Food

Farm To Table Israel is transforming the traditional dining experience into a hands-on journey.

This week, Israel’s precision-fermentation milk from Remilk is finally appearing on supermarket shelves. Staff members have been posting photos in Hebrew, smiling, tasting, and clearly enjoying the moment — not because it’s science fiction, but because it tastes like the real thing.

Researchers investigated whether carrot side streams, generated during the production of natural food colorants, could support edible fungi growth. After screening 106 fungal strains, they identified Pleurotus djamor (pink oyster mushroom) as the most efficient, producing strong biomass growth and high protein content when cultivated on carrot residues.

This is a luxurious recipe that requires a taste for exotic flavors, and willingness to see it through its stages. It’s based on the...

Dragon fruit is also known by several other names depending on where you encounter it. In much of the U.S. and Latin America it’s commonly called pitaya or pitahaya, terms you’ll often see used interchangeably with dragon fruit on market labels. Botanically, the fruit comes from a cactus sometimes referred to as night-blooming cereus, a nod to the plant’s dramatic flowers that open after dark. Older or poetic names like strawberry pear, belle of the night, or queen of the night still appear occasionally, though today dragon fruit and pitaya are the names most shoppers recognize.

Balat is not a neighborhood you would visit in the standard tour to Istanbul. If you want a real taste of Istanbul and the people who live there, wander around a smaller craftsman, artisan, coffee shops and second hand clothing shops on cobblestone streets in the neighborhood of Balat.

Qatayef - also spelled katayif or qatya’if - is traditionally eaten at Ramadan (get our Ramadan vegetarian ideas here), but it’s a treat anytime. In fact, it’s a treat that’s gone through history. A recipe for qatayif appears in a tenth century Arabic cookbook by the writer Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq, who compiled recipes going back to the eighth and ninth centuries. People have been eating qatayif for a very long time.

What makes Souk El Tayeb in Lebanon remarkable is not only its insistence on local, seasonal produce, but its belief that dignity and sustainability must go hand in hand. Farmers are paid fairly. Villages are uplifted. Traditional recipes are kept alive not as nostalgia but as knowledge systems: real food is carbon-light, waste-free, and is adapted to the land.

Winter is citrus season, and the markets are full of golden oranges. Don’t even try to resist them. What could be more heavenly than the sweetness of a good orange? As juice, in salads, cooked with chicken or fish, or eaten out of hand, oranges are delicious, and provide a good hit of vitamin C as well.

Sheep, goat, and buffalo milk create some of the world’s most flavorful cheeses. And if you are going an extra step and can find it, camel milk cheese might be one to try.

Even meat labeled organic may contain injected saline, because FSIS lists salt and water as organic. The FSIS allows selling injected meat as “natural” and “fresh” unless the added solution changes the product’s nature in ways that require different labeling. If you want to make absolutely sure that product is free of added salt and water, look for a statement on the label reading “no artificial ingredients,” “minimally processed,” or similar.

For now, the symbolic impact is huge. “Reinventing dairy by removing cows from the equation” was once a science-fiction idea. With Canada’s green light, it’s officially a market reality — and the race to define the future of milk has entered a new phase.

From Rabbi Shimon’s cave to a global marketplace hungry for sustainable nutrition, carob’s revival reminds us that sometimes the future of food grows from the oldest roots of all.

Yes, pea pod wine is a real thing, an old-fashioned, home-brewed country wine made from the leftover pods after shelling fresh peas. It is a sustainable, no-waste practice, often popular among allotment gardeners.

For an easy, luscious appetizer, wrap a semi-firm white cheese like Brie or feta in grapevine leaves and bake or grill it. It's a...