eG Foodblog: Lior - Spend a week in sunny Ashkelon.

[Chris Hennes]

Ilana that coffee table is gorgeous. The photo of the pita reminds me how long it has been since I made my own. One of my dream-kitchen items is a wood-fired oven to make things like this in "authentic" style. It looks fantastic!

[BarbaraY]

I don't think I should have read this before breakfast. Those breads and pastries look wonderful and I'm sure they must taste wonderful, too.

[Lior]

Well thank you so much!

[Lior]

Shabbat Shalom l'koolum!- a peaceful sabbath to all!

Sabbath is entering now with the setting of the sun. The streets are silent, you can hear the crickets chirp and see the crows and sparrows settling down for the night. The stores are now all closed until Sunday morning when they will be full early morning as though the people are in dire need of fresh bread and milk. I think it is a psychological thing! I will try to sneak a few shots of men on the way to their neighborhood synagogues. The roads are quite bare.

Soon I will post as this time passes fast I must run to capture the feel!!

[Lior]

OOOF! basically I missed the moment! Night fell fast! I managed some fast photos but they are a bit awful. The crows were cawing but I could not photo the sound!! So sorry I missed the moment!!

rooftop view of night falling:

empty streets. Most people have arrived at their destinations.

[Lior]

Back to the Morracan kitchen:

We will start with a very tradional Morrocan dish called "Kubeh" It is a dumpling made of ground turkey and/or beef covered in the grainy cereal that you people would probably use to make hot wheat cereal! It is in a stew of vegetables and tomatoe sauce spiced and herbed with cumin, coriander, parpika, etc

My neighbor does it tradionally on the gas as we say here in the middle of her small kitchen floor. She has a storage room just outside her kitchen where she has 2 refrigerators and an oven for frying so that her kitchen does not get too smelly!

The vegies used:

eggplant:

eggplant dishes:

another eggplant dish:

another eggplant dish. She uses a cardboard eeg carton and paper towels to soak up the oil hence the dark spots on the carton!!

more to come...

[Peter Green]

Okay! I've just rescued today's egg carton before it was thrown out! What an excellent idea for taking the oil away from fried eggplants.

[kbjesq]

←

Wow, that is a huge pot of stew. How many people is your neighbor planning to feed?

I have never seen such a cooking device - but I can see where it would be very useful when cooking for a large crowd. And portable! This would be perfect for tailgating here (crowds of Americans gathered in parking lots -- eating and drinking to excess -- prior to football games in the fall).

[Smithy]

That IS an excellent way to drain the oil from the eggplant! Thanks for the tip! The stew and the eggplant dishes look fabulously tasty. I recognize okra (bamya to me). Is the leafy green kale?

Do most homes there have solar panels on their roofs? How much energy do those panels supply? Where else does your electricity come from?

I have a "thing" about those aluminum cookpots. In Cairo, in the proper sector of the Old City, you can see workmen making those by placing disks of aluminum in stamping machines. They're so perfect and neat and shiny, I always want to bring some home. I never do, settling instead for clay pots. But still I admire those pots with their honest simplicity.

Your evening shots may have missed what you think of as the best time, but they still convey a sense of peaceful settling-in for the night. It's lovely.

[cakewalk]

Mmmmm. Kubeh.

[racheld]

I wanna be a BALABOOSTA!!

Though, if you could see my dining room right now, you wouldn't eat my cooking. The glass table is covered in thick terry towels, with the entire guts of a HUGE computer-being-built spread around, with two immense black monitors and all the other detritus of getting it together.

I haven't had breakfast or lunch, and all this Nigella bread and gruff, rumpled pita and the bubble-popped tops of the spongy lachuch and that pot of stew!!!

And it has okra and what looks like collards!! I could bestow some major G.R.I.T.S. Girl honors for that one. And dumplin's in it, too.

The rugelach back a few posts---I had wondered what it was WAY back on another page---it looked so much like croissants, but not buttery ones---the shiny dark circlings make the bin look as if it's full of immense striped-tail hornets. I'm accustomed to the smaller, folded apricot versions, but those are SO tempting.

This is one of the most atmospheric blogs of all time. I'm really there; can you be homesick for somewhere you've never been?

[abooja]

I have really been enjoying your blog. Thank you so much for allowing us this glimpse into your life -- for the myriad photographs, insights and detailed, thoughtful answers to all questions asked. You seem like a very sweet woman with a wonderful life and family. You have shown me a side of Israel I knew absolutely nothing about, quite opposite some of the dreary news stories one sees on television. Nothing beats the Internet for bringing together people from all walks of life. Thank you!

[Rebecca263]

Shabbat Shalom! I can not wait to log on tomorrow and see what your Shabbat was like.

Edited February 22, 2008 by Rebecca263 (log)

[Lior]

Smithy, they are bamya to me too!! You must tell me a bit about yourself...

We are all basically the same I suppose, when you get down to important stuff. Every house has solar panels as it is sunny most days. All our water is heated bt these, everywhere in Israel. If it is rainy or cloudy then we switch on the boiler for an hour or so to get enough water for a shower etc. It is never on all day though. There is a lot of talk now of other methods for electricity.

Now the Morrocan is far from finished:

Vegetable stew

Salmon waiting to be cooked:

mushroom quiche:

homemade potato burekas with mushroom sauce:

mini challahs

brains and peppers

And all for this weekend!!

My personal shabbat pictures will be posted tomorrow morning-my time. It is half past midnight and I am sleepy! Lila Tov!

[Jamie Lee]

Ilana...

This has been the most fascinating blog ever!

If your avator is accurate, you are a dead-ringer for Julia Roberts!

Thanks for effort, insight and stunning photos.

