands. Besides Hebrew and French, I heard Amharic, Russian, Spanish and even some English.
Most of the produce was beautiful, like this bright orange pumpkin and baladi eggplant. The tiny artichokes would have been perfect for stuffing and frying, except, sadly, they were infested with snails.
Clothes in the shuk always intrigue me. Here’s a T-shirt for Maccabi basketball team fans…
and a startling new summer fashion: chamsot to avert the evil eye, on your sandals.
I always look for the one table displaying awful shoes in the shuk, and I found it.
So awful as to be actually rather cool.
Although you wouldn’t catch me dead in them.
I meandered on under the awnings, enjoying the colors and scents and glancing at vendors like this couple selling room perfumes.
A pair of hips swaying like The Girl From Ipanema, apricots in the background…
A street musician provided the music, although he was more into El Condor Pasa than bossa nova. 
Hungry for some foodie pictures?
Here’s a vendor of lupine and big, coarse ful beans.
Lupines are tedious to prepare, being saturated with a bitter alkaloid. To make them edible, they must be soaked, rinsed, soaked again, cooked, drained, and then put to rest for 4-7 days in brine. Then they are rinsed and ready to eat. Sort of like olives, except for the cooking. But they’re nutritious and tasty – once someone else has done all that work.
A pot of ful beans, hot, floury, and savory with cumin.
And those stuffed vine leaves looked good.
I wouldn’t buy those candied pecans though, having watched a worker sifting them through his bare hands.
What can I say, I’m a fussy Westerner.
Almonds kept plump in water…
And in case all those goodies were making you feel a size larger, the herb man had fresh stevia plants for sale.
Kosher keepers should know that none of the prepared foods sold in the shuk are OK. Actually while my friend and I were standing and watching two Beduin ladies make hand-made flatbreads, a woman with a sharp face came up to us and hissed,
“Is this kosher? Do they take challah?” Warning us away.
Ohferpetessake.
But here are the flatbreads, some baked in a skillet that goes into a portable oven and some slapped onto a saj (the pan that looks like an upside-down wok).
That’s what our breads should have looked like, the day the bloggers got together to bake on a saj at Sarah Melamed’s house. (Our breads were still delicious, though.)
I venture to guess that the two bakers were the wives of the man who ran the stand.
He filled the breads with leben and chopped herbs and tomatoes, then rolled it all up into a neat package for eating out of hand. It looked mighty good. I’ve eaten saj bread (with a hechsher, at the Central Bus Station in Jerusalem) – it has to be very fresh because it goes dry and tasteless quickly.
The bread vendor also had leben cheese in olive oil, bottles of that same oil, and fresh okra. What the dark seeds in the containers to the right are, I couldn’t tell. He wasn’t too thrilled at my taking photos so I didn’t linger to ask him.
On our way out of the shuk, the delicious smells of meat grilling over coals wafted around on a cloud of smoke.
“Tell them it’s the best!” ordered the vendor. It may well be, but I can’t testify to it.
It was hot. Behind the shuk is the promenade, with cafés overlooking the beach. To let the delicious sea breeze cool me down, I stood there for a while.
My friend suggested we just get on buses and ride around. So we did. I became a little more familiar with the new, sprawling Ashdod, so neatly planned with its independent neighborhoods.
At sunset, we walked over to the absorption center where my folks had lived for six months. The building stands near a garden that slopes down to the beach. I had often taken walks with my parents there.
Memories rose so strongly that tears rose too. It seemed I could almost hear my Dad’s voice, almost expect to see him walking and pausing to turn his head in his characteristic way to catch what Mom was saying. In one way, I was glad Mom wasn’t with me – I know she would have been overcome.
In another, I felt as if both of them should have been there with me. Remembering the Seder we made in the little bed/living room with its kitchenette . Dad became emotional, being in Israel after decades of hoping.
Hope and anticipation lay lightly on our hearts then. The future was a thing unraveling, far ahead.
Jun 092011
On one side of the street, a street sign like a beckoning finger encourages the stranger to enter.
But turn around to the other side, and this spooky masked image glowers down at you.
So it was with a slightly uncomfortable sense of ambiguity that we entered Wadi Nisnas, a neighborhood in lower Haifa steeped in the atmosphere of a 19th-century Arab village.
