While the Jewish new year is a time for contemplation and prayer, there’s nothing sparse about the festivities. Families gather together to feast in the late morning and again in the evening, after blessing the day with wine. The family cook often starts feeling overwhelmed with the quantity of cooking that takes place. To help plan […]
Celebrate a sweet new year with this Jewish recipe for honey cookies, eaten during Rosh Hashannah holidays.
In the Middle East, grilled meat is king. This recipe calls for marinating lamb cubes overnight in pomegranate molasses, a sweet, thick reduction of pomegranate juice. We have a recipe for it here. Then it takes only 15 minutes to cook. Have ready rice, a variety of salads, hummous to spread on your challah, and […]
Drinking beer is definitely more of a Western tradition than one of the East where wine is preferred, but beer has its place where tradition allows. Miriam has covered beer expos in Israel where there is a rise in boutique breweries like the Dancing Camel and a demand for organic beers. My mom always said […]
So many ways to eat sensual summery figs. Here are 5 ways.
Tunisian flavors come together deliciously in a salad of charred, chopped vegetables.
With a solar cooker, you can set a pot down outside and come back later to find lunch ready. We’ve only just begun harnessing the non-stop, 800 trillion-watt light bulbs’ worth of energy that sweeps our planet. The move towards solar energy is growing. In large areas of China, India, Africa, North America and the […]
Try something a little different than plain-old tomato sauce on your pasta. Try tahini! On my first night CouchSurfing in Haifa, Israel, in the cozy apartment of a young married couple, the three of us sat down, along with a local friend, at the table on the balcony to eat dinner – which, surprisingly, the […]
Called polo in Syria, try this refreshing Middle East mint lemonade to beat the heat. Like our cooling vegan cold almond milk and Turkish aryan yogurt drink, this herbal lemonade cools the body and soothes heated spirits.And it’s not only good, it’s good for you. Mint is packed with vitamin C, which helps you withstand […]
Homey, comforting and light, these crepes of 1000 holes make a delicious start to a Ramadan iftar (break-fast) meal. As Arwa pointed out, what a body wants after a day’s fast is light, nutritious food (see Arwa’s list of links to our favorite Iftar recipes). Carbs and something sweet suit the bill, giving that initial, […]
From pest to the palate? Try cooking some jellyfish with a “flip flop” texture. Nice try, but there are no culinary awards for stir-fried jellyfish just yet. Still, if you want to cook it, here’s a method from the Israeli food blog Ptitim (Hebrew), written by a cook who goes only by “Gal.” With all […]
This refreshing soup fits the menu perfectly when temperatures soar and you want a diet without meat: A quick historical note is in place here. The Jewish month of Av begins on a dark note. The preceding three weeks in Tammuz see a slowdown of joyful activities, as Jews remember the breach of Jerusalem’s defences […]
Rich spices and heavy wintertime comfort food: this is what often springs to mind when people think of recipes from the Middle East and North Africa. But with temperatures in parts of the region rising to 50 degrees Celsius in the shade, who wants to eat rich dishes that end in a food coma? Not […]
Hamutal goes strawberry picking and shows us how to can our jam like a locavore
Pilgrims from Uzbekistan brought Ruz Bukhari with them long ago, as they traveled to Mecca and Medina. We're sure they traveled by camel caravan, but nowadays pilgrims make their haj in all kinds of ways, even by bike. Along the way, the recipe infiltrated borders, as recipes tend to do, with Pakistan, Afganistan, and Arabic countries, eventually reaching Yemen.