Tapenade

I have to agree with most of what Maher wrote here, especially his detailed explanation of the distinction between the dried herb zaatar and the ready-made mixture that one buys in shops and supermarkets. Unfortunately, at least here in Israel, some manufacturers do include parsley in order to increase the bulk very inexpensively: I can't say I have seen chick-pea flour yet, but I'll keep my eyes open now! Maher is definitely right to say that the best stuff is what is collected from the hillsides and sold by the side of the road. But here, zaatar is a protected plant and so it is difficult to come by in this way. Incidentally, we just tried a new use for zaatar at home the other day: I suggested that my other half mix a little zaatar to the flour coating in which we deep-fried a batch of red mullet (barbounia) fillets. It was a great success, although I think we could have added a little more zaatar. We've also done this in the past with fresh thyme, oregano and chives mixed into the flour (or matza mea, which is even better).

First of all, I don't know who says that Yaffo has the best food in the Middle East, except perhaps for some particularly chauvinistic Yaffo residents -- and I've lived in Israel (including Yaffo) for 28 years now. There are certainly some good restaurants in Yaffo, but I wouldn't say they are any better than a lot of other restaurants in Israel (as for the rest of the Middle East, I only have experience of food in Egypt and Jordan, and a little bit of south Lebanon). I've certainly encountered pre-packaged zaatar that includes citric acid, presumably to add sourness to the sumac (although not very often); but I've never seen pre-packaged zaatar that includes parsley. Typically, stuff you buy at the supermarket includes the zaatar itself (technically, it's hyssop in English), sesame seeds, sumac and a little olive oil. At one foodie heaven where I sometimes shop in Ra'anana, they also sell bulk zaatar with added garlic. However, it's also worth pointing out that there is (usually) a difference between pre-packaged supermarket zaatar and the stuff you buy in market stalls, which tends to be the pure herb. In Amman, for example, I bought a biggish bag of zaatar that was pure dried hyssop with no additives. As far as sumac is concerned, I've bought it in bulk at the supermarket, and it is the real thing without additives (the only additive that wouldn't change the colour significantly is parika, but it would change the taste noticeably).

Well, the fish-and-chip place that Swisskaese referred to in her post, which is in West Hampstead, uses pure vegetable oil and a matza meal coating on the fish, and it was among the best deep fried fish I've ever eaten, to say nothing of the huge portions of fish (halibut for me, haddock for her). The truth is that we wouldn't eat fish fried in beef fat anyway, since we both keep kosher, but I don't recall from my pre-kosher days that the fried fish I had in many a chippy around England -- and some of them were definitely using animal fat rather than oil -- was as good as what we had in this place.

I've made several fruit salads with kiwi: two favorites are fresh strawberries, halved or quartered (depending on size) and sliced kiwi, to which you can also add some sliced carambola (starfruit); and a salad of fresh melon chunks or balls, kiwi as above, fresh figs cut into eighths, fresh mango and fresh nectarine; preferably with some liqueur on top and a few mint leaves. I've also had wonderful fresh kiwi and pineapple juice at juice bars here. Although both fruits are fairly tart, they mix really well.

What Swisskaese didn't write is that while I was sick as a dog and eating plain rice, she ate up all the beautiful green asparagus, right in front of me, with the sadistic look of pleasure on her face. And this was after I'd been planning a surprise birthday dinner that I was too ill to even think about making.

That's more or less what I do, except that I do eat halal meat, at least if I'm in a Muslim country. After all, Islam borrowed a great deal of its laws and customs from Judaism. a very good plan ... many people who are Jewish eat only fish and/or dairy items outside their homes .. they are sometimes referred to as "Metrodox" ... they just don't eat meat out ... I am married to one ... my friend, Binyamin Cohen, explains it here ←

