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palestinian food

Sourdough Chard and Feta Hand Pies

April 22, 2023 by Rob Eshman

A chard and feta hand pie made from sourdough starter.

If you ever come across a recipe that instructs you to feed your sourdough starter by first discarding a portion of it, throw out the recipe. How wasteful is it to toss off perfectly good flour, especially the fancy organic Central Milling stuff I buy from Kings Roost? Instead, I make a quick pita-like dough from it, which I keep around either in the refrigerator or freezer to make pizza, pita or, in this case, hand pies.

I haven’t measured out the precise amount of flour I need for turning starter into pita dough; I go by feel, and you can too. You’ll know it’s right when the dough starts to come together in your hands, and after a few good kneads you have a soft, smooth mass. It’s a good feeling. Try it once:

Start by taking 200 grams of sourdough starter and plopping it in a medium mixing bowl. Loosen with 100 grams of filtered water. Add a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of good olive oil, and stir well. Now add flour, mixing until everything comes together in a nice but somewhat shaggy ball.  Scrape it all out onto a floured surface and knead, adding more flour to create a cohesive but soft dough. Clean your bowl, smear it with olive oil, and plop the dough back in it. Cover and let rise until double. If your starter is active, this should take an hour or so in a warm place, since this dough is mostly starter.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees and place a cast iron pan, baking stone or griddle inside. Take about a pound of chopped chard and 1/2 cup finely diced onion. Saute the onion in a little olive oil until translucent, add the chard and saute until it is cooked down but still bright green. Stir in 3/4 cup of crumbled feta and some fresh ground pepper. Let cool.

Turn out your dough onto a floured work surface and separate into pieces the size of a small fist. Roll out each piece using flour as needed, until you have a circle about 1/8 – 1/4 inch thick.  Plop your filling down the center, fold over, crimp, brush with olive oil and dust with sumac or zaatar. Bake on the hot sheet or pan  for about 10 minutes, until golden.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: israeli food, palestinian food, pita, sourdough, sourdough starter

A Jew Cooks Palestinian: Sage Tea

January 8, 2019 by Rob Eshman

I first learned to make sage tea from a Jew who called himself Palestinian.

Mr. Yadeni was born in pre-state Palestine in the early 1900s. By the time I met him, he was old. He had made some money creating Israel’s first lock company in 1947, the still-going Yardeni Locks, and he lived on plot of land in Ein Kerem, in the hills of Jerusalem. He was in love with the land. As a boy he had hiked every inch of it, and in his retirement he spent hours tending to his garden and foraging. I think for him the land came before politics. It was there before the first Arab or Jew ever set foot on it, or bled on to it, and it will, God willing, be there long after we are all long gone. Yardeni showed me how to make wine from the pomegranates, zaatar spice from the wild oregano, and tea from the mint and sage.  Mint, he explained, was for summer and spring, sage for fall and winter. To this day, in LA, that’s what I do.

Not surprisingly, as I started cooking fro Palestinian cookbooks, I came across sage tea.  A recipe for int tea appears in Joudie Kalla’s Palestine on a Plate, and in The Palestinian Table, Reem Kassis features a recipe for sage tea . The key to making it is to use black tea (caffeinated or decaf) and plenty of sugar. You steep it all together a few minutes, and enjoy. Yardeni used wild sage that he picked himself. I use the stuff from my garden or, you know, the supermarket.

Even the supermarket stuff evokes for me the flavor of the Jerusalem or Galilee hills. I can’t pour myself a cup without thinking of Yardeni, sipping from his glass between puffs of his pipe (he smoked an old Shalom briar, another pre-state product). I had many glasses of sage tea with Yardeni, and even more when I’d sit the cafes of East Jerusalem in winter. On the street leading into the Old City from Damascus Gate, Palestinian women in heavy embroidered black dresses still sit beside piles of sage, selling it for just that purpose.

The Israelis and Palestinians I love most are like Yardeni,  the ones who love and appreciate the land they live on. The more distance I get from covering the day to day craziness of Israeli politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the more I focus just on the land and the foods, the simpler the solution seems to me: Just share it.

Its easy to get caught up in the weeds of the conflict. Try focusing on the herbs.

