Thumping the watermelon
It’s not a great summer for fruit in Israel; prices are high as a result of the extreme heat we’re experiencing this summer, and the Farmers’ Association reported that the main fruits affected by the heat wave are peaches, plums, grapes, nectarines, and watermelons. A shortage of these fruits is likely, they say, and moreover, their quality isn’t great. The peaches turn rotten within seconds, the nectarines aren’t as sweet as usual and the watermelons aren’t worth the trouble.
When we cut open a “personal watermelon” yesterday afternoon, besides being full of seeds — horrors! — it just wasn’t any good. Which led to a discussion of how the watermelon had been chosen.
“Did you ask for help?” I asked my husband, Daniel, who handled the food shopping this week. He looked back at me in disdain, as if he would need help for such a task.
At that point, my brother-in-law chimed in with his watermelon-picking story of the previous week. He was choosing a watermelon, which in his case meant looking over the selection and sticking one in his cart. Meanwhile, another customer, an older Israeli gentleman, was busy thumping all the watermelons in the case, clearly checking for that hollow sound that lets you know the watermelon is ripe and ready for eating. When he saw that Ira was picking without checking, he was astounded by the carelessness of his act.
“What, you’re not gonna check to see if it’s ready?” he asked Ira. Knowing Ira, he probably smiled and shrugged. Maybe he smirked. So the older man thumped it, nodded and handed it back to Ira.
The moral of the story? I’m thinking that regular watermelons are probably better this season than the engineered kind. As for our dud, I ate some with feta cheese, which saved it a bit. As for the rest, I’m going to try a granita, which is never a bad thing during this kind of weather.
The Jody Blum Culinary Institute
Jody in the kitchen of her Culinary Institute
Growing up, my mother refused to let my brother and me into the kitchen. While this created a carefree cooking-neutral childhood, it hasn’t served me so well as an adult.
Whenever my wife Jody goes away – whether for an evening activity or an overseas trip – I slip into panic mode. Tackling menus terrifies me. Sure, I can follow a recipe, but it takes me at least three times as long as Jody, and I usually burn something or render it otherwise indescribably unusual.
When the issue raised its hungry head again last week after Jody was spontaneously called away at dinnertime, I realized that – after 22 years of marriage – it was time for a change. So I enrolled in Culinary School…run by none other than chef Jody.
As Jody and I began to think about the best way for me to learn to cook, we realized that I was missing even the basics. For example: how to prepare rice.
It sounds simple enough, but there are a lot of steps to ensure the rice is neither soggy nor overly crisp.
So at the Jody Blum Culinary Institute, there will be no assumptions. We’ll start with the basics – like boiling – and move on to more exotic topics such as sauces and sautéing.
We decided to open up the lessons to the rest of the family. To our astonishment, Merav – our 16-year-old cooking whiz – said she wanted to be a student too. She didn’t know how to cook rice properly either. Her big brother joined in too.
Now, some people might just throw some Uncle Ben’s into a pot. Jody’s technique takes a few extra steps – but it’s worth it.
Jody uses only brown rice unless she’s following a recipe that specifically calls for white.
First, you have to measure out the rice. How many people do you want to serve? One cup is enough for our family. Two cups or more are required when you’re hosting for Shabbat. It may seem obvious to the more experienced, but it’s far from intuitive to the kitchen clueless.
The next step is to lightly fry the rice. One tablespoon of olive oil and one teaspoon of salt for every cup of rice. Heat on a low flame and stir while preparing the water – 2 cups for every cup of rice. If you’re like me and you can’t multitask, remember to measure out the water in advance. Seriously.
Then you cover the rice and set the timer. 30 minutes should do it…unless it’s not enough. How do you know? Well, first of all make sure you use a pot with a glass top. That way, you can tilt the pot to see if there’s any liquid left without needing to lift off the top, which ruins the whole process. Smart cookie, that Jody.
It took a lot of hand holding but eventually the rice came out perfect. No one at lunch complained about an inadvertent “barbecue” flavor. It was just rice but I was beaming with pride.
I’ll be chronicling my ongoing adventures in cooking. If you’re culinarily challenged like me, I invite you to follow along. Who knows, someday I might even conquer a quiche!
Foto Friday – A little Italy in TLV
Filed under: Art, Food, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Profiles, Travel
There is a lopsided love affair between Israelis and all things Italian. Italians think of Israel as the Holy Land. Israelis think Italy is what Israel could be were it not for the matzav — the word used to describe the roiling, boiling political-diplomatic-religio-ethno-social situation that is our constant reality. Without the matzav, your average Israeli believes, we too could focus on a life filled with beautiful objects, high-quality design, and of course, great food and wine.
Your average Israeli is, as usual, deluding and flattering himself all at once. If anything, Italy’s history is proof that a well-developed sense of aesthetics is possible to sustain, even in times of great conflict. And there’s no reason to think that, even if peace broke out tomorrow, your average Israeli would suddenly put those ass-crack jeans away and don an linen Armani suit in its stead.
Plus, despite the matzav, Israel has fine-tuned its palate over the past 20 years, with award-winning wines, gourmet coffees, excellent cheeses (especially the goat variety), and restaurants that rank four and five stars in leading international guides.
For five years now, restaurant RoniMotti has been serving up freshly made pasta and other Italian delights to the yuppie crowd working feverishly ’round the clock at Tel Aviv’s Ramat Hahayal high-tech park. Owners Roni Belfer and Motti Sofer recenty celebrated the anniversary with a series of photos celebrating their dedicated staff. The pictures are nice way to give a big public “Thank you” to their workers…
as well as pay homage to the persons, places and things that inspire them, like the mother who taught Motti how to cook…
the fresh food ingredients that are Roni’s passion…
and of course, la bella Italia itself…
…as they carve out their own little slice of Italian heaven in North Tel Aviv.
RoniMotti also recently launched an online magazine, Villagio, profiling everything from the Slow Food movement to Frank Sinatra. Hey, if it’s Italian, we Israelis love it! Salute e buon appetito!
L’eggo my pizza
On the food front, had an unusual slice of pizza the other night. I’m not always all for the Israeli take on foods from other ethnicities, such as corn on pizza or cream cheese and bagels loaded with vegetables. But this was both unusual, tasty and highly filling, with slices of hard boiled egg laid on the pizza and, at the pizza counterperson’s suggestion, I sprinkled some hot sauce on it, a la shakshuka, as a friend pointed out.
It was great, and yes, hinted at the egg-tomato-and-red pepper-sauce flavors in a hot pan of shakshuka. Given that hard-boiled eggs are a staple in the Israeli diet, added to everything from tuna sandwiches to bourekas, it’s not all that surprising to see it added to a pizza. But as someone who rarely gets filled up from one slice, I appreciated the protein gesture. Turns out, egg on pizza is not an Israeli invention. According to the Life in Italy website, the regional Capricciosa pizza includes a topping of mushrooms, prosciutto, artichoke hearts, olives and half a boiled egg. The Zoe food blog turned out a recipe for pesto and egg pizza, while a French pizza combines hard boiled egg and brie. Yum.
I’m going to try my hand at Zoe’s version:
Hard Boiled Eggs & Pesto Pizza
1 store bought pizza crust, or make your own dough. (I bought whole wheat and I couldn’t even tell the difference)
Marinara sauce, enough to cover entire pizza surface
3-4 hard boiled eggs, a great tutorial can be found here
A couple of tablespoons of pesto
About 2 cups shredded mozzarella1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Slice already cooled hard boiled eggs into thin slices, keeping the yolk and egg white intact in each slice. Set aside.
3. Spread marinara evenly onto pizza dough.
4. Sprinkle the mozzarella cheese. Next, dollop some pesto wherever you want it. Top with egg slices and pop into oven for 8- 10 minutes.
Artik, Kartiv
Filed under: Art, Food, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Movies, Music, Pop Culture
I’m in a kartiv period of my life. Kartiv, for the unitiated, is the Hebrew word for frozen popsicles, but the ice ones, not those made of ice cream. That would be an artik. Israel, being a land of a long summer, specializes in its artikim and cartivim, with huge selections of both everywhere you turn (something like the dairy selection). Whether you’re in the supermarket buying a box of eight, or at the local pool or makolet (corner store) sliding open a freezer, you can find popsicles in a wide range of flavors, from the traditional lemon, cherry and pineapple to passion fruit and mango. There are cup-like popsicles that hold small balls of ice (I’m partial to the strawberry/banana), long sticks that are more sherbert-like and creamsicles that look like watermelon. But that’s getting into artik land.
For my purposes at the moment, being the mother of 22-month-old toddlers, popsicles are playing a major role in our days. Ziv and Lev were introduced to cartivim a while back, probably when we were at someone’s house or the pool. Now they’re pretty addicted to the most typical Israeli cartiv, colored plastic tubes of sugar water that are sold in packages of 6 or 8 in the supermarket. Granted, lots of sugar in them, but what I do like is that the tubes are colored — green, red, purple, yellow — but the ice itself is not, which is a sort of natural touch. In our house, we call them ‘pops’, and they’re requested first thing in the morning, but I try to hold them off until the afternoon. I’ve tried to turn other food items into ‘pops,’ such as pretzel sticks, breakfast bars, bananas. But they’re not buying it. They want the real thing.
The inappropriately named 'Nanasim'
Israel, in fact, is known for its artik/kartiv selections, and there’s even a Facebook page called Artik Kerach. As well as a song by singer Tzvika Pik, called 
(“Artik, Kartiv, chocolate, banana” is the refrain). Which brings me to my final bit of popsicle linguism: The real word for an ice popsicle is a kirchon, as in kerach (ice), but is commonly known as a kartiv, artik kerach or eskimo (Check out the 1978 cult classic, “Lemon Popsicle”, about three high school kids growing up in Tel Aviv). Finally, the term artik came from the name of an ice cream company, based on the word ‘arctic,’ as in cold.
Grag me a cold one, wouldja?
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