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israeli food

Sourdough Chard and Feta Hand Pies

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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.

A Jew Cooks Palestinian, Potato Edition

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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.

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve Had Two Food Fantasies

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Hi Folks.  This is my first post on Foodaism since leaving the Jewish Journal.  It took a while to get the stand-alone site up and running.  Hope you’ll sign up for the newsletter so we can keep in touch.

I’ve had two food fantasies in my life.  Today I met the man who fulfilled them both.

Chef Nir Dagan of Food Travelers food truck in Venice, CA

One fantasy has always been to own a small restaurant at the north end of Jaffo, perched on a promenade just above the Mediterranean Sea.  I’ve sat for hours in those cafes where Tel Aviv bleeds into the ancient port town.  In summer I’d order watermelon and feta, and in winter a bean soup and a beer.   And I’d think, how terrible could it be to spend each day here, cooking for the Jews, for the Arabs, for the Christian pilgrims and the windsurfers and the hipsters and tourists?

Nir Dagan did that.  For several years he ran Casa Nova, a cafe overlooking the sea  exactly where mine was supposed to be.

Fantasy number two: I’ve always wanted to open a small place serving food I love to eat, just a block or two from our home in Venice.  I’d wake up, have a coffee, go to work and cook for the neighbors, the tourists, the artists and Snapchatters, not to mention friends and family.

It turns out Nir Dagan did that too.

Just today I walked past a small yellow food truck parked a short walk from our home. I’d passed it before over the past month and glanced at the menu. It read “Sloppy Joe. Cuban Sandwich…” and I kept going.

Today I slowed down.

The sign actually read, “Sloppy Joo. Juban Sandwich.”

I read more: “Fatoush Salad. Eggplant and Egg Pita. Antichucos + Inka Cola.”

A man came out from the truck.  Stocky, young, with a wide friendly face.

“You have any questions?”

“Is that Eggplant and Egg like sabich?”

Yes, he said, it’s exactly like the Iraqi sandwich with hard-boiled egg, fried eggplant and tahini.  Except the eggplant chunks are caramelized, the egg is perfectly runny, and along with the tahini, there is a green chimmichuri sauce.  Nine bucks.  I devoured it.  You’ve seen on “What Phil’s Having” when Phil Rosenthal tastes something incredible and his eyes go wide like he saw a ghost?   This was a four-ghost sandwich.

Eggplant and Egg Sandwich

Nir told me he was born and raised in Israel, just north of Tel Aviv. He went to the Florida Culinary Academy, lived and travelled in South America for seven years, then opened his restaurant where mine was supposed to be in Jaffo.

After a falling out with his partners, he remembered two things. His fantasy was to own a food truck, which are illegal in Israel.  And when he graduated FCI, to celebrate he took himself out to eat at Charlie Trotter’s.  After one of the best meals of his life, Nir was invited by Chef Trotter  to tour the kitchen.

And Nir told me the chef offered this advice: “Before I cook I always ask myself this question ‘What do I want to eat now?'”  That stayed with Nir.

“That’s what I do,” Nir said. “I won’t sell anything I wouldn’t want to eat myself.”

The “Jubano Sandwich” is turkey, chicken, Swiss cheese and a horseradish sauce, pressed between a roll like a Cubano, but with no ham.  The “Sloppy Joo” uses chopped corned beef.  The “Loaded Corn Pancakes” are Nir’s version of Venezuelan cachapas.  The menu is a roadmap of where Nir has been in his life and what he has loved to eat there, filtered through a chef’s sensibility to push, improve, transform.  Hence, chimichurri in the sabich.

The bright yellow truck is called, appropriately, Food Travelers.

The food truck menu

It’s parked in front of the Love Shack on Lincoln Blvd. The owner of the Love Shack, also an Israeli, invites Food Travelers to use his outdoor furniture as a dining patio.  It’s one block north of Venice Blvd., just across the street from the One Taste orgasmic meditation center. You think I’m joking, but this is Venice.

Nir will be open for breakfast soon, serving shakshuka.  Just like I would have.

“I’m making hummus,” Nir announced.  He pointed to a bowl of pureed garbanzo beans on the small truck counter.  “It should be ready tomorrow.”

I didn’t tell him in my fantasy restaurant there would be hummus each day, but with different toppings.

Nir continued. “Every day I’ll make something new for it,”  he said. “You know, to put on top.”

I’m being honest: I couldn’t be happier that Nir has taken on my dream cafe.  I suppose there’s room for another if I ever decide to take that immeasurable step from fantasy to reality.  But it’s late in the day.  And Nir’s hummus is almost ready.