See my video on Instagram @foodaism.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Joudie Kalla, palestinian food, reem kassis, sage tea, yardeni

A Jew Cooks Palestinian, Potato Edition

December 27, 2018 by Rob Eshman

For dinner last Sabbath, I cooked mostly Palestinian.

I made potatoes roasted with lemon, dill and scallions, green beans stewed with olive oil, tomato and onions, and meatballs in a tamarind tomato sauce, all from cookbooks by Joudie Kalla.   (I also served a smoke-roasted chicken with lemon, fresh bay leaves and garlic, arugula salad, and store-bought babka, because babka goes with everything.)

Potatoes with Lemon, Scallion and Dill

The potato dish is from Baladi, Kalla’s second cookbook.   I used large yellow potatoes without peeling them. The genius of the recipe is that you roast the potatoes with half the herbs, lemon juice and a little flour until they are shiny and crisp. Then, just before serving, you toss them with the other half of the herbs. The flavors of the cooked and raw herbs hit you in alternating bites. There’s a lot going on in this dish, for potatoes.

The green beans, from Kalla’s first cookbook, Palestine on a Plate, are cooked until tender, then added to a mixture of tomato, garlic, chili and onions, which are sautéed in many glugs of olive oil. The recipe calls for two heads of garlic, chopped. I checked and rechecked to make sure Kalla didn’t mean two cloves. She didn’t. The acid in the tomato sauce stops the beans from overcooking, and all that oil, garlic, stewed onions and chili gives them a meaty depth and richness. It’s pure vegan porn.

Green Beans with Olive Oil, Tomato and Onion

For the meatballs, from the Baladi cookbook, I substituted ground turkey and beef for lamb. (As a recovering goat owner, I still get queasy eating their close cousins. That of course is a big problem when you’re cooking your way through a Palestinian cookbook. So sue me.) The real flavor here comes from the six caramelized onions and the tamarind-tomato sauce, which after a short simmer completely suffuses the meat and turns the whole dish into something rich and exotic. Never mind lamb: you could make this with eggplant and it would still be thrilling.

Meatballs with Tamarind-Tomato Sauce

I’ve been trying to describe to friends the power of these cookbooks. Then, this past weekend, I came across this quote from Edward Said, which accompanied an exhibit on refugees by the Chinese dissident artist Ai Wei Wei.

“The pathos of exile is the loss of contact with the solidity and satisfaction of earth,” Said wrote.

Immediately I thought of Baladi. Recipe after recipe connects me with the “solidity and satisfaction” of the land. From the unholy mess of politics and violence in Israel and Palestine, Kalla zeros in on what is pure, beloved and enduringly beautiful to most of the people who live there, as well as to those who have left.

Wouldn’t it be nice if one day the Jews and Arabs fighting over that bit of earth figure out a way to share its many satisfactions? Here’s the truth, and it’s a truth beyond words, beyond history, beyond argument: If they all really wanted to find a way to share, they could.

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: israeli food, Joudie Kalla, palestinian food, palestinian recipes

A Jew Cooks Palestinian, Egg Edition

December 16, 2018 by Rob Eshman

Baba’s soft-boiled eggs with yogurt, chili and lemon

I started cooking from Joudie Kalla’s Baladi cookbook by making a more complicated dish—meat stuffed grape leaves with tomatoes and potatoes—then I moved on to a simpler cabbage salad. This dish is even easier than that—eggs with yogurt, chili, olive oil and lemon. Joudie writes that it is her father’s favorite breakfast, and I can see why. The hot, soft boiled eggs melt into the yogurt, and the resulting fondue-like blend gets a jolt from fresh lemon and chili. That’s a lot of flavor before 9 am.

For those of you who’ve been hesitant to try one of these recipes— maybe you think the whole thing is a irredentist Palestinian plot to undermine the Jewish state, or an imperialist Israeli plot to get you to appropriate Palestinian culture, or, you now, maybe you just hate cooking– this is a good dish to try. You can make it in 5 minutes. It captures the flavors of the land, and it really does go well with strong black coffee.

A few recipe notes: You can make this with labne, Greek yogurt or strained regular yogurt.  you can dust with some za’atar. I’ve also made a version adding a small scoop of warm garbanzo beans and a tomato-harissa sauce– a perfect brunch meal.