I think this business of only drinking kosher wine, to say nothing of only cooking with it, is absurd, and is based on rules that originate much later than the main laws of kashrut and are not found in the Torah. I've kept kosher for most of my adult life, but nothing will stop me from drinking wines of whatever provenance, irrespective of whether they were made and supervised by suitably religious Jews. The risk that I'm going to be forcibly baptised, or otherwise transmogrified into a Christian, as a result of drinking wine otherwised used for the sacrament, or that I am going to marry a non-Jewish women because I've been drinking the wrong wine, is infinitesimal to zero. What is even more ridiculous is that I can drink beer, whiskey, vodka, sliwowitz or tequila with, and made by, non-Jews without the slightest ostensible risk or breach of what some other Jews think is an essential law: it's only wine that is restricted. By the way, I know plenty of other people who keep kosher but also think the kosher wine business is humbug. Apparently, paranoia is no longer a deciding factor in oenological taste. David Having had a kosher kitchen for some 38+ years, I agree .. catfish is never kosher but many fish are fine .. that said, while I like Daniel Rogov's idea about poaching in wine ... however, please know that the wines must be kosher ... and as for kosher? there are many variations on what constitutes kosher ... some more and some less stringent ... ←

And even by Michelle's usual standards, it was totally scrumptious The taste of the herbs and garlic was more pronounced than usual, and I could have sworn that I smelled the oregano growing on the hillside and heard the kids bleating in the dark.

Right, but you're begging the question aren't you? The first amendment does not apply only to journalists, it applies to all US citizens. I'm not a legal expert, so if you could point me to some case law showing that FA applies unequally to different groups of US citizens, I'll promptly eat crow. I was under the impression that it applies to everyone equally. ← We're going to deleted because this has nothing to do with the thread, but the first amendment has different applications for different groups. It covers freedom of religion. But it doesn't mean anyone can start a one-person religion and claim such a religion should enjoy some of the same constitutional guarantees afforded to "established" religions - such as priest/penitent confidentiality. Same as freedom of the press. The journalist must work for a "recognized" form of the media to enjoy certain privileges ie cameras in courtroom, revelation of sources - all of the "slippery slope" stuff. Bottom line, yes virtually every amendment affords certain rights to certain groups: women's sufferage, civil and voting rights, duly elected office holders etc, etc. We are a country of individual equals, but some professions enjoy privileges others do not. And the list of professions is long - doctors, clergy, lawyers, journalists, elected officials etc. But of course with those privileges comes additional responsibilities. To keep this somewhat on topic. A restaurant has the right to refuse anyone from taking photos, but they do not have the right to seize such photos (if taken) unless they can prove harm, slander, liable, copyright infringement etc. As far as posting such pictures on a public forum or a personnal internet blog - stay tuned, that determination will be made in the near future. ← The definition of a journalist is someone who works as one. It is not a profession that requires professional qualifications or recognition in the same way as a lawyer or accountant has to pass exams and be acknowledged by a professional association. Actually, it's rather like being a chef: you're a chef if you make food that's good enough to attract people to your restaurant, not because someone else says so; and you're a journalist if your writing (or broadcasting) is good enough to get you published or broadcast. The White House press office, or whoever, can choose to grant or deny you a press pass based on who you're working for and even how long you've been working for them; but a court would judge whether or not you're entitled to keep your sources confidential according to the factual issues of whether you really work as a journalist or not. I once had my press card cancelled by the Israel Government Press Office, because of completely improper and illegal pressure put on them by my previous employers, AP, but I carried on working as a journalist, and if I had been forced to claim the privileges of a journalist in court, the court would have backed me completely. A restaurant doesn't have the right to seize your photographs in any circumstances, and if it tries to do so by force, then you're entitled to file a criminal complaint for assault and battery, or worse, and to sue for damages. A court can seize your photographs; the police could probably do so if they are considered evidence of a crime; and national security authorities could do so if they were evidence of some national security threat (of course, since the Patriot Act, all these conditions have been eased in favour of the authorities). As for DC Foodie, I say again that he should have stood his ground against the attorney's threats, which were nothing more than intimidation, and published the photos on his log. If they were an accurate representation of the food he was served, there is absolutely nothing Carol G could have done about them. And I hope that her despicable behaviour makes clients go somewhere else, however good the branzino. David

