eG Foodblog: Swisskaese - Hannukah: The Feastival of Light

[Swisskaese]

Dinner was simple, but nice.

My friends brought over:

Chili con carne

Vegetarian chili

Beer bread

Green salad

Spinach

I made roasted cauliflower (some of the group is vegetarian)

We also served left over tapenade and the desserts from the Latke party.

We had cocktails before dinner, red wine with dinner and champagne to ring in 2006. A few of us put cassis in our champagne and made a kir royale.

Bloombear and the rest of the Nordell family wish you and yours a very happy and prosperous 2006. May we see less sorrow and see a future that includes peace. See you tomorrow. Happy 7th night of Hannukah.

Lila Tov from Israel and Shavua Tov (have a good week)!

Shavua Tov is what we say at the end of Shabbat. Shabbat ended at sundown on Saturday. Our week begins tomorrow. I work Sunday through Thursday.

Edited January 1, 2006 by Swisskaese (log)

[Zucchini Mama]

Your latkes and pomegranate tart, the tapenade and everything looked so delicious. Your big breakfast looked divine. We're just about to head out the door for our futuristic NYE party. Happy New Year Tapenade and Swisskaese! May there be peace and affordable lamb in your future!

Zuke

[Pam R]

Michelle,

I'm going out of town in the morning and don't know if I'll have a chance to get online. I wanted to thank you so much for your wonderful blog. I had such a good time revisiting one of my favorite places with you and David. Todah rabah. It brought back many wonderful memories and gave me much to look forward to for future visits.

Shavuah Tov, Shana Tova, Chag Sameach, a Hearty Yashir Koach and Lila Tov!

- Pam

Edited January 1, 2006 by Pam R (log)

[Swisskaese]

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope that you do not have a hangover from all the festivities.

Today is a regular workday as if nothing happened last night.

I had my usual muesli and cappucino breakfast.

Today, David is going to show you our visit to the wineries and dairies and he is planning to go have some hardcore felafel for lunch.

We are going to have non-fried dinner tonight.

[Swisskaese]

Since we won't have time to take you to Jaffa for this blog, I thought I would show you a few pictures of a nice pastry shop in Jaffa.

Knaif - This is shredded pastry filled with cheese and sprinkled with sugar syrup. It is gooey and yummy.

I dont' know all the names for these.

Pistachio baklava

[Tapenade]

This is an expanded and edited version of a message from earlier on in the series:

Once upon a time, when I first came to Israel, pretty well the only wine one could find in the shops was made by Carmel Mizrahi, a big cooperative owned by the grape growers around the country, and the choice was basically between rather sour, mangy Carmel Hock, and a generic red whose name I've thankfully forgotten. I don't mean that the wine was really bad -- certainly, compared to Gianaclis, the only local label in Egypt, it was heavenly -- but after having grown up from age five or so drinking wine at home, I was pretty disappointed.

A few years later, in 1980, I made aliyah, or actually moved here, and by then the situation had improved somewhat. Carmel was selling a few varietal wines, mainly Semillon Blanc and Sauvignon Blance among the whites, Carignan, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petite Syrah among the reds, and it was even starting to sell some premium wines branded with the Rothschild name, which was actually fair enough, since Baron Edmond de Rothschild had basically started off the wine industry in this country in the late 19th century. The fact was that the Israel premium wines still tasted like Ribena compared to the real Mouton-Rothschilds from France, but we were happy. Most Israelis knew almost nothing about drinking wine, because traditionally they didn't drink much more than a few sips of the syrupy red glop that was used for making blessings on Shabbat and holidays; and from what I could see, most Jews in other countries weren't much more sophisticated. Ever tried Palwin or Manischewitz? I was once given a free mini-bottle of wine with dinner at a kosher restaurant on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, and I almost became diabetic on the spot.

