The fruit of passionfruit

January 31, 2010 by · 7 Comments
Filed under: Food, General, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

Just in time for Tu B’shvat, I picked a huge bowlful of passionfruit from the vine in our yard, all perfectly brown, wrinkled and ready for eating. Such a sense of satisfaction, to have a bowl of fruit in your home, ripe for eating, and from your very own garden.

I had been kind of cursing the passionfruit, courtesy of my sister Sarah, who’s been warning me that the vine will take over all growth nearby, including the bougainvillea and mini peach tree. I had even considered cutting the whole thing down come spring, and putting in a new vine, something floral, scented, easy.

But then, Yossi, the gardener, came for one of his monthly-to-six-week visits. After ridding the garden of the vociferous winter weeds that I can’t keep up with these days and doing some general cleanup, he told me to come outside with a bowl and gather the passionfruit. I have to admit, I’ve been so out of touch with my garden that I wasn’t expecting much, a few, maybe several passionfruit for snacks.

Instead I ended up with a bumper crop of some 25 passionfruit, and good advice from Yossi to keep the vine, but just cut it back come spring.

Now I had to figure out what to do with the passionfruit, since there’s just so much spooning out of the yellow stuff that I could do, given that I’m pretty much the only one in the house who eats it. Enter Nigella Lawson, Brit foodie chef extraordinaire. I remembered seeing a recipe for passionfruit curd in “How To Be A Domestic Goddess,” and as I always aim for domestic goddess status, was excited to try it out.

I’m happy to say that the recipe is flawless and the results stupendous. As per Nigella’s suggestion, I smeared some on plain cake, a shortcake that I happened to have in the freezer. Truly luscious. And there really is no greater satisfaction than having a jar of passionfruit curd sitting in your fridge.

Recipe details

Great to slather over a thick slab of white bread for a morning breakfast.

Ingredients

* 11 Passionfruit
* 2 large eggs
* 2 large egg yolks
* 150 g caster sugar
* 100 g unsalted butter
# Put the seeded pulp of 10 of the passionfruit into a processor and blitz just to loosen the seeds. Strain into a jug or bowl.
# Beat the eggs, egg yolks and sugar together.
# Melt the butter over a low heat in a heavy-based pan, and when melted stir in the egg mixture and the passionfruit juice, and keep cooking gently, stirring constantly, until thickened.
# Off the heat, whisk in the pulp – seeds and all – of the remaining passionfruit, let cool slightly, then pour into a clean jar. Keep the jar sealed in the fridge.

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Santana cancels – touring glitch or anti-Israel lobby?

January 31, 2010 by · 17 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, coexistence, General, Music, Politics, Pop Culture 

The announcement had been made, the tickets were being sold, and the hearts of aging baby boomers were actually beating above their normal rate at the thought of seeing Woodstock veteran Carlos Santana and band perform in June in Tel Aviv at Bloomfield Stadium.

Santana was just one of the name artists who confirmed dates for this year – leading a pack that includes Elton John, Rod Stewart, the Pixies, Rhiana, and rumors of shows by Bob Dylan, Metallica, Coldplay and U2.

But, mysteriously over the weekend, the show’s producer Shuki Weiss, released a statement saying that Santana had cancelled the performance to and undetermined time, citing an overloaded spring touring schedule.

Stuff like this happens all the time in the music business, but only in Israel is it chalked up to to anti-Israel sentiments. Yediot Aharonot
ran a story this morning quoting an unnamed source in Weiss’s office as saying that “messages” had been passed onto Santana that it wouldn’t be a wise thing to play in Israel.

Both Paul McCartney and Leonard Cohen experienced pressure from pro-Palestinian groups to cancel their shows here over the last two years. And McCartney allegedly even received death threats. So, it’s not an uncommon occurence.

However, someone like Carlos Santana and his management, surely review the proposed itineraries of his tours before giving the OK for confirmation. And Carlos has been around long enough to not be swayed by anti-Israel thuggery – I recall he even used to be in his own youth knife gang as a teen, so he can stand up to threats.

