Hamutal never planned to become obsessed with food, much less with sustainable food. It crept up on her when she wasn’t looking.
At first it was pure self-defense: her parents, though well intentioned, had no idea what to do in a kitchen, and so she had to learn a bit about cooking, sheerly for the sake of her sanity. Chopping things, it turned out, was great for soothing the savage teenager. Skip ahead several years, and she’d figured out that making your own jam from local organic berries was even grander.
Love of food led to love cooking, led to love of ingredients, led to love of markets, led to love of farmers, led to love of land. Hamutal is profoundly convinced that sustainability and pleasure are the best of friends, and tries to write about both of these in equal measure.
She can be reached at hamutal (at) green prophet (dot) com.
What exactly does ricotta have to do with Sukkot? After all, Shavuot is the holiday that features dairy so prominently. In part it’s a question of ecology: meat is a high-impact food, and if we can all cut down a…
Many of us are rushing around today, crossing things off lists though simultaneously putting new ones on, trying to get ready for Rosh Hashanah. It’s a big food holiday – bigger than most, even – and most of us will…
It’s about this time of year that the air starts to change. Evenings cool off and breezes pick up. Put another way: it is a time to put some food by, as the old phrase goes, the season for trying…
We’re now just over a week into Ramadan, and hopefully those of you that are fasting have settled into a comfortable routine. For any of you that may still be trying to find your way, though, we thought we’d do…
There is something so profoundly compelling about a dish named buckle. Just think of it: buttery golden batter, giving way – buckling – under the weight of juicy, jammy, slightly caramelized hunks of fruit. A buckle is more exuberant than…
Zucchini flowers, or squash blossoms (for culinary purposes these are interchangeable), are one of those off-the-supermarket-beaten-path ingredients you tend to find only at farmers’ markets or fancy restaurants. (Or Italy, though that doesn’t really help most of us all that…
Ful medames; ta’miyya; bissara — fava beans have given rise to iconic dishes across the Middle East. Egyptian cuisine is unimaginable without them. They’ve been a staple in the region for about eight thousand years, and were one of the…
* Fresh peas are delightful. They are bursts of green, garden-tasting goodness, immensely better the moment they are picked than even a day or two later. Peas can be snacked on raw out of the pod, simmered in cream, tossed…
One of the great joys of eating seasonal, local food is the unabashed, seam-bursting happiness of eating something you haven’t seen since the last harvest. It’s the kind of excitement which comes from deprivation – food is always tastier when…
(image credit: giggul371) Shavuot is best known as the holiday which commemorates the bestowal of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. It is also the celebration of the harvest of the Bikkurim, the first fruits of the year. Pomegranates and…