Fast-forward to 2005, and we could be living in a completely different country, never mind a different decade. Israel is dotted not just with serious competitors to Carmel, such as Barkan and Segal and the very good Golan (yes, in the Golan Heights), but also with dozens and dozens of boutique wineries. For more detail, you can read Daniel Rogov's 78 best Israeli wines of 2005. They're not just in the north, where the terroir (more about this subject in a future episode) and the cold winters of the Golan and Galilee are ideal for growing wine grapes (as well as apples, pears, blackcurrants, cherries, plums, olives and much more besides): in the same way as Israeli farmers only a few miles north of Eilat, in the middle of the desert, have learned to grow massive crops of cauliflower and farm herds of cattle that produce the best chocolate milk in the world (yes, straight from the udder ), they are also growing terrific wine grapes, mainly Merlot, in the middle of the Negev desert a bit further north.

We would have liked to get to several more wineries during the course of this week's blogging, but in the event we've had to make do with two boutiques, one already well established and famous, the other still making its way.

Typical Israeli wine-growing country, in the Jerusalem foothills

The Flam winery is at the bottom of the Jerusalem foothills, a few minutes south of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem motorway: it's set back from the road among olive groves, in an ochre-stuccoed building that could have been lifted straight from Provence or Tuscany, apart from its modern architecture.

Golan Flam, one of the two brothers who runs the place, was born in Stellenbosch, South Africa, while his father Yisrael, who was the wine-maker of Carmel, was studying there, and wine has flowed in his veins ever since: he did his first degree at the Hebrew University's agriculture faculty in Rehovot, went on to a second degree in oenology at the University of Piacenza in Italy, carried on learning on the job at Greve in Chianti (poor chap), worked for a couple of years at Hardy's in South Australia, and went on from there.

Golan and Gilad founded the winery at 1998 at Moshav Ginaton, a few miles from Ben-Gurion airport: then, like now, they bought their grapes mainly from farmers in the villages of Kerem Ben-Zimra and Dishon in the central Galilee; they also buy from farmers at Karmei Yosef and other vineyards in the plain west of Jerusalem.

Golan showed us around the production line, where the grapes are fermented in large stainless steel vats at controlled temperatures of about 16 Celsius: they're also brought down to the winery in refrigerated lorries in order to ensure that they start fermentation in optimal conditions. Then downstairs to the cellar, where the wine lies in new oak barrels -- a mixture of French and Italian oak -- for 15 to 18 months. Golan says he prefers to avoid older barrels, because the aromas they add to the wine detract from the fruitiness that he wants to accentuate. In the case of the Chardonnay, he says, he prefers it completely unoaked.

Golan Flam in the cellar, with lots of delicious wine waiting for us to try

Back upstairs again to the tasting. I'm going to cheat at this point: Rogov, who reviewed a number of Flam wines only 12 months ago Rogov on Flam wines, has far more educated taste buds than mine, and specialises in all the flowery metaphors for the fruits and herbs that characterise wine, whereas my literary talents go in other directions.

Flam Classico, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot

Some of Flam's current offerings: the labels are designed by a top Italian graphic designer, using archeological and artistic motifs from Israel

more to come

Edited January 1, 2006 by Tapenade (log)

[Tapenade]

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:

[Swisskaese]

Here a few more pictures to entice you to come for a visit.

These are some more pictures of Jaffo:

Abulafia, an Israeli institution. This is the place to come for hot pita and other goodies. They are open 24 hours a day and people line up and triple-park to buy all of the tasty offerings.

A beautiful door in the artist quarter.

A lovely view of the Mediterranean Sea.

A carpet seller at the Shuk in Jaffo.

Edited January 1, 2006 by Swisskaese (log)

[Swisskaese]

Tonight is the final night of Hannukah and tomorrow is the last day of our blog. We have thoroughly enjoyed showing off our country's bounty and hope that we have given you a little taste of what we get to enjoy everyday.

We will be back from the fat farm sometime in March, in time to show off our designer hamentashen, the three-pointed cookie that we traditionally eat during Purim.

Happy Hannukah!

David went to our local falafel stand for a late lunch. It was recommended on a blog on Haaretz called Underground.