I'd have to disagree with most of what Jackal says: I think he is drawing an over-broad analogy with our common world, that of high-tech business. The whole law of copyright, and design rights which are a derivative of copyright, has to be understood in context. It was created in order to prevent someone from plagiarism and passing off another person's original work as his own. But there is what is called a 'fair use doctrine,' which means that one has a right to quote reasonably (which also means that one has to attribute the quotation) from another person's original work even while the copyright is still extant. If tomorrow I write an article quoting from a play written yesterday, or a political speech, and I do not pretend that it's my own creative work, then there is no breach. Were that not the case, it would not be possible to carry our academic or business research (and, Jackal, in our world, it wouldn't be possible to quote analysts' resports or similar material in our business plans!). It is usually the case that in writing a book, one requests permission to quote extensive passages from other works, and somewhere in the foreword says "passages from Sophocles' 'Antigone' appear by courtesy of the author's estate," or whatever. A plating arrangement could certainly be covered by design right, if the plating arrangement itself were the creative work in question, say in a competition for the most beautiful or original plating of food. Even then, the design right would at most protect the creator from having some other chef, or food designer from having the design copied by another chef or food designer, not from having it captured and even published by a photographer, whether a professional press photographer or an amateur. The same principle of design right would apply to the dish itself: if you create a dish, you have a reasonable right for it not to be copied exactly by a competitor, but you don't have a right to prevent a food reviewer, or even a member of the public, writing "last night at X's restaurant, I ate a dish of venison that my taste buds deduce had been sauted in a light olive oil with chanterelles and shallots before being flambed in calvados and then topped with a light sprinking of grated truffles" (I'm making this up, I haven't considered whether it might be a good dish to make). What is more important in our real-life context is that the chef has an enforceable right not to have someone steal his knowhow in order to compete with him. For example, if I lose my mind and go to work for Gordon Ramsey as a sous-chef, and systematically learn his recipes in order to open my own restaurant and make his dishes as if they were my own, he would have every right to sue me, and he'd probably make mincemeat of me in the courts. However, if I worked for him, learned from him, and then went off to my own restaurant in which I market myself as a former Ramsey underling whose original works have been influenced by Ramsey's genius, he would be stupid to even attempt to sue me. Besides, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. There is also what is called an issue of public interest. If you are the first chef in the world, say, to discover to make a perfectly edible dish out of pebbles from a stream, most courts would apply the public interest argument and say that you can't prevent other chefs, or cooks at home, from finding their own way to cook pebbles, especially if there's a shortage of other raw materials. You certainly could apply for a patent for the proprietary process of softening and cooking them, and might well get it granted, but the patent would probably only cover your process and you could probably only demand royalties from other people who were doing it commercially. Basically, intellectual property rights aren't open-ended: you can patent a particular gene sequence, but that doesn't cover other gene sequences. You can have your original creation "to be or not to be ..." covered by copyright, but you can't prevent other people from quoting you; and you can't use copyright to prevent parody, such as "to pee or not to pee ..." That is not quite right. Although the photograph is the photographers copyright, if it includes substantially a copyrighted work or a design right work then it may be a derivative work (like a translation), and cannot be published without the original IPR owners permission. This occurs, for example, where a picture includes most of an advertising hoarding; in principle (an in practice for most TV and film work) you must get release from the advertiser. I think that (at least in the UK) a plating arrangement would be covered by design right , unless the chef has applied for a Registered Design. If he has served more than 50 similar plates then it no longer counts as artisitc copyright (70+ years from death of the author) but industrial copyright (25 years from first publication) Unless the customer has comissioned the work explicitly, the IPR remains with the chef, even though the customer has purchased the work, just as purchasing a CD or a book does not transfer the copyright Maybe we should sell edible tags with the copyright © or design right (DR) logo for chefs to add to the food at the pass... ←