Next up: dessert. The Times of London just named Baladi as Best Cookbook of 2018. Congratulations/Mazel Tov/Mabrouk to Joudie Kalla—it’s time to celebrate!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baladi, Joudie Kalla, palestinian food

A Jew Cooks Palestinian, Cabbage Salad Edition

December 12, 2018 by Rob Eshman

Cooking my way through Joudie Kalla’s Baladi cookbook, I found myself hooked on the least likeliest of recipes: cabbage salad.

The Arabic name is also the description: Salatet malfouf bil toum wa na’na’ , or Cabbage Salad with Cumin and Mint. There’s not much more too it, just olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.  You shred the vegetables, add the other ingredients, scrunch them up to soften and blend, and that’s it.  The fragrance and flavors are powerful, transporting.  And it’s just cabbage.

Cabbage, mint and cumin salad

I brought a massive bowl to a Hanukkah potluck. The hostess texted me the next day. “I need the recipe for that Persian salad,” she wrote.

No problem, I texted back, except it’s not Persian, it’s Palestinian.

Understandable, right? “Palestinian” is just not a category in our food consciousness. Israeli food is the rage, thanks to Yotam Ottolenghi, Sami Tamimi, Alon Shaya and Michael Solomonov (and their under-sung predecessor Erez Komorovsky). And none of these chefs would deny or obscure the fact that their ingredients and inspirations often come from Palestinian kitchens. But because their dishes are filtered through an Israeli or American sensibility and nationality, the label “Israeli” sticks. They are the market makers, and the market makers get to decide on marketing.

(I could go off on a tangent here about how history and culture have led Jews to excel at marketing as a survival mechanism, and how that explains, among other things, how hummus could exist as a staple of Middle East culture for thousands of years but not until Israelis began making, promoting and marketing it did it become the peanut butter of the West, identified as “Israeli” though it long pre-exited the Jewish state. Same with Jaffa oranges, which were actually created by Arab agronomists in Ottoman-era Palestine. But those are for other posts.)

Joudie’s books correct the idea that there is an Israeli cuisine – which there is – but no Palestinian cuisine, which there is and has been as well. Baladi roots many ingredients and dishes in the land and culture before Israel came into existence. Nowhere does Joudie Kalla make the argument that Jews didn’t live in the land prior to that, or that there aren’t a myriad of influences on the cuisine – European, Ottoman, her own creativity, etc. All she is saying is this is what Palestinians have been cooking and eating, these are the foods of tradition and, for many Palestinians living outside Israel, of memory.

So the books are a celebration and reaffirmation of Palestinian culture, which can be revelatory to American Jews whose views on Palestinian culture begin and end with intifadas and Arafat.

In my case, I’ve had quite a few meals in Palestinian kitchens, shopped in Palestinian markets, and eaten in Palestinian restaurants, in Israel, the West Bank and abroad. Nope, I’m not saying some of my best friends are Palestinian. I’m saying for all my experience with Palestinian food, I still found the recipes in Baladi a revelation.

Starting with the grape leaf casserole I wrote about yesterday, and including this simple cabbage salad. I can’t wait to try more.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baladi, Joudie Kalla, palestinian food, vegetarian food

An American Jew (Me) Cooks Palestinian Food

December 11, 2018 by Rob Eshman

I’m cooking my way through Joudie Kalla’s Baladi cookbook. The latest recipe: meat-stuffed vine leaves with tomatoes and potatoes, or “Auntie Dunia’s kufta bil warak ma’batata.”

The fragrance—cumin, onion, tomato, grape leaves, parsley—immediately transported me to the land from which it comes—what Palestinians call Palestine and Israelis call Israel. How is it possible, you wonder, to write about that over-promised land and its people and not get lost in anger and argument? How do you celebrate your culture without negating another culture? How do you get people to see you have a culture beyond what they read in the most violent or depressing headlines? Kalla has figured out the answer: write a cookbook.

Baladi, like Kalla’s earlier book, Palestine On a Plate, shows the beauty of the land, the culture, the food and the people. She looks at the land not as a battleground, but as a blessing.

For this dish, instead of lamb, I used a combination of ground turkey and chicken. (You could easily make a vegan version, using chopped sauteed mushrooms instead of meat.) The meat is flavored with onion, parsley and cumin, then wrapped inside grape leaves that you first boil. When it cooks, the potatoes gets crisp and chip-like, the onions and tomatoes melt and form a cumin-scented sauce with the fat  and olive oil. On the side I served a thin tahini sauce. It was delicious, and beyond that it  looked delicious, something most people haven’t seen or knew little about– like, you know, Palestinian culture.

