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(The crazy moon language ampersand numbers in the title correspond to Hebrew characters) המטבח הישראלי - Israeli Cuisine tl;dr - Food processors are the greatest and I apologize for my lovely cell phone camera pictures and yes this post has a bibliography Choosing a Cuisine I'm a Jew! Specifically I'm an American Jew of Eastern European heritage, and in terms of cuisine, this means I grew up eating kugels, latkes, blintzes, challah, hamentashen, tzimmes, matzoh ball soup, gefilte fish, and the like. To the extent that I would ever want to eat any of that stuff again, I know how to make it all. I've got Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine down. Jewish cuisine in general is a really wide ranging category, though, and I'm unfamiliar with cooking most of it. So for this ICSA, I've chosen Israeli cuisine, because it's the part of my heritage that, culinarily, I'd most like to get in touch with. Because it is delicious. So of course with Israeli cuisine, I've got to hit the basics. Obviously on my menu are pita bread, hummus, falafel, and tabbouleh. In rounding out my menu and adding more stuff, though, I have a ton of options. To see why, let's have a short history lesson (I promise it won't be too boring)... ** Recommended listening: this song, for starters **   History of Israel and Israeli Cuisine Once upon a time, all the poo poo in the Old Testament (Jews call it the Tanakh/תַּנַ"ךְ) happened. This will become relevant later. Between around that time and the Israel's declaration of independence in 1948, there weren't a ton of Jews hanging out in the promised land, a situation known as the Jewish diaspora, or as us Jews call it, the diaspora. So Israel (aka Palestine) was full of Palestinians. Israeli cuisine was what you would expect for the region: a mix of Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian, and Egyptian food, which itself is all a mix of Arab, Ottoman, and Persian influences, among others. So, fairly eclectic. Lentils and lamb and so on. This is where hummus, falafel, pita, and tabbouleh spring from, and those were the four basics I had already decided on. So far, so good! But not so specifically Jewish, all things considered. Then some poo poo happened and Israel turned into Jewslyvania overnight. Starting in 1948 and continuing to today, Jews from loving everywhere started streaming into Israel, taking with them their culinary traditions. One notable instance is Operation Magic Carpet wherein basically every Jew in Yemen flew to Israel (not on literal magic carpets, though). This will also become important later. In any case, zillions of Jews from Eastern Europe and the USSR, various Arab countries, Africa, America, and so on ended up in Israel, and just like that, the result was probably one of the most cosmopolitan cuisines I can think of. I'm having trouble thinking of any other country with such an eclectic mix of culinary traditions. (The United States of America counts, I guess.  Can you think of any other countries with such a cosmopolitan mix of cuisines? Let me know if you can - I'm curious.)So when I decided to choose Israeli cuisine that narrowed things down not at all, even after ruling out all the Ashkenazi-inspired stuff (bye bye, sufganiyot!). I've never been to Israel but I do have access to a lifetime's worth of exposure to the foods Israeli people eat plus Wikipedia, Google, and Israeli friends to make sure what I think is Israeli actually is Israeli. Which means I was left with options as varied as burek, mejadra, something with Israeli couscous, shakshuka, amba, and so on. Luckily I'm vegan so that narrowed it down some. Eventually I decided on two things: I wanted stuff that is fairly common in Israel, so as to make my foray into Israeli cuisine somewhat authentic to the Israeli experience. Also, or alternatively, I wanted stuff that exemplifies Israeli cuisine's massive cosmopolitanism - stuff that takes advantage of the fact that Jews from all over came to Israel and shaped its food. So let's see how that turned out... The Food Let's get the obvious poo poo out of the way. First up is hummus. Carl Sagan once said, roughly, "if you want to make hummus from scratch, you must first invent the universe." He was wrong. Anyone who's read the Tanakh knows that God already did that poo poo. If you want to make hummus from scratch you only need to first invent tahini. טחינה - Tahini Tahini is sesame seed paste. It's what peanut butter would be if you didn't make it with peanuts. I bought a big bag of sesame seeds from my local Korean grocery store, which had the cheapest price per pound for sesame seeds. Doing things cheaply is going to be a theme here, because, hey. Jewish.  Normally I would roast the sesame seeds but I think the ones I bought are pre-roasted. I can't read Korean but some of the seeds seem pretty roasted. Either way, these go into a food processor with some canola oil.  Process for however long Jews have been waiting for the messiah or until paste, whichever is sooner.  Mine turned out pretty dark. If you've ever bought tahini like a sucker at the market, you've had the choice between dark and light tahini, probably. I don't know if "dark" means the seeds are roasted first or if "dark" means the seeds aren't crushed to get at the sweet sesame poo poo inside each tiny seed, or what. I don't know gently caress about tahini except that 1) it is also confusingly spelled "tahina" and 2) making this back before food processors were invented must have been boring as hell. חומוס - Hummus Hummus is not very complicated. Every recipe I looked at was pretty much the same. One tip I did pick up was from this smitten kitchen recipe which suggests peeling the chickpeas. So, after soaking them overnight + boiling them, and while the tahini was blending, I peeled the chickpeas:  Okay. First of all, this is a pain in the rear end. dino. suggests to just "blitz the hell out of them in a food processor, because gently caress pressing through a sieve" so I'm not sure where he'd fall on the labor intensive process of peeling everything. My guess is that he would say nobody has that sort of free time. So, tune in later in this post to find out if peeling them was worth many minutes of my life. Second of all, smitten kitchen says to throw out the peels, but I put some salt and pepper on them and ate them, because, hey. Jewish. Throwing food away is a waste of money. The skins are probably good for you! (They are largely flavorless.) In any case, I ground up my newly naked chickpeas a bit, then added the tahini, garlic, lemon juice, salt, and some reserved chickpea cooking water as it was processing, to thin it out.  