[Pierogi]

Ohhhhhh, Ilana, so beautiful ! This shiksa wants some of these.........

homemade potato burekas with mushroom sauce:

mini challahs

And those...........^^^^

Like, immediately.

Congratulations on a beautiful blog and a glimpse into your life !

Again, from the shiksa perspective Shabbat Shalom ! (It's technically still Saturday night where I am..........)

[Lior]

Hello everyone! I just came back from the dairy festival and it was , uhmm, disappointing! I took some pictures of meat (!) and of a cow and calf, but that was about it! Oh well. Anyway, last night's dinner was very nice. It was great to be together. Thanks toeveryone who gave me kind words about the blog! And co pliments about my avator I wish the shiksa could get some burekas- I tried squeezing it through but did not succeed.

Shabbat dinner at my MIL's:

lubia beans:

Broccoli and mushroom stew:

cabbage salad (nothing new for you right?)

Chicken:

My other son taking a tablespoon of Hilbeh to put in the chicken soup:

Hilbeh:

About the soup:

This is a traditional Yemenite soup, with chicken pieces, vegetables, and Hawaiij which makes it yellow. My MIL likes to take all the chicken out before it becomes too mushy as well as allthe vegetables. These are served in serving dishes and whoever wants this vegie or that piece of chicken can add it to his soup.

chicken from soup:

soup vegies:

pita:

white rice:

potatoes

meatballs and beef:

Aftet that we sit around and chat and joke and then have coffe or tea and cake. I made a coffee cake with a topping of cinnamin, pecans and sugar, but forgot to take a photo. All in all it was a lovely evening. Later on I will post pictures of the jachnun. And on Monday I will got o the meat market for Gfron. Bye for now-have a lovely, lovely Saturday!!

[BarbaraY]

I'm curious about the soup veggies. Are those preserved or fresh lemons and what are the greens?

[Lior]

The soup vegies include leeks, the green tops of celery- here the tops are more popular than the sticks- sometimes the celery is picked as a root in order to get the tops greens. Then there are whole onions, and parsley and roots such as turnip and another kind-I have to find out its nname in English! If I missed out on others I will let you know also.

[racheld]

How many at table?---looks like quite a crowd. Is this traditional Friday night, and you all always gather there, or was this a gathering of the family just for you to show us?

All the food looks hearty and delicious, and the Corelle quite familiar---that's Chris' favorite. But I could not DREAM of putting a nicely-molded dish of rice onto a plate---all the little bits and briblets that would fall onto the cloth---my, my.

This just looks spectacular. And what is the beautiful large vessel atop the cabinet in the background---looks like a shiny hot-pot. Is the after-dinner coffee strong and sweet, and the tea fragrant with mint?

One more thing---I Googled jachnun and it said "left overnight in the oven" and eaten on Saturday, since no appliances can be turned on then. Does that apply to coffeemakers of any type?

Thank you for sharing your family with us. I wish you were MY DIL.

[Pam R]

Shabbat shalom, Ilana (still Shabbat here!). I wish I was there! Even though I'm Ashkenazie, when my Baba was still with us, our weekly dinners at her house (she cooked for 17+ of us every Friday) weren't all that different. We didn't have any hilbe, and the soup was not as yellow, but the chicken, brisket, meatballs, potatoes, vegetables, salad -- we had it all. It's lovely to see very similar traditions from very different areas of the globe.

I'm looking forward to the jachnun! Does your mother in law also make malawach?

[Rehovot]

The Shabbat meal was gorgeous. I'm still happily full from seeing all the photos of it!

I love jachnoun... What are the red and green sauces that come with it? We used to buy ours from a roadside stand, and it was always wrapped in about 20 layers of paper and another 20 of foil. Mmmmmmmm. Jachnoun!

[Lior]

Hello! Well, we either eat at my MIL or at my house, sometimes we are only 6 or 7 and sometimes we are 14 -15. It all depends on whois coming/can come etc. Yes those are Corelle!!! By coincidence my in laws have the same as we do!! And Rachel- I am sure you are a ballaboosta!!! Just the desire to be one is halfway there!!

Back to the dairy festival that was barely existent I took a photo of a wild weed/plant that grows all around. It is called "Chkubeza" and is great to eat as a cooked green, or cooked and then served either hot or cold in a salad of lentils and onions, for example. You can use it like spinach and even make "meatballsl"from it. In the center of the leaves, before it flowers is a bud that the kids pick, peel and eat. It is crunchy and nutty.

Other pictures from the dairy festival! :

That was Entrecot

duck (blehk! )

About food. Isn't it odd how itis often the same! I like that about the chicken soup being less yellow etc!!! Oh! And about the Jachnun, the red and green sauce is probably Schkoog, a spicy peppery sauce. We eat jachnun with grated and herbed tomatoes. Pictures are on their way.

Sneak Peak:

[Lior]

Yes we also have malawackh, which is the same dough as the jachnun, on rouned and flatlike a pita, fried on med heat on both sides and then it is a flakything of thin "leaves". One can have it sweet likea pancake or savory with grated tomatoes etc. I will make one tomorrow or the next day and photo it.

Jachnun on its journey into the oven for 12 hours at low heat- about 115-120C.

ready to eat:

The house awakens to this delicious baked and familiar smell. Upon smelling it, one instantly remembers, "AAAH!! It's Saturday! " And goes back to snooze for a bit more,feeling very luxurious beneath the comforter.

As the Saturday ends, everyone wishes the othe a good week. So here that is the time now, so I wish all of you- a very good week!!

[Pam R]

Ilana, thanks! My baked jachnun didn't look like that -- after spending the night in the oven it hadn't browned at all. I'll definitely try it again soon. I don't have a the right pot -- can I use an aluminum foil pan? Or should I use a coated cast iron pot? And do you add anything to the grated tomatoes?

By the way, did they have any dairy products at the dairy festival or just meat?