eG Foodblog: Swisskaese - Hannukah: The Feastival of Light

[cakewalk]

What a lovely blog! It makes me smile. (Not to mention a lovely trip down memory lane.) I remember the last time I was in Israel (about two years ago, time for another trip) the thing I went most crazy over (if you don't already think I'm nuts, you certainly will now) was the cucumbers from the market. (There are cucumbers in the market, Mr. Wilde.) Great shuk photos, BTW! I especially got a kick out of the "tari tari" sign above the artichokes. But I absolutely love those cucumbers. They have taste! I look forward to photos of milkies and crembos. I think I could live on milkies.

[Swisskaese]

I am glad I can bring some joy to you Cakewalk.

For the other viewers, Tari means several things, such as fresh, hot, new or young. And obviously, can be used in a number of ways.

In this case, I am sure the seller meant "fresh, fresh".

[Pam R]

I'm not sure there is anything better than strolling through the shuk with a cup of watermelon juice, snacking on some warm nuts and haggling with the vendors.

Being somewhat lactose intolerant, I used to eat a cucumber for breakfast every morning when I was on kibbutz - can't handle the typical Israeli breakfast. They were definately not the same cukes I get here... they had ta'am.

I hope you realize you may have to put up some visitors in the future!

I can't wait to see the Moshav - Bnei Darom is the brand I carry in the store. This is very cool.

[Swisskaese]

I am off to the supermarket.

Milkies, Krembos and the rest are coming up......

See you soon.

[Gifted Gourmet]

Michelle and Pam, may I jump in here and explain a word which has appeared in a couple of Pam's posts? Namely, ta'am:

The Hebrew word ta'am has two meanings, "taste" and "reason". Taste and reason are related because the comprehension of an intellectual idea produces palpable satisfaction, not unlike the pleasure derived from tasting good food

source of this quote

[Swisskaese]

Thanks Melissa for explaining ta'am.

I am finally back from the supermarket. David loves to go down every aisle.

The truth is that we were buying everything for the latke party on Thursday and the Hungarian dinner on either Friday or Saturday, depending on whether we are invited to my cousins for Shabbat dinner or Shabbat lunch.

While I am loading the pictures, I will show why we are called the land of milk......

And we also have some very nice spices.....

These pictures were taken at a supermarket called Tiv Tam (Quality Taste). We don't may a habit of shopping here because they do not sell Kosher meat, so we can only buy produce and a few other things. But, the supermarket is very nice.

Edited December 28, 2005 by Swisskaese (log)

[Swisskaese]

Wow, it takes a long time to download the pictures.

First, I want to introduce you to the rest of our happy family.

We don't have a dog, cat or children at the moment, but these furry friends are very attached to us.

Starting from the left is D.B., which stands for David's Bear. This bear is approximately 50 years old.

Next is Eli, David's elephant and he is 51 years old.

Then there is Harry and Bloombear. They are my bears and are only a few years old.

Edited December 27, 2005 by Swisskaese (log)

[Tapenade]

What Swisskaese didn't say is that the cheeses shown in our photos are only about one-third of the hard cheeses sold at this place (as opposed to the soft white cheese that you spread on bread). The other two-thirds are imported from Holland, France, Switzerland, Denmark and even Russia -- that's because the Tiv Taam chain is patronised mainly by Russian immigrants, and its huge stock is very much tailored to their tasts. So apart from God knows how many cheese, they also have different makes and types of sour cream, buttermilk, fermented milk and so on that are an important part of the Russian culinary tradition. Then there are dozens of salamis and sausages, nearly all made of pork (very few Russian immigrants, even the ones who are completely Jewish as opposed to partly so, keep kosher), and scores of types of dried, marinaded, smoked and processed fish. When I brought a friend, a very refined English lady in her 70s, for her first visit to Tiv Taam outside Netanya about three years ago, she was amazed at the selection, and then told me that one of the types of dried fish was exactly what relatives in Russia used to send to her father when she was a young girl in London before World War II. And that story brought up an amazing coincidence, which is that she's the aunt of an old school friend of mine from 35-odd years ago. By the way, she also has gastronomic relevance, because she is the most amazing cook, with a cook-book collection even bigger than ours, and the foie gras she made for me once still buzzes on my taste buds.

Tiv Taam is also interesting from another point of view. Nearly all the supermarkets in Israel carry only kosher food (which of course can include food manufactured anywhere as long as some suitable rabbi certifies that it doesn't include forbidden ingredients such as pork or shellfish); and this restricts the selection somewhat. On top of that, the country's customs regulations used to be fixed to protect local food manufacturers from competing imports. But Israel now enjoys free trade, and Tiv Taam doesn't care what is or isn't kosher. The result is that it carries everything from Moldovan wines to Vietnamese noodles to Russian jams and fruit nectars, in staggering variety. I don't think I've seen such a great variety of food products under one roof anywhere, and I've shopped in quite a few countries.