Well, I am not a lawyer (probably to the relief of my friends), but I have been a journalist on and off for the last 25 years, and I have had other reasons to learn something about the laws of defamation and of privacy. Admittedly, there is some difference between these laws in the USA on the one hand, and the UK (where I grew up) and Israel (where I live) on the other, but it isn't a huge difference. Everyone, as a general rule, is entitled to have his privacy protected from the public eye. So, if Carol Greenwood had, hypothetically, been photographed by DC Foodie having sex in her home, or smoking a joint there, or whatever, she would be completely entitled to seek a cease and desist order, and to sue to damages, because this is her private life. She could even try to get a seek and desist order if, say, Foodie had photographed her private kitchen, and revealed that she is a slob who leaves rotting vegetables in the sink, because even though this might reflect on her public reputation, she could legitimately claim that this is no proof that she is also messy and unhygeinic in running her restaurant. A jury might, of course, disagree. However, a restaurant is by definition a public place and it is in the public interest to know whether it is clean and whether the food lives up to the reputation that the owner is trying to foster. It isn't Carol G's private home, there is no explicit or implicit contract term that says its clients may not take photographs, it is not a classified military or government installation (or a court in session, which usually bans photography); and the only legitimate reason I can think of for asking clients not to take photographs is that the flash disturbs other diners. Not only that, but a restaurateur is almost by definition a public figure who seeks public attention in order to publicise her or his business, and the law in general says that the public has a legitimate, although not disproportionate, interest in the affairs of public figures. That's certainly the case in Israeli statute law. What about the law of defamation, whether libel or slander? Yes, everyone is entitled to have his good name protected, which is why there is a law of defamation. But he or she is not entitled to have misdeeds hushed up by this law, which is why it's always a good defence if you have published the truth. If Foodie published undoctored photographs that are a fair representation of what was served in the restaurant, or even the dirty dishes in the kitchen, or whatever, that is the truth, and it's a sufficient defence. If, of course, the photos were manipulated to make them look worse than what was really there, or even if they're tendentious -- say, taken from an angle that misrepresents what was really there -- then that is no defence against a libel action. Foodie is just as much entitled to take and publish photographs as if he were a journalist, but of course he's also bound by the same rules of fair play. There's one last point. I don't know if this is the case in the USA, but in England, it's a tort to threaten someone with a lawsuit simply in order to intimidate him. In other words, if Foodie tells Carol G to get stuffed, which is most certainly what I think he should do, and she backs down after having already sent this intimidating letter by means of her attorney, then Foodie would be entitled to sue her for trying to intimidate her. And it would completely serve her right.

I don't know why Michelle was so insistent that I write about our (my) bar in the course of this blog, since it's actually a much more appropriate subject for Purim than for Hannukah: Jewish tradition is very strongly opposed to drunkenness, but on Purim you're actually obliged to get drunk. However, for the sake of maintain peaceful relations at home, I'm giving in to her The truth is that this is probably not so impressive by the standards of people in other countries, but Israelis are not exactly the world's biggest, or most sophisticated, consumers of fine alcohol (the Russian immigrants drink lots of vodka, but that's another story), so I suppose that by local standards, this collection is very impressive. Please don't imagine that I'm some kind of alcoholic But I had the good fortune to grow up with two European parents who both liked and appreciated good wine and spirits, and who believed that knowing how to hold and enjoy my booze was an essential part of my education. So from the age of about four or five, they would usually give me a glass of wine mixed with water or soda water with dinner, just like parents in Italy and France do: more often than not, it was Egri Bikaver, or "Bulls' Blood," a delicious and powerful red from Hungary, which I still love. For anyone who doesn't know the story behind the name, the Ottoman army was so humiliatingly defeated by the Magyars at Eger that their commander said that the Hungarians must have been drinking bulls' blood, and the name has stuck ever since. Anyway, over the many years since my parents first corrupted me I learned to appreciate sherry, vermouth, liqueurs, gin and tonic and all sorts of other elixirs. The only one for which I never developed a taste was whiskey, which was odd, considering that my parents would always have a dram or three before dinner. In fact, I really disliked the stuff for years. Then I got married (not to Michelle), and my ex-wife somehow got me to develop a taste for whiskey. The trick, I think, was that she liked whiskeys such as Chivas Regal, JW Black Label and the Famous Grouse, which were all smoother than the ones my father liked (and bought at duty-free on his many business trips); not only that, but she drank them neat, whereas at home, the taste was mangled by ice and soda. She also got me to like Glenfiddich, which I now regard as "beginners' single malt," but which was something of a revelation at the time. So, together with a much more detailed education in single malt whiskey that I subsequently received from a Scottish friend who is a proud descendant of Robert Burns, I learned to love the stuff, and now I have one of the best collections in Israel (one of my colleagues in the start-up has another great collection). It's got a pretty good selection of everything from the smoothest lowlands and Speysides to some pretty peaty Islays, such as Laphroaig (that's the one trying to dominate all the others on the shelf) and Lagavulin. The only Islay I really don't like is Ardbeg, and there are a few from other parts of Scotland that don't appeal to me much, but I have managed to avoid adding those to the collection by accident. Don't imagine, by the way, that I pay Israeli prices for these (about $90-100 for a 75cl bottle of single malt), or even at shops in London: I always buy them at duty-free (and Ben-Gurion airport is significantly cheaper than Heathrow, so that's another reason for all you readers to come and visit!). Michelle has also been a major contributor to the collection, to say nothing of the drinking of it: over the last few years, she has usually travelled rather more than me, so she has brought back some rather nice bottles, such as 20-year-old vintage port from Lisbon and Jellinek slivovitz from Prague. Of course, she comes from another boozing family: her great-grandfather Felix was famous in his hometown of Emmerich in north-west Germany for riding his horse into a bar after already having visited several others for a few rounds of beer and schnapps Slainthe!

