Spice

I have been craving some serious Chinese food recently.

Food with wok hai, food that is like mother's milk,
But that is not so sweet as to be mistaken for dessert.

Food that will put hair on you chest (if you are so inclined)

But I have yet to find that kind of Chinese food here in Israel. 1950's and '60's "Canadian-Chinese", or "Kantonese", everything flavoured with Osem Chinese style soy sauce, which is artificially flavoured and coloured as far as I can tell, and has no relation to naturally brewed soy sauce, or even LaChoy's lacklustre version. And everything tasting exactly the same, no matter if it is called Mandarin, Hunanese, Cantonese Szechuan, Hong Kong, Shanghai or Peking style.

And then, to add insult to injury, in order to eat pathetic pseudo-Chinese you have to take out a mortgage and still be careful to not order anything that has seafood in it. That is, of course, if the restaurant isn't Glatt Kosher…

Family legend has it that I first tasted Chinese food aged 6 weeks – when my mother fed me a sip of wonton soup. Ever since then I have been hooked. I remember going to the original Toronto Chinatown on Dundas Street. This was back in the early 70's and Sai Woo was considered to be the epitome of authentic. My father, in a generous mood, let me choose any dish on the menu, and me, aged about 8, and having been influenced by National Geographic articles written by Euell Gibbons, I chose an abalone dish. I don't remember how they cooked it or even the texture, but what I do remember is that it was tinned and that was a big disappointment. I had expected something that would taste special and worthy of National Geographic, but I could have been eating tinned clams, or textured SPAM or Dinty Moore chicken. That's what eating Chinese food here is like... a big disappointment.

Personally, my favourite dim sum treats are chicken's feet and tripe. Fat chance finding either of those here. Instead, I am assaulted by limp ravioli noodles filled with sweetened sweet potato {yes, you read right – sweetened sweet potato} doused in olive oil and spiced with dried coriander and cumin. I really don't think that this could be considered even bastardized dim sum. But then again, this is Israel, and nothing is sacred.

I digress.

I love Chinese food. Really love it. And really miss the real stuff. In desperation, I have managed to achieve almost authentic tasting Chinese food in my own home.

But I still wish I could just wander down the street and have my cravings satisfied...

Spicy Chicken with Cabbage and Noodles
This is flexible and you can play with the quantities to suit your taste and the number of guests {I made enough for 2 and I love spicy food}. Just make sure that you don't overload your wok and make sure it stays very, very hot.

• Egg noodles, blanched and tossed with oil to keep from sticking then allowed to drip dry
• Peanut oil or corn oil
• 1 inch ginger sliced into very thin match sticks
• 3 cloves garlic smashed and sliced very thin
• 5 Green onions sliced into 1 inch pieces.
• 1 star anise
• 10 tiny dried bird chilis
• 1 tsp whole Szechuan peppercorns
• 2 tbsp dried shrimp
• Sesame oil
• 3 tbsp {approx} dark soy
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp hot sriracha sauce
• 1 tbsp cornstarch or ricestarch
• 3 tbsp Xiao Xing wine or sherry
• 2 boneless chicken thighs, thinly sliced, sprinkled with a generous grind of black pepper
• 1/4 red cabbage thinly sliced
  You can also add bean sprouts, very thin matchstick carrots, mangetouts, or almost any other vegetable that you like, just so long as they are cut to cook extremely quickly, this was just what I had on hand
• Fresh hot red pepper – to taste –
  Mine was really hot - I used 1/2 of a 4 inch one that was the size of a medium carrot

Mix the starch, sugar, wine or sherry, soy and sriracha sauces together with a little bit of water.

Heat some peanut oil in a wok until it just starts to smoke, then throw in about 1/3 of the ginger and garlic, swirl it around the wok and then throw in the noodles and give a quick toss. Let the wok regain heat and then toss the noodles again. Basically you want the noodles to start getting a bit browned, and even lightly scorched and crispy in places. Use chopsticks or forks to help separate the noodles. When the noodles have lots of crispy, browned bits, throw in half of the green onions and a small splash of sesame oil, toss around to mix thoroughly and then put onto a warmed serving plate and keep warm in the oven.