[Swisskaese]

Today David and I went to my secretary's mother's restaurant called El Senia in Ra'anana. El Senia is a Moroccan brass tray.

This restaurant is very special. Hannah Ben-Yishai, the owner, looks like a typical Moroccan Jewish mother and welcomes guests as if they were visiting her home.

This is the best of Moroccan home cooking.

We begin with Moroccan salads.

From 12 o'clock clockwise: Beet root, Green olives with preserved lemons, Spicy cooked carrot salad, Aubergine with garlic, Matboucha (spicy tomato and red pepper salad) and in the middle a grated raw carrot and sesame seed salad.

Fennel and red pepper salad dressed with olive oil

And then .......

Couscous with Spicy Beef and Chickpeas

The beef dish was spiced with nothing more than hot paprika, cumin and garlic. This dish was outstanding.

The restaurant is decorated with a collection of brass coffee pots and traditional Moroccan tea glasses.

She also has some nice hamsahs (called The hand of Fatima in the rest of the Middle East)

When you taste the food you can tell it was made with a loving hand and with wonderful fresh Israeli vegetables. The couscous was wonderful, each grain was separated as it is suppose to be.

I have eaten at a number of Moroccan restaurants here and abroad and it is some of the best I have ever had.

On Thursday morning (I have the day off!), Hannah has invited David and me back to the restaurant and she is going to give us a cooking lesson on how to make a very special Moroccan Hannukah treat, Sfenj. This is not exclusively Moroccan, it is made througout the Magreb and the Middle East and the Gulf.

Here is a picture of the lovely Hannah and my David

Edited December 28, 2005 by Swisskaese (log)

[Tapenade]

Boker Tov!

I woke up a little late today and am getting ready to take my beautiful 15 minute journey to work. Later this afternoon, I will post the pictures of my drive through farm country and will report on my Moroccan lunch.

We are also going to take you to an Olive Oil Festival that took place this past Friday on a Moshav called Bnei Darom. They are famous for their olives and boutique Kosher olive oil. A Moshav is village that has some shared farming facilities. It is not like a Kibbutz.

Tapenade, who forgot to mention that he is a former journalist for the newspaper Haaretz, talked to one of the boutique olive oil producers who was at the festival and will tell you about in his own contribution later today.

Shemeneto Olive Oil that we purchased. 

Shemen means Oil.

Shemen Zayit is Olive Oil.

Neto means Net as in the opposite of Gross.

So the brand name of this olive oil is a play on words. The name means "Nothing but Oil". And that it is.

←

←

Some of the exhibitors at the Bnei Darom olive oil festival

Shemeneto was one of about eight olive oil manufacturers taking part in the olive festival at Bnei Darom. They're all from the same area, which is basically on the coastal plain south-west of Jerusalem, and olives don't actually grow there: the main olive-growing areas are in the north and in the Jerusalem hills, where the combination of limestone rocks under shallow topsoil and cold winters is optimal for olive trees. But most of the villages in this area between Jerusalem and Ashdod live on agriculture or its by-products, and olive oil is one of the most important.

As I mentioned yesterday in explaining the history of Hanukkah, olive oil plays a very significant part in the festival itself. But historically, it's also one of the most important products of the country: olives and oil have been produced since the mists of time, and when the Bible mentions oil, often in the context of the sacrifices that were offered in the Temple, it always means locally-produced olive oil. Large areas of agricultural land are devoted to growing olives, and there is fierce competition between the growers and also the olive-press owners for who produces the best. On top of all the culinary uses, I've encountered a lot of Palestinians who use it therapeutically: when they have muscular pains or even arthritis, they massage the area with olive oil.

Yossi Sberro explaining the secrets of olive oil to visitors at his stand at the Bnei Darom olive festival

Yossi Sberro, the owner of Shemeneto, who sells oil made from the local Syrian and Barnea varieties and also the Manzanillo and Pikval varieties that originates in Spain, explained to us that freshly-pressed oil changes character over time. For the first three months, it's "agressive and herby," to use his words, and then gradually becomes milder until it reaches its best at about one year; after this, it can still be used for about another year, as long as it's kept in cool and dark conditions.

The olive press at Bnei Darom

Bnei Darom itself has a highly sophisticated olive pressing plant, which the locals proudly showed visitors to the festival while we were there. Plastic bins containing about 300kgs of olives are first dumped into the hopper of a cleaning machine, which strips off the leaves and twigs and washes any dirt or dust off the olives. From there, another short conveyor crops each batch of olives into a mill, where two vertically-mounted granite wheels each weighing more than one ton crush the olives. The next step is that the pulp, still including all the stones, goes through another machine (they're all Italian-manufactured, of course ), which separates out the oil, not by pressing, as is traditional, but through the insolubility of oil in water. The last part of the process takes the olive pulp after all the oil has been removed and presses into into a solid mass, called gefet in Hebrew, which can be used to feed cattle; in Talmudic times, some 1800 years ago, it was used as fuel for cooking and heating homes.