So that was hummus. How does it look or taste? You have to wait for the end of the post... פיתה - Pita Like naan, pita's some confusing poo poo because although it's a flatbread, it's leavened. I know, right? People have been eating flatbreads forever, leavened and unleavened, and Israel is no exception. I think the first time we meet pita bread is in Genesis 4:17, when God is busy cursing Adam for some bullshit or other. God says "by the sweat of your brow / Shall you get bread to eat, / Until you return to the ground" suggesting that making pita is a PITA compared to however it worked in the Garden of Eden. In any case, commercial yeast makes things pretty easy today, and making pita isn't much harder than making unleavened flatbread - you just need to give it time to rise first. We have a pita recipe on our wiki but I went with smitten kitchen's recipe with 50% whole wheat flour. Here's the dough after kneading:  I gave it an overnight rise in the fridge to let it develop some flavor, then per the recipe portioned it into discs, let it rise again, then rolled out my pitas:  Pictures of the finished pitas will come at the end. I got a little more than half of them to puff up entirely while cooking - the ones that didn't puff up were rolled too thick, I think. In the future I'm pretty confident I can get all my pitas to puff up perfectly. They're still pretty great flatbreads even without the pocket in the middle. פלאפל - Falafel Everyone knows what falafel is! And if you don't, you're missing out. But apparently nobody knows where falafel came from. Some people think that Coptic Egyptians invented falafel to eat in place of meat during Lent. Even if that's not true, the message behind it is true: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all play a key role in this region's diverse culinary makeup, and that's without even taking into consideration all the different non-religious differences that also contribute to Israeli cuisine's variety. It just goes to show how, when you put everything into your melting pot, you get wonderful flavors out of it! Also, constant unceasing bloody conflict. In any case, it's pretty safe to assume falafel was invented somehwere in the Middle East, and it's a staple of Israeli food today. We have a recipe on the wiki but I read a bunch of other falafel recipes and cobbled something together from them, hewing mostly to this one when in doubt, which was... pretty much never. I just winged it really. After again soaking some chickpeas overnight, all the ingredients went into my food processor.  This left me with delicious looking falafel stuff.  Falafel are traditionally deep fried, but given the price of cooking oil, I decided to pan fry them, because, hey. Jewish. Deep frying is a technique I would use if the hypothetical situation described in the chorus of this ethnically appropriate song were the case. Until then, pan frying is probably healthier, right?  They look delicious like this so forget that deep frying stuff. טאבולה - Tabbouleh Tabbouleh is, broadly, a bulgur/cucumber/tomato salad with mint, parsley and lemon juice. It's pretty iconic of Israeli cuisine. Somehow I managed to delete all the pictures of the in-progress tabbouleh from my phone without emailing them to myself, probably because I only took one picture. Oh well. It's a very straightforward process (which is why I took one picture). Bring water to a boil, drop the bulgur in, turn off the heat, wait a while, mix the rest of the stuff together and add the bulgur. The end! Here's what the tabbouleh looked like later:  I took a page from this recipe and this one and used green onions rather than the normal onions that this recipe calls for or the zero onions that this one suggests. Other than that, like I said, straightforward.  **Intermission** ** More music to listen to** So now we've seen the obvious Israeli stuff from my menu. What did I choose for the more exotic food? Remember that I want stuff that's common in Israel and/or stuff that shows off the cuisine's cosmoplitan nature. To that end I've chosen to make matboucha, hilbeh, and zug, along with some za'atar for my pita. Since these are a little more exotic/less well known, at least where I live, I'll explain more about them as I introduce them. מטבוחה - Matboucha Matboucha (also known by its French name salade cuite, aka "cooked salad" I think) is a sweet stewed tomato salad made with green peppers. I guess it came to Israel with the Sephardic Moroccan Jews and ended up pretty popular. I can understand why - it's super delicious, and since it's good cold or at room temperature, you can eat it on Shabbat, the day when you're not allowed to cook anything if you're an observant Jew. Its popularity is the main reason I decided to make it - if I want to learn to make some authentic Israeli food, part of authenticity means that Israelis eat the stuff, and if it's popular, that means more people eat it, and thus it's more authentic, right? The other reason I wanted to make this is because it's sort of sweet, and I don't have a lot of experience making sweet foods that aren't desserts. My matboucha is cobbled together from these three recipes. Thanks Google! The first step is to roast three green peppers in my oven, then peel the charred skin off. I roasted them on a baking sheet with tin foil, then transfered them to a plastic bag to steam for a while so that removing the skin would be easy. I used chopsticks to transfer them to the plastic bag because I am hip and cosmopolitan. I also use the chopsticks to eat Chinese takeout because, hey. Jewish. (Heyooooooooooooooooo)  They went into a pot along with garlic, tomatoes, serrano peppers for some heat, and sugar. In the following picture you can tell I forgot to chop up the green peppers. I noticed that a couple of minutes later, and I just grabbed my kitchen scissors and snipped them up in the pot.  This simmered until mostly reduced, at which point I added olive oil, paprika, salt, and some fresh ground pepper and simmered a bit more.  Pretty easy stuff. I haven't added sugar to a non-dessert in... longer than I can remember so I was excited to see how it turned out. I added a bit more than one teaspoon and that was sweet enough for my palate. סחוג - Skhug/Zug/Zhuk/Whatever Zug (not to be confused with zug zug) means "ground" in Yemeni, according to some random Internet site. Zug is also also known as חריף, which just means "spicy." So you can start to maybe guess what it is. Zug is two broad kinds of spicy sauces that the Yemenite Jews brought with them when they came to Israel. (See! I told you that remembering the magic carpet ride would be important!) Apparently it has become quite a popular condiment in Israel, similar to Cock Sauce or Angry Lady Sauce in America. So because it's popular, because I love spicy stuff, and because it meets my other criterion by being from a unique culinary heritage, zug is my next choice for something to make. Zug comes in two broad flavors: green and red. I decided to make green. Here's a recipe for the red stuff if you're curious. There are a number of different recipes for green zug online, presumably because there's no right answer. I went with something broadly similar to this recipe which is largely the same as the recipe in this article from Gourmet (pdf). The spices are cardamom, cumin, peppercorns, and salt:  I ground them up and added a bunch of jalapeños and a bunch of garlic.  Then blend into a dip.  Then this happened: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqbTHwknMZk And that is zug. חילבה - Hilbeh For broadly the same reasons that I wanted to make zug, I wanted to also make hilbeh. Hilbeh is a second Yemeni sauce, although instead of being hot like zug, it's sort of bitter, a result of its main ingredient, fenugreek. Fenugreek is a really unique flavor, and just like I made matboucha because I wanted to get more practice making sweet foods, I think it would be good to make something bitter. I don't really use a lot of bitter ingredients in food I regularly make, so an entire sauce that's mostly bitter is something I'd like to learn to love. Hilbeh has almost as many variations as zug from what I can tell. After checking out a number of different recipes I went with the one in the Gourmet article I linked above. Step one is to soak some fenugreek for a while:  Next up, process it with a bunch of cilantro and some water:  Until it's blended:  At which point you beat it, adding in cold water as you go. At the end, add in some zug, some lemon juice, and some salt, then beat more.  Weeeeee and it's done. זעתר - Za'atar Um. Za'atar means "thyme" or perhaps "spice" in Arabic. (Or it doesn't.) Wikipedia (and more or less everyone else) says that za'atar is a spice mix that's popular in the Middle East, including Israel. People put it on pizza. People put it in yogurt. People eat it on bread for breakfast or in a sandwich or on pita with hummus and so on. It goes on everything! So of course I want to make some za'atar for my pita and hummus. This is where the rabbit hole starts. If you read that Wikipedia article you'll see that it describes za'atar as "a generic name for a family of related Middle Eastern herbs from the genera Origanum (Oregano), Calamintha (Basil thyme), Thymus (typically Thymus vulgaris, i.e., Thyme), and Satureja (Savory). The name za'atar alone most properly applies to Origanum syriacum. It is also the name for a condiment made from the dried herb(s), mixed with sesame seeds, dried sumac, and often salt, as well as other spices." So, now, imagine you want to make za'atar. What are you going to make it out of? Well, About.com has a recipe that looks good. So does Epicurious although they're completely different recipes. 101 Cookbooks weighs in with her recipe, which is just thyme + sumac basically. Food.com has the same idea but they think savory is interchangeable with the thyme, which is either helpful or unhelpful depending on your perspective. Heine, in Food Culture in the Near East, Middle East, and North Africa, says that it's a "dry spice mixture made mostly of thyme and wild marjoram, sesame seeds, and sumac" (Heine 169). Confusion would be warranted at this point. self similarity asked for help back in 2010 after tinkering with the various recipes available, but to no avail. (CloseFriend asked for help more recently.) Squashy Nipples suggests that za'atar is "mostly sumac" which is something I think I can respectfully disagree with even at this early point. Sumac is red and za'atar is green. Still on our very own forums, we can narrow things down a bit: while The Macaroni claims that "za'atar is a bit of minty-ish herb... Oregano, mint, thyme, or basil could all work. In the Middle East they use weird herbs that don't have English names, apparently including one that's actually called za'atar." Psychobabble concurs, saying that "while za'atar does generally mean 'thyme' its actually a different herb, I believe a member of the hyssop family." Finally and unhelpfully, rasser says it's made from "wild thyme" and that it makes a bad infused vodka while mindphlux says that za'atar is "herbs from the genera Origanum, Calamintha, Thymus, and