Next up: Cabbage Salad with Cumin and Mint.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baladi, Joudie Kalla, palestinian food

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These #leeks… bubbling away in plenty of olive o These #leeks… bubbling away in plenty of olive oil, salt and pepper, covered for a bit, then uncovered… these leeks. 

#gardening #gardentotable #veganrecipes
Never been much of a #Purim guy but when @rabbinao Never been much of a #Purim guy but when @rabbinaomilevy asked me to make enough dough for 200 #hamantaschen — that’s *my* celebration. I added fresh vanilla and some grated 🍋 rind to #Breads Bakery sturdy recipe. (And how dependable is my 31 year old @kitchenaidusa bucking and groaning under the load but mixing it up like a champ?) Happy Purim! 

#jewishfood #jewishbaking #homebaking #jewsofinstagram #nashuva
For those who prefer their Purim food savory, I gi For those who prefer their Purim food savory, I give you pitataschen. Sourdough pita, baked in a hamantaschen shape, and filled with avocado and hummus or with an egg, cheese and herbs baked right in the center. The latter are a direct ripoff, I mean inspiration, of @Abulafia in Jaffo, or sambusak, or #lahmajun, or any number of similar baked savory stuffed breads. But it’s #Purim, so they’re disguised as #Jewish. 

How to? Preheat oven to 500 degrees with pizza stone or baking sheet inside. Take pita dough (@mikesolomonov cookbooks have great recipes) or store-bought pizza dough. Cut and roll to about the size of a tangerine. Roll each ball into an 8-inch circle, about 1/4 inch thick. Squeeze together sides to form a triangle, pinching each side well. Brush with olive oil. For hummus version, bake until just brown, about 8 minutes. For egg version, bake until just set, about 5 minutes. Crack egg into well, add some cheese and some chopped fresh herbs and salt. Bake until egg is set, another 5 minutes. Remove from oven. Fill empty pitataschens with hummus and avocado. Use harissa on everything. Happy Purim!

#Purimfood #jewishfood #kosherfood #kosherrecipes #jewishrecipes #middleeasternfood #foodvideos
This is my happy place. For the goat it’s just m This is my happy place. For the goat it’s just meh. 

#babygoats #goatstagram #bajacalifornia #animalrescue
Roasted cod with a cilantro crust from #Falastin:A Roasted cod with a cilantro crust from #Falastin:A Cookbook made use of all the late winter cilantro in our garden. There’s so many layers of flavor to this dish: spices, herbs, garlic, lemon, tahini, olive oil. Oh, and cod. The fish section of this important book comes with a thoughtful introduction to the way the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has impeded the once thriving Gazan fishing fleet. I love that about this book: celebrating the food without looking away from how the people who cook it struggle and cope. Also: fantastic recipes like this. #cookbook #palestine #palestinianfood #middleeasternfood #foodvideo #fishrecipes
I was driving by the Ballona wetlands preserve Sat I was driving by the Ballona wetlands preserve Saturday just as an RV caught on fire. 

For several years city officials have allowed the delicate ecosystem to become an encampment site for RVs and unhoused men and women. 

This has had dire consequences: The people there are not getting the services they need. The natural landscape, what remains of a once vast marsh and now a critical urban habitat for birds and other animals, has been trashed— needles, garbage, feces, chemicals, gasoline. 

Finally, what had been a beautiful taxpayer-funded preserve that activists fought for decades to rescue from development, is now despoiled— not because of greed, but from misguided policies, apathy and inaction. 

When @LAFD put the fire out they found a dead body in the RV, not the only body found in the preserve since 2019. 