On our way to the buffalo farm at Bitzaron, we also went to visit another place we had hoped to get to last week, Kibbutz Nahshon, situated a couple of miles south of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem motorway where it starts to climb up the hills towards the capital. Right next to the motorway turnoff is the Trappist monastery of Latrun, which is known for its wines as well as for the fact that the monks are bound by a vow of silence. By the way, one of the carved stones at the entrance to the monastery attests to the origin of the place name Latrun: it's a corruption of 'Le Toron,' Norman French for 'The Tower:' there was a Crusader fort there during the Middle Ages, because of its strategic location on what was the Jerusalem highway even in those days. And in 1948, one of the bloodiest battles of Israel's War of Independence was also fought there: it's commemorated by a memorial to the fallen of the armoured corps (although it was mainly an infantry battle). The Trappist monastery There's actually a food-related joke about this monastery. The rules of the monastery (allegedly) allow one monk to get up and make a short personal statement to the other monks during Christmas lunch; and each year, the privilege passes to another monk. So one year, Father Giovanni gets up and says "I think our beloved cook is putting too much pepper in the food." He sits down, and the silence resumes until the following year, when Father Patrick gets up and says "I completely disagree with Father Giovanni: the food here is delicious." Another year passes, and Father Manuel's turn to speak arrives. "I quit: I can't stand this constant bickering." I hope, of course, that none of our eGulleteers will be so foolish as to follow the example of the Trappists Anyway, on to Nahshon. The whole of the Nahshon winery, by contrast with the rather grander Flam only a few miles away, is in a slightly shabby prefab building in the middle of the kibbutz: the fermentation tanks are hidden away behind the building, as is the shop where they sell both the wines and also a range of cheese produced by the kibbutz dairies. Swisskaese and I, and our friend Jonathan, a professor at a university in Georgia (the Jimmy Carter one, not the Joseph Stalin one), were greeted by a young man who introduced himself as Shlomi and immediately offered us some wines to taste. The first one, to our surprise, was labelled 'Pushkin.' Pushkin Red, 2004 vintage Why Pushkin, I wondered? The answer was simple: it was basically a marketing gimmick to attract the many wine lovers among the million-odd Israelis who were born in Russia and immigrated either around 1973 or, mainly, since 1989. The wine was a bit rough and had too much heavy tannin for my taste, but Shlomi explained that it sold very well. In fact, he said, they had had a visit from the deputy mayor of Moscow a while before, and when he saw the label (and tasted some), he immediately grabbed a caseful to take home. The medium-priced Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot that I tried was much smoother, and definitely a wine I would want to take home. However, there were a couple of surprises. One was these: Nahshon, it turns out, is one of the biggest manufacturers of the 'bag in a box.' I can't recall seeing these more than half a dozen times in Israeli shops and supermarkets, but the kibbutz sells 50 million of them every year to Australian wine producers, and about 20 million more to other countries. The other surprise was this: For those of you who can't read Hebrew (all of you?), it's Nahshon's own port. Actually, it isn't the first Israeli port I've tasted: last year, I was invited to a private tasting by the owner of the art auction company from which I've bought several pictures over the last few years, and it turned out to be of wines he had made himself. Michael's port was not bad at all for a first attempt, and I'd definitely go back for more in a year or two. I can't say I was quite as positively impressed by the Nahshon version: made from the local Argaman grape, which is best for the sweet red wines I had hoped never to see again in Israel, and from the Latrun monastery's brandy (which I've tasted and rather like), this port was still very syrupy and lacking in complexity. Shlomi actually agreed with me, pointing out that it was their first try, and said he hoped that next year's version would be significantly better. Like Flam, the Nahshon winery's output isn't kosher. Why not, I asked: after all, some potential customers won't buy non-kosher wine. The reason was very simple: although Nahshon has been producing wine -- all from its own vineyards, incidentally, since 1998 -- its output is still only around 20,000 bottles a year, and they simply can't afford the salary of the kashrut supervisor they would have to keep on staff. Oh, and Shlomo himself: he turned out to be a refugee from Israel's burgeoning high-tech sector who couldn't take the constant stress and decided to become an oenologist, so he worked for other winemakers to learn the business, and ended up working for the kibbutz. Now he's no doubt earning a lot less, but he certainly looked as if he was having fun!