My friend Chaya and I were looking for the open-air market. No sign of vendors or stalls, although colorful murals with a nostalgic feeling decorated the street walls.
Did these two boys live in this house?
Look carefully and you’ll see, behind the shutters, the pale oval of a woman’s face as she gazes down at the street life below. 
The couple below are a little girl and a man. I wonder if they were the artist and her Dad.
We climbed up a little alley and knew we were getting close to the shuk when we smelled the mellow odor of roasting coffee drifting around.
At Cafe Haifa, a truly ancient roaster produces several blends of coffee. Cranky and decrepit the roaster may be, but the smell of freshly roasted and ground coffee was head-filling and delicious.
The owner hasn’t wearied of his own product.
Cafe Haifa is one of the stops along “The Tastes Track,” a yearly culinary festival promoting intercultural exchange and peaceful co-existence in Haifa.
As expressed in this hopeful mural decorating the ceiling of a bakery. 
Every Friday and Saturday in December, Wadi Nisnas bursts into festival. There’s the Tastes Track, a big arts festival (the street murals were originally created for the festival) , street performances and concerts. Apparently the streets fill with visitors and a good time is had by all.
But on that fresh June morning, we found a couple of quiet streets,
Fruit and vegetables of early summer.
Prices were about the same as in my local shuk in Petach Tikvah, but there was some produce that my shuk doesn’t have – like fresh grape leaves.That excited me. Mushrooms baked in vine leaves (recipe here)! Fish baked in vine leaves! Vine leaves stuffed with cheese! Stuffed with rice! Oh boy… I filled up a bag and paid all of NIS12.
A shopping cart heaped high with some herb caught my eye.
I couldn’t identify it. The vendor told me it was fresh green chickpeas on the stem and to go ahead and eat one. I peeled one and did. The taste is like raw sweet peas.
I considered bringing some home, but the thought of carrying all that herbage in my arms, on buses, for 2 hours across the country, defeated me.
I wonder what these two ladies were chatting about. Something pleasant, it looks like. They looked so content.
Chaya and I kept sticking our heads into the shops. I sensed a certain forced tolerance in the shop owners, rather than the friendliness and humor I’ve found in other shuks. Still, this bakery allowed me to squeeze in and watch the pitot plopping out of the oven.
One of the things I like about the Middle East is how people like to celebrate times and people gone by. A reproduction of an ancient photo showing an Arab woman winnowing grain. The photo of the baker’s father, maybe the founder of the business.
I loved the look of these home-made pickles.
This store also carries small zucchini, all hollowed out for filling with rice and ground lamb. You buy them by the bagful. Things to charm the eye and waken the appetite, although nothing for the kosher-keeper, of course. Yet…
Chaya and I spent several long minutes in the store, looking at things on the shelves and taking pictures. Nobody appeared to help us. It seemed that the owners were in the back of the store, doubtless watching us via surveillance camera.
A TV near the cash register was showing a program in Arabic with English subtitles. The narrator spoke of how Israel fills its citizens with anti-Arab propaganda. The hatred in his voice was palpable. Chilling for me, but for Chaya especially, sad.
Chaya meets with Muslim and Druze women every week in a moderated setting. They exchange life stories, seek to understand each other, hopefully encourage the germ of peace to take root. Over time, real friendships have formed among them. I hear Chaya’s stories and only shake my head…G-d knows how much we all want peace.
And how I would love to sit among the women of those cultures, talking family, talking food, talking life.
Women’s lives.
Well, maybe someday.
In the meantime, we walked on. In other stores, a display of beautiful multi-sized finjan pots caught my eye.
As did the exotic labels of Arak bottles.
The Abdel Hadi bakery almost blew me away.
Just imagine being a kid in this store – miles of the most delicious-smelling pastries! Every possible variety of baklawa and cookie, each with its own name and origin.
If any of them had been kosher, I would have gladly bought. If I could have chosen from the bewildering variety.
Oy. Just as well for my health, not to say my girth, that none of it was kosher.
And so we slipped out of Wadi Nisnas, each pondering life, and calories, and should we all trust each other, and things like that.
The afternoon was waning into evening and there was a long bus trip ahead for each. We parted at the central bus station, Chaya to Tsfat and I to Petach Tikvah. I sat by the window on the bus and looked at the ocean as we rolled away from Haifa.
Wadi Nisnas.
Such a tiny neighborhood, containing so much living history. Will its history end in real peace?
I hope so.
It took a long time to get over Passover this year. Non-stop cooking and washing-up, it seemed, and once the kitchen was restored to its leavened state, food lost its appeal. Easy soups and sandwiches have been keeping body and soul together around here for the past two weeks.
Except that Husband and The Little One would have left the house, never to return, had I gone on feeding them sandwiches and soup. So to find inspiration, I took my first post-Passover trip to the shuk.
I should have gone before. The beautiful produce, the bustling crowds, the odors and colors worked their usual magic and before I knew it, I was filling up the wheeled shopping cart and recipe ideas were buzzing in my brain.
First, a salute to the end of garlic season. Freshly-harvested local garlic with long green scapes is still for sale, but not for much longer.
Mostly I saw piles of shorn bulbs. 
They’re still tender and juicy, although their greens have dried up. I bought what I think will be my last batch for this year. Cloves from about 8 heads of that batch are in the oven right now, slowly cooking in olive oil for confit (recipe for garlic confit here) – and the garlicky, spicy odor in the house is making me hungry. Off to one side of the shuk is a large butcher store. Apart from the usual beef, chicken and turkey, they have things like entire cow’s tongues, long and grey and too much like super sized human tongues for me. Also, unhatched eggs taken from hens at slaughtering time. 
This delicacy is only available once every three months. Maybe someday I’ll look up a recipe using those unhatched eggs. In old-fashioned Eastern European kitchens, they are simply poached in chicken soup. This butcher speaks excellent, courtly English and is also very sweet. He knew exactly which cut of beef I needed for boeuf bourguignon. Here he is with a neck of lamb like the one I cooked as Osso Bucco for Independence Day last year. 
The other guys have far less class. 
Interesting mix of Russian, Arab, Moroccan and Ethiopian Jewish workers there. There are several fish stands in the shuk, but I like this one best. 
Ofer is the owner. He gets up at 3:00 AM every day except Shabbat and works till the shuk closes down at sunset. 
Off to one side of the fish stand are posters that read: Abortion is murder and then this sombre thought: Troubles and evil decrees are warnings that we must immediately reform our ways. 
In another corner of the shuk, a poster warns: The Messiah is coming. Are you ready? Next to it, a sign asks every Jew to put on tefillin(phylacteries). 
Mincha – afternoon prayers – in the tiny room set aside as a synagogue. 
And finally, some vegetables. Somehow even turnips, onions, and pickles become luminous in the everyday shuffle of the shuk. 
I also find the dignity of worker’s hands beautiful. 
How about these pickled vegetables? 
Almost as lovely as the display of spring flowers in the alley across from the shuk, where I picked up a couple of petunia starts for my porch garden. 
Yes, I know…I didn’t show you my shopping. Well, I bought the last of the season’s strawberries – a kilo, which I finished off with just a little help from The Little One when I got home; broccoli and mushrooms for a quiche to serve the book club; broad Italian beans; tiny new peaches for a pie and for chutney; big bunches of basil and rocket for pesto and…and more, only I haven’t cooked much of it yet. Except that garlic confit.
So now I’d better hop to it. Meet you back in my kitchen!
Dec 152010
Long ago and far away, a friend and I would drive up to the Meron hills and pick olives from abandoned trees there. But since moving to the center of the country, I buy raw olives in the shuk. Any shuk. This past September, it was the Ramleh shuk.
It’s a long process, curing olives, but not a lot of work. The first thing you have to do is find yourself a good rock. A rock with a good heft, one that the hand closes around comfortably.
It’s for cracking the olives. I found a likely one in a field near my building and brought it home to wash. It looks like a loaf of sourdough bread, but it’s a rock, and it crushes my olives fine. (The white bloom on it appeared after I poured boiling water over it and then rinsed it with vinegar).
My usual recipe calls for simply packing the olives in brine, but I was curious to try Sarah Melamed’s method with vinegar, so that’s what I did. The result was a little too vinegary for my taste, but after a second brining with fresh herbs, the olives, with only a hint of vinegar, became a savory treat.
You’ll only need a big jar and water the first week. So get yourself a clean rock and a kilo or two of raw green olives to start. Look for signs of ripening among the olives you buy – some will have turned darker.
Rinse the olives and drain. Discard any spoiled ones. Crush them with your handy-dandy rock, a few at a time, and put them in the jar. Some will escape and fly around the kitchen, of course, but just pick ‘em up, rinse again, and keep going. Take it easy, though – the weight of the rock should be enough to just crack the olives, not smash them to bits.
Cover the fruit with water. Make sure there are none floating – weigh them down with a small saucer or drape plastic wrap over the surface of the water to keep them under. Change the water every 24 hours. Do this for a week.
The olives will lose their bright color and take on a drabber, khaki shade. This is good – it means that their bitterness is leaching out. When the olives are uniformly darker, taste them to judge if they’re ready for brining. If they’re still bitter, soak them and change the water for another few days.
Once the olives are ready, drain them and put them in a large bowl while washing out their jar. Make a brine. This is:
10 grams of salt for every 100 ml. of water or 7 tablespoons of salt per half-cup of water.
For every 4 cups of brine, add 1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar. Mix well.
Replace the olives in the clean jar. Pour the salt/vinegar brine over all. Add 1 sliced lemon or lime, hot red peppers, garlic cloves, sprigs of rosemary or thyme, black pepper, bay leaves, allspice, or grape leaves – to taste and depending on what you have in your kitchen at the time.
Cover the olives with plenty of olive oil to exclude air and prevent spoilage. Close the jar. Leave it alone for a month, then taste an olive every week or so till you’re satisfied. For me, it took 8 weeks. If you like them the way they are, serve them as is. If, like me, you prefer a salty taste to vinegar, drain them, make a new brine as above without the vinegar, and put them back in the jar with fresh herbs and a new layer of olive oil to cover them. After a week or two, they’ll be ready, and just keep improving over time.
Keep your olives in a cool, dry place. How to serve them?
- Eat them alone, as a nosh or appetizer. A little fresh, chopped parsley, cilantro, or basil, mixed into the bowl of olives you intend to eat right away, is a very nice thing. Or:
- Chop some into dishes that use chopped meat, like picadillo, meat loaf, or hamburgers
- Add whole olives to braised chicken 10 minutes before serving
- Or to potatoes
- Or to rice
- Or add some chopped to an omelet…the world is yours with these olives.
Jul 272010
Many of my photos I’ve kept in my archives, thinking I’d post them here someday. Some involve stories I’m not at liberty to tell. Some evoke a mood that lives, I guess, in my mind alone. But many are of plain, human faces caught in moments of humor, irritation, thought. The unconscious dignity of labor – smiles layered over sorrow – a challenging gaze behind a coffee cup. I want to share some of these photographs – these people, with you. Now I’ll tell you some of the stories behind them.
The Disgruntled One. I was taking pictures of my daughter and her friend in the Yaffo flea market. They were standing next to this guy, who possibly thought that I couldn’t resist taking one of him. Look at his hand. He was spoiling for a few sharp words. But he relaxed when he saw I was interested in my teenagers, not him. Only later did I see he still got in the photo.
On the other hand, these two ladies didn’t mind at all. Aren’t they cute? Just two friends, one brunette and one blond, relaxing oh the sidewalk. On antique chairs meant to be sold, but never mind.
Still in Yaffo, cooking shakshoukah at Dr. Shakshuka’s.
The Lilac Lady. I wonder what event she was all dressed up for. A grandson’s bar-mitzvah? A wedding? Or does it take her fancy to dress like that every day, because she’s old enough to do what she dern well pleases?
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Do people still fall for this ancient scam? It’s a variation on the shell game, which has gulled the naive (and the greedy) into parting with their money for centuries.
This elderly Russian lady must have intense stories to tell, but we couldn’t talk because she spoke only Russian and Yiddish. She was selling chocolate rum balls she’d rolled up at home – koosher, she assured me. I paid whatever she asked for them, my heart squeezing in my chest. I hope she has someone to go home to at night, and that they love each other.
The lively Greek music coming from this Levontin Street bar caught my attention. Then I saw the guys sitting and having a little arak together there, and I really had to snap. They were amused at my interest and at my American accent – probably figured me for a tourist – and allowed me to.
I like to see friends together.