Satureja" although mindphlux was copying and pasting some random source as a joke so that's hardly relevant. So... that's... still confusing. But I guess we have a bit of a direction to go - it sounds like it's some magical funky Middle Eastern herb. Let's dig deeper. TO THE INTERNET. Alia Yunis, travel writer, quotes Jihad Noun (that's Arabic for "Holy War Part of Speech") an "expert on medicinal and aromatic Lebanese plant species" which means either 'actual expert' or 'someone who managed to fool a travel writer.' Holy War says that "there are 22 herb species referred to as za'tar in the region. It is the essential oils they have in common. They all come from the same Lamiaceae, or mint, family, which includes savory, oregano and thyme." Thus, za'atar mixtures vary from person to person and region to region. But za'atar also refers to some specific plant, says our travel writer, inexplicably. This is the same conclusion reached by this random blogger. Serious Eats thinks that za'atar is made from stuff like oregano and thyme today, whereas in the past it was made from either wild hyssop or "the eponymous herb za'atar" which would help if za'atar weren't a name for every loving herb including perhaps that wild hyssop. Another random blogger has a combined theory of za'atar, sort of: "za’atar is all of these things. There is a bush that grows in the deserts of Israel known as za’atar. The bush is most likely a member of the hyssop family, though some call it savory or wild oregano." So za'atar is hyssop or not. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs chimes in, straight up saying za'atar is hyssop and not even pretending like anyone would ever be confused about it. Za'atar/hyssop is so popular, in fact, that "over-harvesting in modern times... has nearly denuded Israel of wild zaatar. As a result, the plant was declared a protected species in 1977." That's not how some other people tell it, though: quote:According to my friend Abû 'Alî, a Birzeit University professor, gathering wild za'tar was banned because a single Israeli settler in the West Bank had started to grow thyme as a commercial crop. The law was passed, word had it, to limit Arab competition with the settler's herbal enterprise. Given past experience, Palestinians were more inclined to credit this explanation than any ecological justification propounded by state agencies. Benvenisti asserts that 'there is genuine concern' in Israeli circles for za'tar's 'ecological survival,' but adds that the real purpose of the ban is to send this message to Palestinians: because you despoil the land and have no feelings for it, you have no rights to it. Since Israelis do care for it, they are its rightful owners. (Swedenburg 59, quoting Benvenisti 24)  Moving slightly up the chain of expertise, someone with a master's degree in creative nonfiction form Johns Hopkins University says that real za'atar "can be traced all the way back to the Bible, where it is call eizov (often translated as hyssop, though biblical hyssop was something different from the plant that today we call hyssop)." So... no hyssop? Wikibooks thinks that za'atar is "Syrian hyssop," whatever that is. Either that sentiment is less than universal or Syrian hyssop is just a word for some kind of thyme: Nabhan reports that za'atar is "the blend based on wild mountain thyme that [his] Lebanese kin collect in the hills above the Bekáa Valley" (Nabhan 89-90). But Ben-Ze'ev sees nothing wrong with translating za'atar as "hyssop" even though when he speaks to a Palestinian man who is talking about za'atar, the man says that "he had uprooted the thyme plant from the land of his village of origin and replanted it in his garden" (Ben-Ze'ev 149). How it makes sense for Ben-Ze'ev to speak to a person who talks about uprooting their thyme plant and then on the same page refer to that plant as hyssop is beyond me, unless Ben-Ze'ev thinks they are one and the same. What is hyssop? What is za'atar? Is za'atar hyssop? Is hyssop thyme? Is thyme za'atar? Is Syrian hyssop hyssop? Is Syrian hyssop thyme? Is Syrian hyssop za'atar?  Allen equates za'atar with "Bible hyssop" and warns us that "Bible hyssop should not be confused with true hyssop, Hyssopus officinalis, or any of the other herbs that include "hyssop" in their names" (Allen 237). So... maybe the answer lies in the Bible. Figure out what Biblical hyssop is, and we've got za'atar, maybe. I told you the Old Testament (Tanakh) would be relevant later! Can we figure out what za'atar is by reading the religious text of my people? To Exodus 12:22! "Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in blood that is in the basin," and so on and so forth, says God, who is about to kill a shitton of innocent children. At least, my translation says hyssop. Is this hyssop za'atar? Isser isn't sure: quote:For the word 'ezob in Ex. 12.22 (=hyssop), Levi reads in Dusis' text sa'tar. Maimonides on M. Neg. 14.5 translates 'ezob by the Arabic sa'tar ("thyme, origan") as does Saadiah in his Arabic Pentateuch. Ibn. Ezra on Ex. 12.22 comments that 'ezob is the Arabic sa'tar, or, as it is known in the language of idolators, "oregano"! Thus the example chosen by the Samaritan chronicles seems poor, certainly coming from the Islamic period and not from the original Dusis text. (Isser 99) (I'm not even clear on what Biblical hyssop is: as this helpful site points out we don't really know what plant the Bible means when we translate 'ezob as hyssop...)  