Read All About It: Israel's Emerging Food Scene

Now that Jerusalem has become one of the best selling cookbooks in recent years, it may be time to look at it in context. The recipes are wonderful, the photographs are mouthwatering, the narrative is compelling and democratic. Beyond food, the book has touched something deeper in all of us. Jerusalem, home to more than 60 religious and ethnic communities, is a lodestar for spirituality, sharing and healing, along with a full measure of continuing strife. So beyond the book's virtues of history combined with recipes, unusual ingredients and flavors, it allows us to hold in our hands a gastronomic overlay to the region's millennial conflicts, through a universal experience that connotes peace and above all, pleasure. I had the rare opportunity last year to interview authors Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, the former is Israeli, the latter Palestinian, when they came to New York on a book tour. We three sat on the bima in a huge Park Slope synagogue, and gazed upon hundreds of fans who came to listen to their stories and then hungered for more. It was clear to all of us assembled there that their Jerusalem penetrated into a realm far deeper than cooking. The cuisine that the authors express speaks to ancient realities and present truths: The kitchen table knows no boundaries; and no wall, however high and long, can ever be so impermeable to prevent the vapors of the collective culinary consciousness waft through.

Just this weekend, I had pleasure of a parallel experience. This time, the talented and ebullient chef, Einat Admony, owner of New York City restaurants Balaboosta, Taim and Bar Bolonat, expressed the food of another diaspora. Vivid dishes -- cooked and served in her Brooklyn loft to a handful of journalists and friends - blended the recipes of her native Iran with Arabic verve, and Israeli cunning. Pomegranate mimosas, spicy Yemenite s'chug, brown-boiled eggs, delectable fried eggplant, osovo (an overnight peasant dish with myriad variations - ours included rice and marrow bones), kubaneh (a slow-cooked Yemenite bread), and malabi (a traditional milk custard) with red fruit conserve for dessert made an emphatically evocative case for "new Israeli cuisine." Best of all, the recipes are easily found in Ms. Admony's beautiful new book Balaboosta published this week by Artisan.

If asked who I'd have come to a last dinner, Yotam, Sami and Einat would certainly be among my guests. But so too would be the five journalists who graced the stage of the Museum of Jewish Heritage on October 6th for an event entitled "Frothed Milk and Truffled Honey." It was a nod to the ebullient creativity that's fermenting in the kitchens of Israel's best chefs. Janna Gur, food writer and publisher of Israel's most prestigious culinary magazine Al Hashulchan, said that the best word to describe the new Israeli cuisine is "fresh." Fresh referring to the abundance of Israel's technicolor produce, fresh referring to the culture's rampant innovation, and fresh also referring to the sassy ingenuity with which chefs there have absorbed culinary influences from the entire region and integrated them into a new, electrifying cuisine.

In 1996, I was one of four "Women Chefs for Peace" on a mission to Israel. Upon my return I wrote an article for the New York Times called "A Region's Taste Commingles in Israel." I predicted then that it was the trend to watch. And now, it's here.

The Gaza Kitchen

It was with an open mind and a touch of sadness that I read the riveting, and sometimes provocative, new cookbook, The Gaza Kitchen, written by Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt. I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. El-Haddad at her book party launch last month in New York at the sublime restaurant ilili - whose Lebanese cuisine is a distant cousin to the flavors, aromas, and politics found in the Gazan kitchen. Ms. El-Haddad, who is a social activist, blogger and author of Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything In Between, felt like an old friend. After all, there was a time, long ago, when it was possible for Jews to have Palestinian friendships in the Old City of Jerusalem and share meals, and the culinary history, which has existed between us for thousands of years. Now there is a wall, both literal and metaphoric, that shields us from the realities of everyday existence in Gaza, where home kitchens are prey to the exigencies of conflict and deprivation: sporadic electricity, unaffordable ingredients that were once kitchen staples, and the rationing of food and fuel. While I know the food of Israel well, having served as the unofficial spokesperson for Israel's food and wine industry for years, and also as one of a delegation of "Four Women Chefs for Peace" on a culinary mission to Israel in 1996, I was fascinated to learn about the cuisine of Gaza, a tiny strip of land (25 miles long and 2-1/2 to 5 miles wide) sandwiched between the desert and the sea. What immediately jumped out was the presence of fresh dill and dried dill seed, the use of fiery hot chilies, and a totally new ingredient to me "red tahina."

Red tahina, made from roasted sesame seeds, is to Gaza what pesto is to Genoa. It is virtually impossible to get it anywhere and I have asked a friend from Israel to try to find some and bring it to me when she comes to New York at the end of the month. How to use it if you can't find it? The authors suggest adding a bit of dark sesame oil to the more familiar blond tahina to approximate the taste in several of the book's recipes.

