Miriam continues the fourth part of her series on medicinal herbs from the Middle East. To keep things simple for this series, we’re only considering the medicinal properties of dried seasonings. (See parts I, II, and III here on Green…
Hungry? Run on down to your local shuk and get yourself a butternut squash. Butternut squash is still in season. Try stuffing it with quinoa, the seed that the pre-Columbian Native Americans called “mother of the grains.” With its nutty…
You won’t be able to keep these halvah-like cookies around for long. And they couldn’t be simpler to make. We never thought to use tehina in baking, but this recipe produces the most meltingly delicious cookies you can imagine. If…
Dried galingal root is a Middle East spice great for nausea and flatulence. In Mama Nazima’s Jewish-Iraqi Cuisine, author Rivka Goldman mentions that her mother cooked soup to help invalids regain strength. Well, all the recipes involve spices: curry, black…
Purim, one of the most colorful and popular holidays in Judaism (probably because it is a mitzva to get, ahem, inebriated), is coming up this Saturday evening. Colorful because it involves getting dressed up in costume, and popular because it’s…
Eggplant seems an unlikely soup ingredient. But blended with vegetable stock, herbs, and cream, the shiny purple vegetable makes a creamy soup full of Middle-Eastern flavors. Now is when eggplant is coming into season in the Middle East. In any…
There’s really no better way to get to know someone than by sitting down and sharing a meal. Sarah Melamed, plant biologist and naturalist, aims to make those connections happen by recreating recipes from all over the Middle East and the…
Fresh za’atar at Ramla Open-Air Market Chef Moshe Basson created this pungent, chunky pesto in just a few minutes, right under our eyes. According to Wikipedia, Za’atar (Arabic: زعتر, also romanized as zaatar, za’tar, zatar, zatr, zahatar or satar) is…
A culinary heritage centuries old is preserved in this cookbook. This is a Jewish collector’s cookbook. It contains 100 old-fashioned recipes that evolved out of the centennial Jewish presence in Iraq, plus a synopsis of Jewish history there. Through the…
I’d always admired people who eat wild vegetables. No water gets pumped and no gas is drilled to get those plants to the market. But as an immigrant without a horticultural bent, I needed guidance. Fortunately I had expert teachers: …