This stand is located on the main road of Hod Hasharon. There is always a long line there and cars are double and tripled parked, so we assumed this might be a good place to try.

The falafel balls were definitely fresh and almost straight out of the hot oil; the salad definitely was fresh, but he has had much better.

This is the machine that makes the falafel. The chickpeas and herbs are put into the hopper shown above and ground into a coarse mash and then picked up in holes in the dark drum below it, which rotates and drops the mixtures straight into the hot oil. A few minutes later, the falafel comes to the surface and is scooped out.

Apart from the standard salad and techina, the condiments at this stall included (L to R) hot green peppers, fenugreek sauce, amba (pickled mango; an Iraqi treat), coleslaw and white cabbage. Other stands often have a bigger selection of optional extras, including fried eggplant, onion rings seasoned with sumac, and fresh tomatoes.

Take a bite!

We are both so tired from all the festivities this past weekend that neither one of us have the energy to cook tonight. We will make dinner for you tomorrow and then bid our adieu.

But please feel free to ask any questions or make a comment to know that someone is out there reading our blog.

Edited January 1, 2006 by Swisskaese (log)

[CaliPoutine]

what is that contraption that is plugged in behind your menorah? Are electric menorah's availble in Isreal?

Being a New York Jew( born in NY, raised in Florida) I thorougly enjoyed the look at Isreal. Thanks for blogging.

[Swisskaese]

what is that contraption that is plugged in behind your menorah?  Are electric menorah's availble in Isreal? 

Being a New York Jew( born in NY, raised in Florida) I thorougly enjoyed the look at Isreal.  Thanks for blogging.

←

I tried to move it!

It is the surge supressor for our portable phone.

Unfortunately, they do sell electric hanukiahs, but thank G-d most people do not use them.

[patti]

Swisskaese and Tapenade, thanks so much for your wonderfully educational and entertaining blog. It was a fascinating week, and your hospitality was lovely.

[mizducky]

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:

←

This brings up an interesting question, though. I suddenly realized I had no idea of the kashrut status of ostriches and their eggs, so I went Googling ... and discovered this FAQ on the OU site that said that not only were ostriches not Kosher, but that there's apparently some Halachic controversy about the presence of ostrich farms in Israel. (Click on the link that says "questions about whether or not something is Kosher" to get that section of the FAQ to appear).

I'm assuming this is yet another area of Kashrut in which there is a huge variety of opinion and practice--nu, vhat else? But now I'm curious about your perspective on this issue as it plays out in Israel.

Edited January 1, 2006 by mizducky (log)

[Swisskaese]

   

This brings up an interesting question, though. I suddenly realized I had no idea of the kashrut status of ostriches and their eggs, so I went Googling ... and discovered this FAQ on the OU site that said that not only were ostriches not Kosher, but that there's apparently some Halachic controversy about the presence of ostrich farms in Israel. (Click on the link that says "questions about whether or not something is Kosher" to get that section of the FAQ to appear).

I'm assuming this is yet another area of Kashrut in which there is a huge variety of opinion and practice--nu, vhat else? But now I'm curious about your perspective on this issue as it plays out in Israel.

←

Yes, it is true. Ostriches are not Kosher. However, in this particular case, the ostriches are not used for food, nor are their eggs being sold. The Buffalo farm also has a zoo. They are there for show. They also have geese, ducks, turkeys, peacocks, turkeys and rabbits.

[Tapenade]

Yes, it is true. Ostriches are not Kosher. However, in this particular case, the ostriches are not used for food, nor are their eggs being sold. The Buffalo farm also has a zoo. They are there for show. They also have geese, ducks, turkeys, peacocks, turkeys and rabbits.

←

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

[Swisskaese]

Good morning everyone!

Well, this is the last day of your visit to Israel.

David is going to show you one more dairy and winery that we visited, and we are going to prepare a fish dinner this evening using a fish from Lake Victoria. Any idea what fish we are going to prepare? They weigh up to 200kg (440lb). It is a Fred Flintstone size fish.