So let’s hope that it was a technical touring glitch, and that the other superstars headed our way won’t be swayed by the misguided propaganda of our adversaries. On the positive side, we won’t have to hear the fiery guitarist extraordinaire perform his Top 40 hit “Smooth.”

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To 443 or not to 443?

January 30, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Israeliness, War 

With Highway 443, the road that runs between Jerusalem and Modi’in through the West Bank, all over the news lately, I was reminded of the events that led to 443 being closed to Palestinian traffic nearly ten years ago.

We had been invited to a barbeque at the house of friends in Modi’in. On the day of the party, the news reported that Highway 1, the main road out of Jerusalem, was jammed and there were hour-long back-ups. The solution seemed easy enough: we’d just take the alternative highway – Highway 443.

Except that nothing is that simple in Israel.

Since the second intifada broke out in 2000, we had avoided traveling on certain roads, specifically those that pass by areas where there had been terror attacks. 443 had been the site of many such tragic incidents, from ambush killings, drive by shootings, to frequent firebombs.

443 was closed to Palestinian traffic in 2002 – the controversial act that led to this month’s Supreme Court decision ordering the army to re-open back the road within six months. Even with the traffic ban, we weren’t comfortable with the drive. But we were already running late for the barbeque. Sitting in traffic would have meant we’d miss all the fun. And definitely the chicken wings.

With no small amount of trepidation, we opted to take the fast track. We were immediately struck by its stark, barren beauty. The rolling hills with their jagged rock formations, the long stone terraces that always look to me to be thousands of years old.

My wife Jody rolled down her window. The road was open, traffic was flowing, the mountain air smelled crisp with just a hint of the salt from the Mediterranean Sea, already visible in the distance.

Then, out of the blue, we came to a stop. I quickly noticed that no cars were coming in the other direction either. Something had happened.

People turned off their car engines, got out and stretched their legs. A man opened his back door and out sprang a scraggly black dog who instantly jumped the fence to go for a run on the empty other side of the road. The sounds of the muezzin from a nearby village echoed through the valley.

We turned on the radio. Galgalatz was reporting that a hefetz hashud – a suspicious object – had blocked the road.

In the midst of our waiting, a totally chutzpadik taxi driver decided he couldn’t wait and started to push his way to the front. Honking ferociously, he yelled to the other cars to start up their engines and move to the right so he could squeeze by on the almost non-existent left-side shoulder.

It was not like he was going to get past the roadblock. What was he looking for? A half a minute’s lead-time over all the rest of us freiers?

And then, after about 40 minutes of frustration, BOOM. Not deafening, but still loud enough to rattle us. The police robot used to zap suspicious objects had apparently taken a bite, and something on the menu had a kick to it.

The traffic started up again. Slowly we snaked down the road, anxiously craning our necks to see what the cause of all the commotion was. I imagined something minor, maybe a small package, a garbage bag or even a suitcase forgotten the side of the road.

It was a car. An old Subaru, left abandoned, and now a smoldering wreck. That was big…had it been blown apart by the robot or was there a bomb inside? I couldn’t stop myself from thinking: what if it had gone off just as we were passing? On the very day – no, the only day – in the many years that we chose to go this way?

Since that incident, the intifada has faded and so have our fears. We travel 443 regularly. But what will happen when the road is reopened to traffic from Ramallah and other points in the PA, we wonder? Will we – and other nervous Israelis – pack back onto Highway 1? Was that, perhaps, the reason a new exit was recently opened entering Modi’in from the south?

Summer is still far away, but the annual barbeque is already calling. I suppose our decision will be made based on if we’re on time or not.

And whether they’re running out of chicken wings.

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Foto Friday – Tu b’Shvat is here!

January 29, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Foto Friday, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Picture of the Week, Travel 

Tu B’Shvat, the New Year for Trees is upon us! The almond trees are in full bloom.