Actually, this is one of the interesting anomalies of Jewish law. The ostrich is generally regarded as not being kosher, because it will eat anything you give it, including small animals (or, as someone once told me, "even iron bars"). What makes birds kosher or not is the question of their diet: if they live on prey, such as eagles, hawks, owls or seagulls, then they are not kosher. However, ducks do naturally eat fish and insects, and they are kosher. Go figure

This Friday morning, we headed back to the area near Ashdod where we were last week, but this time in order to visit the source of real Israeli Mozarella. Yes, folks, we have our own buffalo herd! One of the Treister family's 500 buffalos Irit Treister and her husband first brought buffalo from Italy to their moshav, Bitzaron, near Ashdod, some eight years ago, and have since then expanded the herd to 500 head. Unlike milk cows, which have a normal oestrus cycle rather like humans and can give birth at any time of the year, buffalo are essentially wild animals and only go into heat twice a year: the result is that although every buffalo that has calved recently produces an average of 15 litres a day, the 500 animals only produce a total of about 1,000 litres per day. Despite the relatively low output, however, the results are outstanding. In the farm's shop, where we talked to Irit, she had a selection of both cream cheese with and without added herbs, and hard cheeses such as a buffalo Tsfatit with sesame and zaatar; and we also tried out the cream (40% fat) and yogurt (4% fat). The Boursin was, if anything, even better than the brand-name original; and everything else we tasted was so rich and creamy that we just didn't want to leave. I've never been that crazy about the taste of cream, but this buffalo cream was wonderful, and we only decided not to buy some because we're pretending to watch our weight. We did get Tsfatit, Mozarella and yogurt, though, and you can see the first two of these on out Shabbat breakfast table The tasting table at the buffalo farm: the Tsfatit with sesame and zaatar is on the far left; the Boursin is on the far right, closer to the camera The truth is, however, that buffalo milk and its products are healthier than cow milk: the milk is much lower in cholesterol, but considerably higher in vitamins A, B and E, as well as sodium. Incidentally, we're not the only ones who think this buffalo cheese is terrific: Haaretz recently published a survey of the best cheese in Israel, and the buffalo Mozarella was rated fourth out of the twenty best cheese in the country. Irit would love to export some of her production, but she would have to move the entire facility, including buffalo sheds, milking parlour (which uses the same computerised equipment as all the other dairy herds in the country), and production line, to near-sterile conditions, in order to satisfy the FDA. By the way, we were hoping that we could get a couple of eggs from the ostriches that the Treisters keep on their farm, for a super-deluxe omelette. This, unfortunately, was the ostriches' response: