It was still daybreak when I took off. I passed by the orchards, made the rounds of the beaches, gained a fleeting acquaintance with the locale’s water, soil and air, and collected fragrant wild herbs that made my palms smell of savoury, sage and pennyroyal – Zorba The Greek The Spring Equinox has just passed
Haifa brings out a lump of what looks like hard, white cheese. It’s kishik. Dried salted yoghurt. She slices it thinly and it crumbles into salty shavings. It’s very salty actually, with a flavour and texture that makes me think of Parmesan. “This is baladi yoghurt”, she says. What she means is, it comes from
“Some recipes are poems. A few scene stealers are novellas. But stuffed grape leaves are short stories; tiny fables of transformation, not of people… but of food.” – Anna Ciezadlo, Day of Honey You could watch the entire length of The Titanic – and then watch half of it again – in the time it
I knew I couldn’t leave Israel or Palestine without talking about hummus. That ubiquitous chickpea paste that is impossible to avoid in the Middle East. And it’s good here. So good! I can’t decide whether it’s the quality of the tahini, the way the chickpeas are cooked or the very specific way it’s served depending on
I was thinking of calling this post Why I can’t bake and possible solutions, but I thought that would be off-putting. But I’ll be honest upfront, I can’t bake. Keep this in mind when I say I made tahini biscuits today, under the very straight-forward instructions of Galia, my Israeli workaway host and mother of this little
There is no good reason to throw onion peelings straight to the compost. The robes of a humble onion serve a far nobler purpose, and that is to make boiled eggs taste (and look) better. This is a new discovery for me, and one that I learnt at my latest workaway in Israel. I’ve been spending my days with