© Barak Sekeles

For those who live in cold climates and can’t get here in time…

© SOBO Dan

…here are some amazing images of pinky-white blossoms against brilliant blue skies.
Photo by Ester Inbar, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Last week was cold and rainy…
Photo by Eli Zahavi, courtesy of Piki Wiki Israel via Wikimedia Commons

…and given this winter’s wacky weather, who knows what next week could bring…
Photo by Ester Inbar, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

…but this weekend we will enjoy ourselves the warm holiday sunshine.
Photo by Dror K, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

I’m a Groundhog’s Day baby, so believe me when I say: only 6 more weeks till spring!

© SOBO Dan

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Meet me at the Mugrabi

January 28, 2010 by · 5 Comments
Filed under: History and Culture 

When I recently was hired to record a series of conversations to accompany a course on teaching Hebrew to English speakers, I didn’t know I’d be getting a lesson in Tel Aviv nostalgia.

The project was to edit a 500-page curriculum originally developed in 1965 by the U.S. State Department to prepare diplomats posted to Israel. Along with the written text, there were about 200 short snippets of dialogue – ranging from “how are you today?” to “the fish was delicious, can I please have the recipe.”

I brought in nine Israeli men and women to record the voices. That alone was a big part of the overall experience. In my line of work, I don’t meet a lot of native-born young people. Indeed, all of my current clients are Anglos and when I write an article for a publication like Israel 21c, I usually conduct the interview over the phone. So, it was refreshing to get to know the world outside our insular Jerusalem Anglo bubble.

My main voice talent was a genial twenty-something named Dov, recently out of university and unfortunately out of a job, having been downsized when the economy went south. With a deep, rich baritone and superb diction, he was considering a career change to radio.

Our team also included Hallel, a playwriting student with a mostly shaved head whose father once served as the security guard at our son’s kindergarten; a musician named Daniel who heads up a band called Moshe and the Refugees that sounds a little like a mashup between the Doors and Leonard Cohen; Maya, who’s pursuing an M.A. in criminology at Bar Ilan University; Rachel, a professional translator, Hebrew/English editor and hazanit (a female cantor); and Avital who is active in the Gush Etzion “Raise Your Spirits” musical theater ensemble that performs exclusively for women.

As I mentioned, the curriculum itself was old, which let us all take a trip down memory lane (or in the case of my actors, who were born in the 1980s, a trip down their parent’s alleyway of antiquities).

At a key point in the course, a U.S. diplomat, Mr. Williams, is looking for the government tourist office. He is told to head in the direction of the Mugrabi Cinema. None of us had ever heard of the Mugrabi and, despite our all being Jerusalemites, we were pretty sure there was no such theater with that name in Tel Aviv today.

Thank goodness for Google. A quick search and we discovered that the Mugrabi was in fact a key cultural icon. Built in the 1920s, the building served as the home for the Palestine Folk Opera in the 1940s and later became the cinema for which it was most famed. It was designed in a classic Bauhaus style. If you wanted to locate yourself in Tel Aviv, it was always in relation to the Mugrabi.

The theater was, sadly, bulldozed to put up a parking lot in the 1980s (Israeli shades of the Judy Collins classic).

There was another reference in the dialogues that was less well known. Adjacent to the Mugrabi, apparently was a restaurant called the “Brooklyn Bar” which, according to the text, served banana splits “just like in America.”

I’m sure that – if the course saw fit to put what sounded like a glorified ice cream parlor in the same conversation as its more famous street-mate – it must have been popular with the locals – back in the days when such cultural imports from abroad were still a novelty. We found one short mention of the Brooklyn Bar online but no pictures.

These days, banana splits have been replaced by gourmet Belgian waffles and the main imports from Brooklyn are new immigrants. But for a few minutes, it was a trip to indulge in this nostalgic blast from the past.

Let’s just hope our Mr. Williams arrived at his destination safely. And that the ice cream lived up to a reputation stellar enough to be highlighted in a once mandatory course for all American diplomats.

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