"You want how many hundreds of crates of our oil?" An exhibitor from Kibbutz Yavne indulging in the favourite Israeli sport of talking on the mobile phone

The whole festival day was pretty well organised: apart from the different producers selling their oil, canned olives, spreads and the rest, the host village showed us a very professionally made video about the production process, and of course gave us a chance to browse in the shop next door.

The shop at Bnei Darom: olive products in every shape and form

We were actually pretty restrained in what we bought during this little trip: about three cans of different kinds of olives from the Bnei Darom shop, and a couple of bottles of oil from Yossi, including one that is still less than three months old, so the oil hasn't yet become clear. I can't wait to taste it.

Edited December 28, 2005 by Tapenade (log)

[Swisskaese]

We went to the supermarket today to buy everything we need for the Latke party on Thursday night. We have invited 10 friends over. One of them is visiting from the United States.

The menu is as follows:

Gluehwein

Spinach and Artichoke Dip

Tapenade's Tapenade

Classic Latkes

Curried Sweet Potato Latkes

Strawed Potato Cake Stuffed With Braised Leeks from Paula Wolfert's "The Cooking of Southwest France"

Green Salad, made by one of the guests

Homemade chunky applesauce

Sour cream

Pear Tarte Tatin

Pomegranate tart

Lemon Tart

Wine, juices, coffee & tea

And you are all going to watch me prepare the meal, starting tomorrow night.

[Swisskaese]

Finally tonight, I bought three of the four most important food staples in the Israeli diet.....

Milky's: This is basically chocolate or vanilla pudding with a topping of whipped milk. Every child's must have on the grocery list.

Then there is Bamba and Bissli!

Bamba is a peanut flavoured snack that was invented here in Israel. I think Cheetos now makes there own version with a license from Osem, the company that invented the product. Bleudavergne served it at a dinner party on her last blog. This snack is served to children the minute they exit the womb.

Bissli is another snack from Osem. It comes in a variety of flavours, such as Falafel, BBQ, Hamburger, etc. This one is onion flavoured. Another must have on the grocery list.

The fourth item I could not buy tonight was Krembo. They only had a 12 pack and since neither David nor I eat them, it didn't make since to buy the twelve-pack. So, I will go to a mini-market tomorrow and buy one. There was a thread on this in the pastry section. Someone wanted to make them.

Tomorrow, I am going to show you the farm area of Hod HaSharon, my green grocer who has been a staple in the area since 1933 and we are going to tell you about ......

and

and you will see my office cafeteria.

[Swisskaese]

I almost forgot...

Happy 3rd night of Hannukah!

[bloviatrix]

It used to be that if I wanted my Israeli favorites - eshkolina, milkys, egozi bars, etc it meant a trip to Israel. Now, I can get everything at my local market. The sheer variety of Israeli foodstuffs available has exploded in the past 10 years. We can even purchase a wide variety of Strauss ice cream products.

[Pam R]

It used to be that if I wanted my Israeli favorites - eshkolina, milkys, egozi bars, etc it meant a trip to Israel.  Now, I can get everything at my local market.  The sheer variety of Israeli foodstuffs available has exploded in the past 10 years.  We can even purchase a wide variety of Strauss ice cream products.

←

oh how you rub it in! I was expecting a shipment of milky's today - but it has been delayed in Toronto yet another week. I think I'm the only one bringing them into the city - and when a shipment arrives Israelies pour into the store to get them.

Do milkys come in any flavours other than chocolate and vanilla?

And you don't eat Krembos either... so ... who does?

[Jason Perlow]

The Falafel flavor of Bissli is like crack. The BBQ one is really good too.

I particularly like the orange haired character on the Bissli bag. He looks like the love child of Carrot Top (the comedian, not the eG member) and Butthead.

[Swisskaese]

It used to be that if I wanted my Israeli favorites - eshkolina, milkys, egozi bars, etc it meant a trip to Israel.  Now, I can get everything at my local market.  The sheer variety of Israeli foodstuffs available has exploded in the past 10 years.  We can even purchase a wide variety of Strauss ice cream products.

←

oh how you rub it in! I was expecting a shipment of milky's today - but it has been delayed in Toronto yet another week. I think I'm the only one bringing them into the city - and when a shipment arrives Israelies pour into the store to get them.

Do milkys come in any flavours other than chocolate and vanilla?

And you don't eat Krembos either... so ... who does?

←

I can't believe I am still up!

Pam, lots of Israelis love Krembo. You would be surprised.