The organic market at the renovated Tel Aviv train station. This guy gave me such a knowing smile from behind his lettuces that I got embarrassed. Well, his dreads are cute.
I bought hot fresh chickpeas from this man on one of my trips through Shuk Mahaneh Yehudah in Jerusalem. Did I seem impatient to him? He’s giving me the classic Israeli signal for “wait a second” – tips of fingers bunched together and the wrist turned.
Far from the shuk’s bustle and noise, chef Moshe Basson shows how to make fresh za’atar pesto. I admire Moshe for his dedication to native foods and traditional Israeli cuisine, and for his partnership in Chefs for Peace. I guess if I have a food hero, he’s it.
What do you see in this man’s smile?
He’s a butcher in Shuk Ha Carmel, Tel Aviv. He’d come to shoot the breeze with the lady below. They’re childhood friends, he said. He scolded her for smoking. She heard him out tolerantly.
Then she said, in a hoarse, cracked voice: “He worries because I just finished a round of chemotherapy.”
A fast-food stand in the Shuk Ha Carmel: two brothers sell majadra, soup, and salads. I couldn’t find a good angle for the food photos, so I snapped one of the brothers.
This drink of coffee covers his thoughts up, but doesn’t hide the challenge in his eyes, or his tough stance.
I know that many market vendors suspect photographers of working for the income tax authorities. I’ve given up trying to explain that I’m just a Jewish matron and a food blogger. Eventually they just trust (sometimes my American accent works in my favor).
This is a Tsfat photo. Yaacov sits outside an electrical appliance store, selling blue bead bracelets against the Evil Eye. When you buy, he gives you a sure-fire blessing that’s guaranteed to fix you up in life. But – you must be proactive. Yaacov will tell you which Psalms to say, and at what time of day, because you must do your part too.
No pictures of kids…I have many, but feel tender about exposing their little faces on the Internet. More men than women – that’s natural, since there are more men vendors in the shuk and on the street. And some of my favorite shots stayed in the archives. Well, it’s a long enough post for right now. Sometime I’ll show you the best of the rest.
Jul 122010
It had been 33 years since I’d last set foot on American soil.
Culture shock, I thought. Be prepared for a different U.S. than the one you left three decades ago. Even the English you speak is going to be different – antiquated, maybe.
And you’re going to be moving among thousands of people who don’t consider you their distant cousin, as everyone in small-scale Israel does.
And so things proved to be. In Manhattan I rubbernecked like a yokel. In Brooklyn I entered a shop and asked, “Would you have such a thing as an umbrella?” and they looked at me as if I’d fallen from outer space. I sometimes felt the alone-ness and paranoia of the subway ride.
A week in New York with my son. A week in Texas to see my Mom. Then a visit with my sister Dina in in Calgary. Dina is the author of Alberta Musts, a travel book describing 101 must-see places in Alberta. She took me to Banff, a small gem of a town set among the Rocky Mountains, and to many other places new to me.
I was amazed, amused, awed. Horrified and thrilled. Follow me, gentle reader, and I’ll show you the marvels of my three weeks in North America.
New York: Chinatown
My son took me on a stroll through Chinatown.
Chinese banks, a huge Buddhist temple.
Greengrocers, some set up on the sidewalk
And fishmongers.
A convenient pushcart for lunch in a hurry.
A traditional herbal pharmacy where the doctor sits in the back room, ready to feel your pulses and prescribe herbs. The pharmacist measures the dried leaves and roots and twists up an origami envelope in a second. I bought a moxa stick in one of those pharmacies.
And stared wistfully down basement doors that advertised 15-minute foot massages and acupuncture. I would have liked a foot massage, but there was no time.
A grocery store displayed these heavy mortars without pestles. I wonder why no pestles. Too dangerous if dropped, breaking a customer’s toe? Theft prevention? Although it would have to be a muscular thief to spirit one of those granite mortars away.
I loved the red and gold in the shops. In this Westernized bakery, the decorations were rather sparse.
Although some of their goodies seemed very traditional.
Keeping kosher as I do, I ate nothing from Chinatown. But I enjoyed looking, and asking, and talking to the shop owners if they were willing. The owner of a diner allowed me to take photographs, although I wasn’t buying anything.
Are those mounds of white stuff tofu?
Leaving Chinatown, I snapped these friendly movers. I wonder why guys on trucks smile at me and give me thumbs-up…maybe it’s just nice to be appreciated.
movers-new-york
Tomorrow another phase of my travels – Brooklyn and its kosher eateries. Stay tuned for Part Two.
May 282010
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.
May 242010
Yael, of the Finnish Oranges and Honey blog, took me on a long walk from the arts and crafts fair on Nahalat Binyamin street, Tel Aviv -
through the beautiful streets of the Neve Tsedek artist’s colony -
in and out of the most interesting shops -
winding up at this market near the beach.
It’s the new organic farmer’s market at the antique, renovated Tel Aviv train station. It’s still small – just an alley lined with booths on both sides – but so much of what you need is there. Leafy greens and pungent herbs, succulent tomatoes, young corn still clothed in its husk because picked that very morning. I saw one man shuck a cob and eat the sweet corn raw.
How pallid and scentless our supermarket vegetables are in comparison. As we strolled by the high-piled baskets, the sweetest scent of organic strawberries, an earthy zucchini odor reminded me that fresh produce should smell distinctive and strong.
We strolled around munching on organic goat’s cheese and strawberries. The cheese vendor said, “This cheese is amazing! Amazing!” I started to sing, “Amazing cheese, how sweetly round…” which everyone politely ignored. I truly don’t know why people don’t like it when I start to sing. Yael, however, showed her excellent European manners by remaining my friend.
One stand, decorated with vine leaves all around and bearing the sign “Kibbutz Sde Eliahu” caught my eye. I made a beeline for it. When I first arrived in Israel, young, alone, and scared of this huge immigration thing I’d done, I spent six months on Sde Eliahu. There, I studied Hebrew, worked in the orchards and the fields, and started acclimating to my new country. I have only good memories of my time on kibbutz.
They were selling olive oil and grape juice and pomegranate juice. How well I remember picking big red pomegranates in the orchards, very early in the morning, as a false dawn came up from behind the Jordan hills.
The vendor must have been only a little boy when I lived there, but he brought me up to date on all my old friends. I was moved to hear how their lives opened out into the future, how one had died, how my pretty young Hebrew teacher was now a grandmother many times.
I lingered at the stand in this nostalgic mood, playing with a long branch of grape leaves that hadn’t been tacked up for decoration. A recipe I’ve seen in an Elizabeth David cookbook came to mind: mushrooms baked in grape leaves. I’ve often been curious to try that recipe, but never remembered to pick up raw grape leaves when they’ve been on offer. People pickle them in brine and then stuff them with rice, of course. Once a year, usually at harvest time, you see these big, coarse leaves lying in piles in the pickles section of the supermarket, or in the shuk. I’d never seen these younger, more tender leaves for sale.
“Would you sell me those grape leaves?”
The vendor thought for a minute. “What will you do with them – stuff them?”
“No, I’m going to bake mushrooms in them. A layer of leaves, then the mushrooms. Salt, pepper, olive oil, and a little lemon. On top, another layer of grape leaves. Cover it all and bake till the mushrooms are done – maybe 20 minutes.”
The vendor swallowed; the image of juicy mushrooms had woken his appetite. “Here, take them. No, there’s nothing to pay. Look, I got a new recipe, and that’s worth a lot.”
We parted with expressions of mutual esteem.
I put the grape leaves carefully on top of my organic artichokes and Swiss chard, and Yael and I headed for home. It was Friday, and at home our Shabbat preparations were only half finished.
I unloaded my market bag, sorted the produce between Cook It Now and Save It for Later. Then my hand pulled the flat package of grape leaves out.
What made me photograph them when I was in such a hurry to get my cooking done? But they were too lovely to ignore. All right, I’d photograph now and cook with them after Shabbat. I rinsed and dried them, and arranged them in a white dish to show their irregular shapes to advantage.
Then I surprised myself – there was a tug at my heart. Tears rising to my eyes. What?…
It was the Biblical beauty of the grape leaves, their millennial, spiritual, physical, mystical connection to the land and to Jews. To me. I had a small, pure moment of thankfulness and praise.
Blessed art Thou, who created the fruit of the vine.
Who brings forth bread from the earth.
Who brought me here, where I belong.
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