The cuisine of Gaza is Palestinian (home to 2 million people) "with its own sense of regional diversity," according to author and historian, Nancy Harmon Jenkins, who wrote the forward to the book. In Gaza, she points out, stuffed grape leaves are uniquely flavored with allspice, cardamom, nutmeg and black pepper, and that chopped chilies, both red and green, and verdant fresh dill make Gazan falafel both personal and unusual.

Food there, no less than here, is a passionate subject. The cooks at home are always women while the cooks in restaurants and outdoor stalls are always men. But it is the zibdiya that unites them in the preparation of their lusty cuisine. According to the authors, "a zibdiya is the most precious kitchen item in every household in Gaza, rich or poor." It is simply a heavy unglazed clay bowl accompanied by a lemonwood pestle used for mashing, crushing, pounding and grinding. Made from the rich red clay of Gaza, in larger forms they are also used as cooking vessels.

Their cuisine may lie at the intersection of history, geography and economy, but in The Gaza Kitchen, one is made acutely aware of how geo-political struggles find themselves revealed in a single dish. It's hard not to swoon over the description of the "signature" dish of Gaza called sumagiyya, a sumac-enhanced meat stew cooked with green chard, chickpeas, dill, chilies, and red tahina, or not to be curious about fattit ajir, a spicy roasted watermelon salad tossed with tomatoes, torn bits of tasted Arab bread, and a lashing of hot chilies and yes, fresh dill. It is a repertoire of dishes that feel like a secret...but no longer.

Now only if there was a recipe for peace. One can always hope.

A Wild & Wonderful Israeli Dinner

Erez Komarovksy has it all: He revolutionized the food of Israel with his catering company "The Futurist Kitchen" (based on the avant-garde cookbook of the Italian writer F. T. Marinetti) and emboldened Israel's "bread culture" with the country's first sour dough bakery.  He studied at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, learned at the knee of a Kaiseki master in Japan, and lived in San Francisco for five years during the heyday of the California cuisine "movement."  Although influenced by the world's tapestry of cooking, including that of his Polish mother (whose chicken soup was the basis of an extraordinary potage he served at the Beard House -- more about that later), Erez redefined the meaning of Israeli food at the restaurant he opened adjacent to his first bread shop "Lehem Erez."  It was at about this time that I wrote an article for the New York Times about the beginning of this "new cuisine" or Israel's own burgeoning culinary movement.  I affectionately called it Med-Rim cooking and later wrote about Cuisine Baladi -- the cooking of the land (the culinary equivalent, as I see it, of "terroir."  A word the wine industry uses to describe the air, soil, typography and micro-environment which influences the qualities of a wine.)

Today, Erez lives and breathes this notion.  After 10 years at his bakery, he moved to the upper Galilee, to a village overlooking olive groves near the Lebanese border.  There he established the Galilee Cooking School where his improvisational classes are based on foraging in the hills, plucking vegetables from his organic garden, using olive oil from the surrounding villages and cooking in the personal, intimate setting of his home.  (As I'm writing this I am already dreaming of going!)  His food is inspired by indigenous ingredients and local traditions -- Muslim, Druze and Christian, as well as the Jewish traditions that inform Israel's melting pot.  Erez's pot is filled with the wild and wonderful -- wild asparagus, wild mushrooms, and Biblical hyssop which also grows in the wild.

At his sold-out dinner at the James Beard House last Saturday, guests were able to experience Erez's personal cuisine and taste the deeply satisfying flavors of Israel -- both ancient and modern.  "A Very Israeli Soup" as the menu stated was filled with artichokes, lima beans, and Jerusalem artichokes floating in a pool of rich chicken broth (yes, that of his Polish mother -- "you take a chicken," Erez said, "take five carrots, onions....) was simply divine.  As was the stuffed spelt challah that was eaten within moments, an exuberant local lamb dish, charred to perfection, and served with Biblical wheat (freekeh).  A lovely Iraqi onion with lamb and tamarind stuffing, baby peppers brought from Israel, a wonderful garnet fish tartare inked by beet juice, fresh goat ricotta served with apricots and air-dried-then-marinated olives.

Dessert shone with radical simplicity-- with "Red Fruits &  Almond Milk"  and a horn of plenty -- his "Grandmother's Yeast Cake."  All of this washed down with intelligently-paired wines from the award-winning Yarden vineyards of Israel -- from an off-dry Gewruztraminer to a sweet Gerwurz to accompany the cake -- in between? Sauvignon blanc, merlot, and syrah.

It's not easy to orchestrate such a meal in the small kitchen at the Beard House.  I know.  I have cooked three dinners there in my day.  So Erez and his staff did their prep at the wonderful Israeli-inspired restaurant, Taboon, located on 10th avenue and 51st Street.  At Taboon one can also sample the depth's of Israel's culinary awakening.

I will see you there.  At Matat, Chef Erez's cooking school in the Galilee, or one Monday night at Taboon, for food, music and a taste of Israel.