But in any case, the Tanakh wasn't any goddamn help with my issue, which is pretty much par for the course (one reason why I'm an atheist, I guess). Maybe we can find a more helpful source. Manniche is instructive here. In her book An Ancient Egyptian Herbal she says that za'atar is the modern Arabic word for whatever species of thyme that ancient people had in mind when they talked about some kind of thyme. Why? Well: quote:Although the ancient name for thyme has not yet been proven with absolute certainty, there is evidence of the plant having been known, if not grown, in Egypt. Dioscorides says that the Egyptians called a variety of the plant merouopyos (III.45). This has been identified as T. sibthorpii, the Greek ἕρπυλος. Remains of T. spicata, according to Dioscorides called saem by the Egyptians (III.30) were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. (150) (I don't think I like Manniche's scholarship: she later says that "thyme honey from the slopes of Hymettos hills in Greece is justly famous" but she gives no citation for her claim that it is justly famous (Manniche 150). Cite your debatable claims  )But Manniche has given us a lead. This Dioscorides chap sounds like someone to pursue. It turns out Pedanius Dioscorides was a Greek physician who wrote a sweet book about herbs and poo poo. And it's online and translated into English. So let's do this poo poo! Dioscorides knows of two kinds of hyssop, "one mountainous, the other grown in gardens" (III.30). One of these might be Biblical hyssop. Is it za'atar? It looks like it's at least not thyme - Dioscorides identifies lots of kinds of thyme, including Thumos (III.44), Thumbra (III.45), Erpullus, and Erupullus Zogis (III.46). Unfortunately, as a doctor rather than a chef, he doesn't really tell us what they taste like, but it sounds like some or all are cultivated for culinary use and not just medicinal use. He says that Thumbra, for example, is "more effective for meat" in its cultivated form than in its wild form (III.45). But there's nothing here to suggest that za'atar is anything specific. (Certainly nothing to support, say, Manniche's identification of za'atar with thyme. And it looks like Maimonides might've been translating out of his rear end too.) From this and from some other stuff I've read that I won't bother to cite, here's where I'm at (at least until I learn Arabic, and even then I don't think that would clear it up). I think "za'atar" has referred to a number of different plants/spices for basically as long as the word has been around. It's clear that za'atar mixes vary not just from region to region but even from family to family in some cases (this woman describes how, growing up in Beirut, her mother and her aunts would bring their own za'atar to the bakery to put on bread). The variation at least between regions is much more than just ratios: people are using different herbs. The magical hyssop, maybe Syrian hyssop and maybe even Biblical hyssop, the hyssop that Israel has restricted collection of and the hyssop that many people claim is real za'atar, is (or was) perhaps the most popular choice for lots of people making za'atar, at least in certain regions, in the past. The fact that other people make za'atar with other plants sometimes is interpreted as a "second best" option in lieu of the hyssop, but clearly some people seem to think it's fine to call a spice mix "za'atar" even if hyssop was never in the offing, so to speak. So I think some people are being overly cagey about what za'atar is - they think their za'atar is the real za'atar and that other za'atars are imitation za'atars. This would not be surprising. There is a lot of confusion out there, and between food snobs who think they are always right and people with their heart in the right place who think they can clear up the confusion by talking about their za'atar which they know is authentic, we get a bit of a clusterfuck. So, there is no true za'atar. There are many za'atars, not just in terms of ratios of herbs but even in terms of what herbs get in there in the first place. It's always up in the air. All za'atar is za'atar, but no za'atar is the za'atar. Adding to the mystique, Kaufman notes that there are some untranslated words on a few clay tablets we have from Babylonian times which are recipes for things like pigeon stew and wonders whether a spice mix like za'atar is one of these untranslated words (Kaufman 29-30). I'm going to say that it doesn't matter - whatever the Babylonians used as za'atar, we're never going to know, because any given za'atar has a good claim to being a specific za'atar of the past. So when Maimonides translates the Biblical hyssop as za'atar, we don't learn what za'atar is, we just learn that whatever plant he has in mind for the Biblical hyssop is a plant people made za'atar out of. And since people seem to have made za'atar out of like 20 different plants, this doesn't narrow things down much. Finally, I would like to point out that poor little Cavendish, in his broad textbook Peoples of Western Asia, writes that za'atar is one of a number of "traditional Omani beverages" (Cavendish 309). This is approximately as correct as saying that 'cheese' is 'the stuff that comes out of a jar of Cheez Whiz.' Za'atar is not just an Omani beverage. Za'atar contains multitudes. Cavendish did not do enough research to realize this. I think it is safe to say that I am no longer in that position. One other thing I learned from this whole experience is that Wikipedia sucks for scholarly work, even light scholarly work like I've been doing here. 90% of my citations are from things Wikipedia cites (so if this were a research paper, you would give me a lovely grade), but in a lot of cases Wikipedia was somewhat wrong about what the source said, or at least Wikipedia's citation was a mischaracterization. It's good to know that when I tell my students not to use Wikipedia for anything serious, I'm right. Also, if you have any free time, the Wikipedia talk page for za'atar is pretty funny. Guess how long it takes for things to devolve into political arguments about Israel vs. the Arab world? Still. What the gently caress do I do for the za'atar I want to put on my pita bread? Well obviously I just buy a bag of it from the local Middle Eastern marketplace.   