Milky also comes in Mocha flavor and you can get Chocolate w/ whipped chocolate milk. Personally, I prefer vanilla and vanilla/chocolate swirl Karlo.

[Pontormo]

Michelle: Thank you so much for this food blog!!!

I love the pictures taken during your shopping trips, especially, and wish I could visit the stall with all the beautiful dates and dried fruits! Olives!!!! I can't wait to see you document your time at the farm tomorrow.

I do have a question.

At the wedding you attended, I was intrigued by the roasted sweet potatoes with apricots (dried? fresh?). Could you tell me more about the dish? It looks delicious.

I am getting a little tired of the salads I make and would welcome more details about the ingredients of fruit and vegetable combinations in some of the dishes that you photograph...or really love yourself.

[Rebecca263]

I don't know which I've been more touched by, the obvious love you have for your life in Israel, or how you posted "my David " under your husband's photo. I dunno, it just got me right in the heart when I saw that post. Milkys! I haven't had one in forever! Sweet potato tzimmes is something I haven't eaten in maybe 20 years, I've only got a recipe that's made with chicken broth, I feel a cooking lesson coming on for kiddle and me.

[Swisskaese]

Michelle:  Thank you so much for this food blog!!!

I love the pictures taken during your shopping trips, especially, and wish I could visit the stall with all the beautiful dates and dried fruits!  Olives!!!!  I can't wait to see you document your time at the farm tomorrow.

I do have a question.

At the wedding you attended, I was intrigued by the roasted sweet potatoes with apricots (dried?  fresh?).  Could you tell me more about the dish?  It looks delicious.

I am getting a little tired of the salads I make and would welcome more details about the ingredients of fruit and vegetable combinations in some of the dishes that you photograph...or really love yourself.

←

Ok. I am really going to bed now. You don't want to know what time it is right now.

Thank you Pontormo and Rebecca. I am happier than I have ever been. Moving here was definitely the right thing for me to do. It is a crazy place and sometimes a scary and heartwrenching place, but I really love it here. David is definitely my beshert.

The sweet potato and apricot salad was very nice. It was roasted sweet potato in which strips of dried apricot had been added after it was cooked.

I will be happy to share some of my favourite salads tomorrow.

Lila Tov everyone. 'Til tomorrow.

[Gifted Gourmet]

David is definitely my beshert.

←

Gifted Gourmet's quick translation for the reader for the term "bashert":

Part of Speech: noun

Etymology: Yiddish for "fate, destiny"

Definition: One's predestined soul mate ... One's spouse.... An individual who is a good fit or good match.

It should only happen to you, dear readers of Michelle and David's blog!

Metsuyon! (excellent!)

[CaliPoutine]

Michelle, I'm curious as to what brought you to Isreal?

[bloviatrix]

It used to be that if I wanted my Israeli favorites - eshkolina, milkys, egozi bars, etc it meant a trip to Israel.  Now, I can get everything at my local market.  The sheer variety of Israeli foodstuffs available has exploded in the past 10 years.  We can even purchase a wide variety of Strauss ice cream products.

←

oh how you rub it in! I was expecting a shipment of milky's today - but it has been delayed in Toronto yet another week. I think I'm the only one bringing them into the city - and when a shipment arrives Israelies pour into the store to get them.

Do milkys come in any flavours other than chocolate and vanilla?

And you don't eat Krembos either... so ... who does?

←

I actually don't eat Milky's anymore. Several years ago I made the mistake of looking at the nutritional content for a Milky and it killed them for me.

[cakewalk]

Milky also comes in Mocha flavor and you can get Chocolate w/ whipped chocolate milk. Personally, I prefer vanilla and vanilla/chocolate swirl Karlo.  

←

Chocolate with chocolate whipped milk?! I don't remember that at all. I really have to arrange a visit now.

I never ate krembos either. But the kids devour them. It always used to make me laugh seeing the kids on their way home from school, each one with a dot of "krem" on the tip of his nose -- the telltale sign of having just finished a krembo.

I'm amazed at everything you've written about Tiv Ta'am and all the luscious photos, particularly those cheeses. (I remember when the only thing you could get was "gveena tsehuba" -- yellow cheese, it was all encompassing.) I'm a former Yerushalmit, and, as you can imagine, we never saw that kinda stuff! Although maybe now they do. (By way of explanation, Jerusalem is a lot more strict on religious issues than lawless, heathen Tel Aviv and its environs.

Lovely blog!

[Zucchini Mama]

Swisskaese,

the menu for your latke party looks amazing. I am so looking forward to peeking in on your preparations for it. Thanks to those who are explaining all the linguistic nuances. What I wouldn't give to be the "Shabbas goy" in your household!

Zuke

Edited December 28, 2005 by Zucchini Mama (log)