We didn't get to show you everything we wanted to, but I think we gave you an idea of what is available here.

David forgot to mention that we also bought a small bottle of chocolate buffalo milk at the Buffalo farm. It was quite good, but not as good as Yotvata chocolate milk. Yotvata is a Kibbutz dairy in the Negev, near Eilat, and they make very, very good chocolate milk.

Edited January 2, 2006 by Swisskaese (log)

[Swisskaese]

Chocolate rugelach from a bakery in Jerusalem. I will post the picture tomorrow. They are the best rugelach in the country. The bakery is called Marzipan and they are locate on Aggripas Street.

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Here is more information about Marzipan Bakery in Jerusalem. You can buy them in the US. I didn't know that.

Edited January 2, 2006 by Swisskaese (log)

[helenjp]

someone is out there reading our blog.

We're here! And enjoying! But a bit holidayed out for actual verbalized responses

Thank you for everything, but from my son2, thanks in particular for the close-up of fresh mozzarella - a favorite of his.

[mochihead]

The olive oils, the cheeses, the fresh produce... especially the cheeses and all of the fabulous pastries. Oh, my! I'm learning so much from the both of you and am thoroughly enjoying all of the pictures and history!

[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.

←

Pontormo, I realised that I forgot to answer you about the fruit and vegetable combinations in dishes here.

Most of the salads that they serve here are small separate dishes, such as in the pictures I took at the Moroccan restaurant. Fried eggplant, roasted zucchini, pickled cabbage, carrot salad, baba ganush, etc.

You can put fruit in just about any salad. I have had mango salad with a little basil, olive oil, balsamico and lambs lettuce. It is hard to find lambs lettuce in Israel, so you could also use arugula to give the salad a bite.

Carrots and pineapple, sweet potato & apricots or prunes.

Figs, blue cheese or gorganzola and arugula, with a honey/balsamico and olive oil vinegrette.

You can also put spinach leaves and mango; spinach leaves and strawberries.

Oranges, avocado, spinach leaves, sesame seeds, almonds, pumpkin seeds with an orange vinegrette.

I will try and find you some proper recipes after I finish the blog.

I also stuff vegetables with meat and rice and season it with cinnamon or other spices.

Here is a picture of my stuffed aubergine:

I also stuff butternut squash and small round green striped squashes. I don't know the name in English.

One of my favourite things that I have had that was stuffed is Stuffed Dates with Lamb. To die for!

Hope this helps.

Edited January 2, 2006 by Swisskaese (log)

[CaliPoutine]

Chocolate rugelach from a bakery in Jerusalem. I will post the picture tomorrow. They are the best rugelach in the country. The bakery is called Marzipan and they are locate on Aggripas Street.

←

Here is more information about Marzipan Bakery in Jerusalem. You can buy them in the US. I didn't know that.

←

Oh wow, I can't believe they have them in Ann Arbor. I know exactly where the store is too. Next time I go there, I'll have to bring back a box.

Btw, I've used an electric menorah in the past because of my cats and I loved it. It may not be as pretty, but I think it was just as symbolic.

[Swisskaese]

Some people here won't even use candles. They say that the true Hannukiah should be lit using olive oil.

Here is a link to the strictest rules of lighting a Hannukiah:

Hannukiah Rules

The most important thing is observing the holiday, whether it be with olive oil, candles or an electric Hannukiah.

Edited January 2, 2006 by Swisskaese (log)

[Tapenade]

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!

[Swisskaese]

I thought you might want to see a few more photos from the Buffalo Farm that David didn't post.

Isn't the baby buffalo just the cutest thing?!

Take my picture please!

Lady, leave me alone!

It is my turn to eat!! BTW - Ostrich is very low in fat. They served Ostrich steaks at my college in Switzerland. I tried it before I kept Kosher; it is different. Tastes like chicken!

Edited January 2, 2006 by Swisskaese (log)

[Tapenade]

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!

Edited January 2, 2006 by Tapenade (log)