The only herb in the ingredients list is "thyme" but this doesn't taste like any thyme I've ever tasted, so whatever the gently caress I bought, I'm guessing it's at least halfway authentic. Holy gently caress Tycho Did You Need to Write a Book I Just Want to Know About the Food Yeah sorry. Got sidetracked. I hope that was entertaining for the two people who read it, one of whom was me. Let's take a look at what we've got.  For starters, pita bread, spread with olive oil and za'atar and baked for a few minutes in the oven, and also plain, with three dips: hummus, zug, and hilbeh. The hummus has a drizzle of olive oil, some parsley, lemon zest, and some sumac (אוג I think). Sumac is a spice that's in many za'atar mixes. It's made from some berry and it tastes really interesting - it's good on hummus, so... I put some on the hummus... (Also, I stuck some onions + parsley on the hilbeh and the zug as a garnish.) How does it taste? The pita is excellent. It is the best pita bread I have ever eaten. Most pita sold in stores tastes like cardboard, and even when I've had the fresh stuff it hasn't been as good as this. Rolling out flatbread isn't my favorite thing in the world but there is no question in my mind that if I ever need pita I will not hesitate to just whip up a batch. The pita toasted with za'atar is also stupendous. This za'atar does not taste like thyme. So whether it's some special variety of thyme I don't normally eat, or whether thyme tastes different when mixed with sumac and stuff, or what, it definitely tastes great. So, this is a snack I would totally recommend if you find some way to make za'atar work for you. If you live in San Diego, Balboa International Market in Clairemont sells that big bag of za'atar for $3.59. The hummus is too good for words, almost. It's the best hummus I've ever had, and this includes the hummus an Israeli friend of mine makes. Probably a lot of what is going on is that I get to control the taste and texture 100% when I make it, so it tastes like what I want with the consistency that I want. In any case, it's brilliant, especially with the sumac. As for making it in the future, I'm not sure I want to bother with tahini - it takes a while in the food processor to grind up. Maybe I'll buy commercial tahini but still make my own hummus. There's no way I'm ever buying hummus again, that's for sure. Did I need to peel the chickpeas? It's hard to deny that the texture is silky smooth and that this is pretty neat. I think next time I might try making it without peeling the chickpeas and see whether it makes much of a difference. I suspect it does, but I'll see. The hilbeh is really neat. The taste is sort of what you'd expect: fenugreek plus cilantro, with undercurrents of the spicy zug. It's an interesting sauce that I'd have no problem using as a dip for vegetables, breads, and so on. It would be neat to put out at a party with chips and vegetables and pita bread. You'd pretty quickly find out which of your friends like fenugreek, or strange tastes in general. The zug is delicious. It's spicy and the cardamom is a great flavor with the massive amounts of garlic. Since it's so ridiculously easy to make, it'll slot right into my hot sauce repertoire. Also, carrots. Those were to dip in the sauces too. Now the main course.  The falafel has been garnished with hummus, cucumber, tomato, and pickle. The pickle is a salty pickle I got at the local Middle Eastern store where I bought my sumac and my za'atar. I was staring at their imposing shelf of pickles and then the guy next to me indicated a jar and said "if you're looking for pickles, these are good." I didn't say much in return - I was wondering if he was some sort of covert pickle salesman. Then he said "I eat a lot of pickles. If you want more sour pickles, these ones are the best," indicating a can from different brand. So at that point I trusted him, said thank you, and bought the salty pickles (salty being better for sandwiches). And he was right! Thanks to the dude who eats a ton of pickles, I was guided towards a great sandwich pickle. Straight up they're not as good as classic Kosher dill pickles, but on falafel they're great. So, anyways, the falafel. It's pretty much a perfect falafel. Most falafel tastes more or less the same to me (as long as it's the general chickpea falafel archetype rather than the different fava bean type) and what really separates falafel from each other is texture and specifically dryness. I've had some really dry falafel before, and it was unpleasant. This falafel is fine. It's delicious. I'd make this falafel any time. It's also quite firm - it didn't fall apart at all when I made little patties, and I doubt it would fall apart if I were frying balls of it.  The matboucha and tabbouleh are both great too. I think green onions were the right choice for the tabbouleh - regular onions would've been a little overwhelming. I don't use mint in my cooking at all, really, so having a dish that's somewhat mint based like tabbouleh is a nice change of pace. The matboucha is sweet and delicious. The sugar mellows out the acidity of the tomatoes and the roasted green peppers are really tasty. Sometimes I find roasted peppers to be slimy, but whether it's something I did (maybe roasting them fresh and cooking them right away) or something the matboucha did, the texture here is great. I've found that the matboucha goes great with rice, cold or warm. In conclusion: Israeli foods make my taste buds go  and I'll definitely be cooking this stuff in the future, over and over again.That was kind of offensive. Let's try that again: Israeli food is so awesome, I'm going to make some again faster than Israel is going all  on Palestinian settlements!Okay third try, maybe this time without pissing anyone off: hooray hummus. I think we can all agree to love hummus. Bibliography (Internet sources omitted and Benvenisti ommitted because I can't find the source)
Ben-Ze’ev, E. (2004). The Politics of Taste and Smell: Palestinian Rites of Return. In M. E. Lien & B. Nerlich (Eds.), The Politics of Food. Oxford: Berg. Cavendish, M. (2007). Peoples of Western Asia. New York: Marshall Cavendish. Dioscorides. (2000). De Materia Medica Being an Herbal with Many Other Medicinal Materials. (T. A. Osbaldeston & R. Wood, Trans.). Johannesburg, South Africa: Ibidis Press. Heine, P. (2004). Food Culture in the Near East, Middle East, and North Africa. Westport: Greenwood Press. Isser, S. J. (1976). The Dositheans: A Samaritan Sect in Late Antiquity. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Kaufman, C. (2006). Cooking in Ancient Civilizations. Westport: Greenwood Press. Manniche, L. (1989). An Ancient Egyptian Herbal. Austin: University of Texas Press. Nabhan, G. P. (2004). Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity. Washington: Island Press. Swedenburg, T. (1995). Memories of Revolt: The 1936-1939 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dessert in the Desert Israel has lots of desserts to choose from. This post is starting to rival some novels in length so instead of laboriously listing my options I will cut to the chase. I made... חלבה - Halvah The word "halvah" comes to English via Yiddish (aka via Jews), but if you go far enough back it comes from the Arabic word for "sweet." That's about as specific as you can get about halvah - there are like a million versions of it. The Wikipedia page should give you an idea for all the various cultures that have a halvah and all the various types of halvah. Israeli halvah tends towards the sesame seed (read: tahini) based variety, either because this is what Egypt goes for, or because because it is popular in some of the Eastern European countries that Ashkenazi Jews come from. Actually the most likely answer is probably "both." So this sort of breaks my "no Ashkenazi poo poo" rule but I've never made halvah and like I said, this is from Egypt as much as it's from Eastern Europe, and in any case it's popular in Israel. I know I also said I was vegan but gently caress bees if it means getting in the way of authentic halvah, basically. Sesame seed/tahini halvah is basically tahini + honey. So that's what I'm doing. (I swear to God I cleaned my stove after this. It's so dirty because I figured making all the ICSA stuff might get messy so I left it uncleaned for a while. DO NOT JUDGE ME.) Honey goes into pot:  This is my first time making any candy ever! I'm excited. I'm going for 240 degrees, or "softball stage." When I get there the honey gets all foamy. Whoa! Nobody told me this would happen. They should just call it "poo poo gets foamy" stage. That's a more obvious indication than "if you decided to suddenly drop some of your honey into cold water it would form into a ball then flatten if you took it out."  I take it off the heat and beat in tahini and half a teaspoon of homemade vanilla extract.  Then it gets poured into a greased loaf pan to cool a bit. This will go into the fridge to chill for at least 36 hours. Also, check out my feet.  The goal is to get it to form crystals or something while it cools to give it a somewhat flaky texture. Lots of people put nuts in their halvah but I say nuts to that. I'm not a fan of whole nuts or nut shards in my desserts. That's just how I roll. Oh look it's 36 hours later.  It turned out okay I guess. I don't think my fridge gets cold enough. It tastes right (it's darker than most other Jewish halvah because my tahini is very dark) but it's definitely lacking in firmness/definition (being in Southern California, where it's somewhat warm, also isn't helping it out much). I've stuck a piece in the freezer - we'll see if anything neat happens to it. So, overall, it tastes delicious but I'm not 100% satisfied. I do have a bunch of tahini and honey left over though so I'll probably try making it again to see if maybe heating the honey a bit more will help or cooling it in the freezer right away will do anything.
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| # ? Feb 18, 2013 22:54 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 08:02 |
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That was one of the most interesting Goons with Spoons posts I have ever read. Well done. Also, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTCmKmofaKA is a also pretty good soundtrack to your post.
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| # ? Feb 18, 2013 23:18 |
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Holy gently caress. This is a good post 
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 00:12 |
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You need to do a lot more of these researched food posts. This was outstanding, and I totally learned poo poo im going to spout at my next dinner party like I did all the work.
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 10:39 |
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Dude... just.. Post more!!
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 17:50 |
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That zug looks lethal. I used 2 cloves of garlic blended in chimichurri once and it blew my mouth off. I'd eat all of that food which is good since I'm sort of Jewish
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 19:37 |
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Good post. Tahini is a bullshit spelling/pronunciation though, don't do that
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 19:43 |
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erezaka posted:Good post. Why is that? In any case that's how people will find it mostly in their local supermarket outside the middle east. In any case yeah I wouldn't bother making your own, find some premade. Tehina really is one of those things that doesn't improve a heck of a lot making it yourself. This was a fantastic entry and post, thank you TychoCelchuu! NLJP fucked around with this message at Feb 19, 2013 around 20:05 |
| # ? Feb 19, 2013 19:57 |
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Amazing! Thanks for an awesome post. Your food looked delicious.