The new mayor and the new 11th district council rep have a chance to step in, finally, and repair the damage done to the nature and the people there. #homeless #losangeles #urbanparks
Quick: make a salad using only what’s ripe in yo Quick: make a salad using only what’s ripe in your yard in #venice in January. Roast beets, section oranges, chop mint then toss with olive oil — not from the backyard (@terre_di_zaccanello). Thanks for inspiration from “Olives & Oranges” by @sarajenkins & @cooklikeafox . #backyardgarden #gardentotable #veganvideos #beganrecipes #mediterraneandiet #foodvideos @revivalrootsnursery
You gotta love Venice. At @thevenicewest down the You gotta love Venice. At @thevenicewest down the block on a random rainy Sunday night the legendary Poncho Sanchez played. Even without the perfect #mojito you gotta dance. #morecowbell #congo #latinmusic #salsa #salsadancing #ponchosanchez #livemusic #venicebeach
An illustrated reel to go with my piece in @jdforw An illustrated reel to go with my piece in @jdforward (bio link) on “Searching for Jewish Sicily.” Everywhere Naomi and I went there were faint signs of a once vibrant Jewish world. Maybe the strongest clues left of its existence are in the food… thanks to all the wonderful Sicilians we met, especially our guide in #Palermo Bianca del Bello and @joan_nathan in whose footsteps we followed. Click on link in bio to read all about it.  #jewishitaly #italianfood #sicily #jewishsicily #koshertravel #sicilia #cucinaitaliana #palermo
Another night of Hanukkah, another fried food. Ton Another night of Hanukkah, another fried food. Tonight: Sicilian caponata alla giudia. Caponata, according to many food historians, has Jewish roots. You can read about it and find the  recipe in my article from @jdforward in the bio link. The recipe, from @labna, fries the eggplant cubes in a 1/2 inch of oil until they are almost caramelized. We ate caponata at every dinner in Sicily, always prepared a bit differently. But the fried version was my favorite. Probably because… it was fried. 

#italia #sicilia #cucinaitaliana #cucinasiciliana #sicilianfood #veganrecipes #veganvideo #vegetarianvideos #kosherfood #foodvideos #chanuka #hanukkah #Hanukahfood #jewishfoodie
In Sicily, I became obsessed with these simple chi In Sicily, I became obsessed with these simple chickpea fritters, panelle. Think of stripped down, basic falafel. Of course because they’re fried I decided to make a batch for Hanukkah. Recipe in bio link. #jewishfood #palermo #sicilia #sicilianfood #italianjewish
It’s traditional to eat fried food during #hanuk It’s traditional to eat fried food during #hanukkah — why stop at latkes? Mix 250 gr flour with 500 ml seltzer, stir well.  Dip in pieces of wild fresh cod and fry in hot oil. Serve with salt and lemon. This is a Roman Jewish recipe for fried baccalà. My big innovation is I fry outside with a propane picnic stove so the house doesn’t, you know, stink. Tomorrow: more fried food. It’s like an advent calendar, but oily. Happy Hanukkah!!! #jewishfood #italianfood #romancooking #italianjewish
Instagram post 17996374606600557 Instagram post 17996374606600557
The instant I tasted Chef Bobo’s frico I thought The instant I tasted Chef Bobo’s frico I thought: latke! @bobowonders shared his Friulian recipe with me so I could sub out the traditional #Hanukkah potato pancake for the Italian upgrade, made with potatoes, onion and Alpine cheese. (Montasio is traditional but the smart woman @thecheesestoreofbeverlyhills told me I could use piave instead and Bobo agreed. Swiss works too). You can make these in the skillet (my first try was a bit messy) or do as Bobo does @thefactorykitchen_dtla : form them in ramekins to make restaurant-fancy versions. The easy recipe is in my article @jdforward in the bio link. Read it, print it, make it for at least one Hanukkah meal. 

BTW if you don’t celebrate Hanukkah you’ll love them too. Grazie Bobo. 

#italianfood #hanukkah #latkes #italianjewish #jewishfood #kosherfood #foodvideo #friuliveneziafood #friuliveneziagiulia #italianrestaurant #cucinaitaliana
Wow, Chef Ana Sortun fixed kugel. Take a look: cri Wow, Chef Ana Sortun fixed kugel. Take a look: crispy threads of kataif pastry enclosing a filling of soft cheese, pureed butternut squash and golden raisins, topped with pomegranate and pistachio. I never liked sweet kugel until I tasted this reimagined version, part of the “8 Nights of Hanuka” menu at Birdie G’s in Santa Monica. Also delicious: Sortun’s olive simit stuffed with fresh goat cheese and another dish of deeply roasted parsnips dressed with caramelized onions and cabbage and shards of basturma. But that kugel….

