Hamutal Dotan

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.

Homemade Strawberry Jam Recipe

Hamutal goes strawberry picking and shows us how to can our jam like a locavore

A Warm, Sunny Earth Day Kind of Dessert: A Recipe for Lemon Curd

Happy Earth Day! (Though technically yesterday, most of Israel is celebrating today.) Celebrations require desserts, we’re quite convinced, and since the citrus season is winding down we thought we’d talk about our absolute favourite thing to do with a lemon. Not lemonade (though we’re fans of that too) but lemon curd: smooth, custardy, tangy, riding […]

Greening Your Breakfast: A Recipe for Winter Muffins

This is about the time of year where we are all just about fed up. The weather is by turns glum, stormy, angry, and generally ill-tempered, there’s little of the new season‘s growth to enjoy yet, and reserves of patience are at their annual low. A freshly baked batch of muffins may not dispel all […]

Kibbeh Recipe Recipe

Kibbeh is one of the stalwarts of Levantine cooking, and comes in as many versions as there are towns or people who make it.

Taking on Middle Eastern Classics: Baba Ganoush Recipe

Last week with our recipe for the Syrian dip muhamarra, we embarked on a perilous culinary adventure: trying to recreate authentic versions of classic Middle Eastern dishes. Why perilous? Well, my grandmother and grandfather couldn’t, between the two of them, agree on the best way to make charoset. Trying to come up with a recipe […]

Muhamarra: the addictive red pepper and walnut spread from Syria

Winter cooking is often pantry cooking. When the rain is coming down at a 45° angle, the last thing most of us want to do is brave the elements to make a grocery run. It’s handy to have a stash of recipes that rely on what you already have in the cupboard – and conversely, […]

Dianne Onstad's Whole Foods Companion, A Charming and Chock-Full Book

With winter upon us, now is the perfect time to get cozy with a pile of books. The latest in our eco-reads book review series is a great food and cooking reference – the Whole Foods Companion. Whole Foods Companion is a dip-your-toe-in book rather than a cover-to-cover book: it’s great for delving into when […]

Making the Season Last: Tomato Confit Recipe

Tomatoes are still, mercifully, quite readily available. Though we hate to think about it, this won’t always be the case. In just a few short weeks, tomatoes—at least the good, locally grown varieties—will be gone on winter hiatus. It always seems to come too soon, and it always somehow seems to take us by surprise. […]

Carlo Petrini's Slow Food, A Review

Slow Food has been garnering lots of attention lately, with an international convention in San Francisco in September and another in Italy just this week. It seems like the perfect time to pull out the Slow Food anthology, this week’s entry in our eco-reads review series. ‘Slow Food’ is one of those elusive yet still […]

Vegetarian-Friendly Protein: Quinoa Salad Dinner Recipe

Quinoa isn’t just for Passover anymore. Revered by the Incas as sacred, quinoa looks like a grain but is actually a plant related to beets, chard, and spinach. Its tiny seeds cook up into fluffy, nutty goodness in fifteen minutes, and can be used in any number of ways. Quinoa is fantastic for vegetarians and […]

What to Do With All That Whey – Make Biscuits!

As you may recall, we recently delved into the wonderful world of cheese-making. And when we did, we told you to save up all that leftover whey, as we’d be featuring it in a recipe sometime soon. Soon, dear cooks and bakers, has arrived. Now, what if you don’t happen to have embarked on the […]

How to Make Your Own Ricotta

Ricotta is a summer cheese. And as the weather warms up, Jewish people start to think about the Hebrew holiday of Shavuot – 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 bit, the planet be much […]

Rosh Hashanah recipe for pomegranate-nut Salad

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 have family recipes and traditional fare serving as the staples for dinner tonight. Far be […]

Pickling 101 – Vinegared Cucumber Salad Recipe

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 to make freshly harvested vegetables last as long as they possibly can. We’ve already explored […]

Have a Healthy Ramadan: Greening Your Fast

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 a bit of research into the best ways to keep your eating healthy and earth-friendly […]