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| # ? Feb 19, 2013 23:36 |
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Hopefully you're not too Jewish to take the bacon when you win.
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| # ? Feb 20, 2013 01:02 |
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 good poster spotted
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| # ? Feb 20, 2013 03:31 |
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chickencheese
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Gawain The Blind posted:You need to do a lot more of these researched food posts. This was outstanding, and I totally learned poo poo im going to spout at my next dinner party like I did all the work.  ~~food mysteries~~ or something else that I could research like a real human being rather than an undergraduate, I'd totally love to redeem myself. But part of why I dove into za'atar is because I had never come across anything quite as confusing, so right now consider the suggestion box open but empty!
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| # ? Feb 20, 2013 07:30 |
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NLJP posted:Why is that? In any case that's how people will find it mostly in their local supermarket outside the middle east. I've just always pronounced it tchina (ch as in achtung) and naturally assumed that everyone else must be pronouncing it wrong. Googled it and apparently tachina is the proper Arabic pronunciation, so I definitely think the i on the end that I always see is some weird Americanism. Agree though, making it at home is not really worth the effort.
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| # ? Feb 21, 2013 02:50 |
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This thread is amazing, and your food looks awesome. You did a great job in the whole spirit of the thing, which was to go elbow-deep into a cuisine you're not familiar with, and try a bit of everything. Excellent writeup too! I'd eat the hell out of all your food happily. :-) RE: Peeling chickpeas. By the time I've cooked my chickpeas for hummus, I'll have cooked them so well that peeling would be difficult, because they're borderline overcooked. You want them loving /cooked/. dino. fucked around with this message at Feb 21, 2013 around 10:57 |
| # ? Feb 21, 2013 10:52 |
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The secret chick pea trick is baking soda in the soaking and boiling water.
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| # ? Feb 21, 2013 11:54 |
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Update: I also made hummus without peeling the chickpeas first. See if you can guess which is which. The hummus on the left is made with unpeeled chickpeas. The visual difference is noticeable, if you care what your food looks like, but obviously if you don't have the two next to each other, the visual difference is going to be greatly minimzed. The texture difference is noticeable when I eat them with a few seconds of each other, but overall, the difference in smoothness isn't huge. I could probably still tell the difference now that I've done a taste test, but it's really a minimal effect. So, I'd say leave the skins on, because it's less work and they probably have fiber which is good for you or something, unless (A) you really like a smooth texture for your hummus or (B) you want to impress someone who likes really smooth hummus. One thing the peeled version does have going for it is consistency - not only is it smoother, it's of a less variegated consistency. So that's... interesting I guess. Basically, the difference in texture between the two is minimal, but the texture of the peeled chickpea hummus is consistent in a way that the unpeeled chickpea hummus texture isn't. I'm not sure if consistency of texture is just texture and now I sound like I'm talking out of my rear end. Really, if you're curious, just try it. There's a difference, minimal as it is, and experimenting is fun!
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| # ? Feb 24, 2013 05:43 |
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I'm crazy about smooth hummus. I didn't have dried chickpeas last time I made a batch though, and didn't have time to peel my canned ones. I got good results by rinsing my canned chickpeas several times, then doing the boiling and bakingsoda trick anyways for like 20-30 minutes. put them in a blender with some of the reserved cooking water, and continued recipe as normal. probably blended mine ~10mins. while I can tell a huge difference normally between peeled/unpeeled (eg, spotting the offender in the picture above was night and day), the results I got with said steps were very good, a huge improvement over just using canned chickpeas and blending a lot. would recommend.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 05:33 |
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mindphlux posted:I'm crazy about smooth hummus. I didn't have dried chickpeas last time I made a batch though, and didn't have time to peel my canned ones. I got good results by rinsing my canned chickpeas several times, then doing the boiling and bakingsoda trick anyways for like 20-30 minutes. put them in a blender with some of the reserved cooking water, and continued recipe as normal. probably blended mine ~10mins. Yeah, I definitely add the baking soda to my pressure cooker when I'm doing chickpeas for hummus. I sat and peeled them one night, and I can't tell the difference between peeling and dissolving them. Even if I end up using canned, I put them in the pc for a bit since they're never sufficiently cooked.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 15:11 |
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mediaphage posted:Yeah, I definitely add the baking soda to my pressure cooker when I'm doing chickpeas for hummus. I sat and peeled them one night, and I can't tell the difference between peeling and dissolving them. Even if I end up using canned, I put them in the pc for a bit since they're never sufficiently cooked. How much bicarb? Like a 1/2 tsp for 1 lb of hummus? I do like using tinned chickpeas for the oven roasted jobbie, because they're firm enough not to get squidgy.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 15:40 |
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dino. posted:How much bicarb? Like a 1/2 tsp for 1 lb of hummus? I don't really measure but that sounds about right.
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| # ? Feb 27, 2013 17:39 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 08:02 |
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Hell of an entry! I made my own za'taar last month and I find it to be a nice addition to a lot of things. I was not aware of the myriad meanings of the term, though! Nor most of the other things posted in the OP!
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| # ? Mar 5, 2013 04:07 |
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