#jewishfood #hanukkah #chanuka #latkes #kugel
Weeknight dinner at da Ettore in Naples. Naomi cho Weeknight dinner at da Ettore in Naples. Naomi chose eggplant parmigiana and a perfect pizza. When I stumbled over my order, the old waiter said, “I’ll tell you what you’re getting,” and ordered for me: fried zucchini blossoms and spaghetti with clams. The tables filled, but people kept coming, so the old waiter just set out more tables in front of someone else’s store. Then a minstrel came by and music broke out. Fast forward a month and I’m watching Howard Stern interview Bruce Springsteen, who explained it all. “I’m Southern Italian, Naples,” Springsteen said. “There’s a lot of innate music ability for one reason or another in Southern Italians.” 

#naplesrestaurants #italianmusic #italianfood @Howardstern #brucespringsteen #pizzanapolitana #cucinanapolitana @daettore @springsteen
Fried ricotta turnovers — Cassatedde di Ricotta Fried ricotta turnovers — Cassatedde di Ricotta — are a specialty of Grammatico bakery in Erice, in Sicily. The delicate dough hides a creamy, not too sweet filling, a comfort food version of cannoli. 

The recipe is in the book “Bitter Almonds,” which tells the remarkable story of Maria Grammatico’s life. Maria was sent to an austere orphanage at age 11, where the nuns used the children as free labor. “I put in a long apprenticeship at the San Carlo: for the first three years I did nothing but scrape the pans. They had to be perfectly clean; if I made a mistake I got a rap on the knuckles.”

When Maria left she had learned enough to open her own shop in Erice, which is now famous, packed with people. The pastries, cookies and marzipan candies I tried there were exemplary. 

But my favorite were these ricotta turnovers. Similar but lesser versions turned up on most Sicilian breakfast buffets.  Anyone know where to get them in LA? NY? 

#italianfood #erice #sicilianfood #sicily #italianbaking #pastry
Same dude, but now the cow has a T-shirt. #mercato Same dude, but now the cow has a T-shirt. #mercatoballarò #palermo
We first had these Sicilian “Esse” cookies at We first had these Sicilian “Esse” cookies at a Panificio Campanella in Monreale, outside Palermo. I like having them to dip in my coffee, so after we ate all the ones we brought home, I searched for a recipe. This one, from shelovesbiscotti.com, comes very close to what we had in the old country — simple, flavored only with lemon peel and a whiff of good olive oil. Enjoy! #italianbaking #kosherrecipes #biscotti #cookieporn #bakingvideos #foodvideos @PanificioCampanella #monreale
“The best bread in Italy is in France,” @stanl “The best bread in Italy is in France,” @stanleytucci writes in his food memoir @Taste (by the way, I did *not* see that knockout last chapter coming). In Sicily, that’s true of the dry chunks of plain white bread most servers plop on your table. But on the last day of our trip we walked into a bakery in Monreale, outside Palermo, and discovered Sicilian bread. Monreale is famous with tourists for its cathedral, but with locals for its small, round loaves, made with local semolina flour. Just across from the cathedral Naomi spotted a bakery opening after siesta, Panificio Campanella.

The young bakerwas dumping hot round loaves behind a display case. He broke one open and offered me a bite. It was a deep yellow-orange tint, with a nutty fragrance and a coarse, earthy texture. I had to see the flour. First he showed me a picture of the ancient Sicilian variety of wheat grains on his iPhone: “Native Sicilian hard wheat,” he said. Then he took me to the back and reached in to a sack, pulling out a fine yellow powder, which those same deep brown grains had somehow become.

I was using my pathetic excuse for Italian, but I definitely heard him ask me if I wanted it plain or a cunzatu. “Cunzatu" was the only Sicilian word I’d learned, because after three days in Palermo,I’d seen those sandwiches everywhere. He split a fresh loaf open and filled it with the ingredients: a deep red slice of tomato, salty cheese, a couple sardine filets, olive oil, dried oregano, salt and lots of pepper. He handed it over and I crunched down. Wow. The best bread in Italy, turns out, is in Monreale.

#italianfood #sicilianfood #sicily #sicilytravel #palermofood #palermo #stanleytucci #cunzatu #monreale #italianbaking #italianbread
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