Heat some more peanut oil in the wok until it just starts to smoke, then throw in the anise, Szechuan and dried peppers, swirl around until they get toasty. If you like spice leave the chilis and Szechuan peppers in the oil, but if you like your food on the milder side, scoop them out now. Add the dried shrimps and then the rest of the ginger and garlic, swirl around again and then throw in the chicken. DO NOT STIR.

After the chicken starts to turn a bit brown, give it a quick stir and wait until the chicken looks almost cooked. Throw in the starch/soy sauce mixture and stir thoroughly, throw in the cabbage and toss again, then cover for a minute. Toss again, then add some sesame oil, the rest of the green onions and the fresh hot pepper {saving some for decoration}. Toss one final time, and then tip out onto the waiting noodles. Sprinkle with the remaining green onion and fresh hot pepper.

Serve with cold beer and a smile.

A Birthday Party

Well, birthday parties aren't what they used to be...

Nowadays, they come stocked with dj's and mobile menageries, professional face painters, bouncy castles and more chemicals than you can shake a stick at (in the form of candies, chips, snacks and pop.

I feel my age, and older, when I go to a child's birthday party.
Because they make me remember what it was like to be small...

When I was young enough to go to birthday parties that were taken seriously, the entertainment was homegrown all the way. Pin the tail on the donkey, hot potato, blind man's bluff, musical chairs. Admittedly my family did things a bit differently. We were given the most amazing scavenger hunts to go on, with my parents hiding elaborate clues, complete with hand drawn pictures and maps, arrows chalked on the street and on walls, and balloons peeking from between the leaves of the apple tree.

I don't remember the final prize, but I do remember the hunt for clues. A flock of little, screaming, giggling girls running from tree to tree, lamp post to lamp post, looking under rocks and through post slots, racing each other through the neighbours' yards to see who could find the next clue. And when it was found, we would all gather around trying to figure out what the clue meant. It was so exciting.

And then I grew up and the wide eyed innocence of youth became something that was not cool to have. Of course, now I know better, and wish I could revert to that time of unconditional belief in everything. Where there was good and evil and everything was cut and dried, black and white. There were no shadows then, except for the long evening shadows of mid-summer, telling us that bedtime was soon to come and that a bedtime story with a happy ending would be our just desserts for existing.

Nowadays, like most adults, I live vicariously, enjoying watching joy light up the face of a child as a grubby hand reaches out for a heart shaped marshmallow. Or the unashamed participation in a puppet play, yelling at the hero that the villain was just behind the curtain, hands partly covering eyes in anxious anticipation of what was to come.

Or the tightly screwed up eyes as the all important wish is made before the candles on the homemade birthday cake are blown out.

If I could remake just one wish, what would it be?

I wish I could regain the feeling of not having a care in the world and being absolutely, supremely confident that everybody loved me just for being.

Not: just for being me.
Just for being.
There is a difference...

But as we all know, you can't tell anyone your wish or
It won't come true...

Oh well.

Disclosure

This is one of my favourite things...

Passionfruit by any other name would still taste as sweet.

In fact, when I was growing up, I knew them as grenadilla and we would occassionally get teeny tiny little cans of pulp from South Africa. These were cherished and saved until needed to make the perfect fruit salad. My grandmother used to say that fruit salad without grenadilla was like an egg without salt or a man without a moustache. My grandmother had very firm ideas about certain things. But she was definitely right - passionfruit "finishes" a fruit salad.

Now I am lucky enough to live in a country where these are easily available (especially if you have friends with a tenacious vine). So to make a divine curd filling for a sponge cake I use de-seeded passionfruit pulp instead of most of the lemon juice and watch peoples eyes light up.

And sometimes I am lucky enough to find maracuja concentrate sold at grocery stores with large South American clientelle. Just add a splash to soda water and enjoy a fizzy passionfruit drink that is thirst quenching, delicious and marvellously exotic.

Passionfruit, no matter by what name they are called, are one of lifes most amazing fruits. I will eat them any way I can get them... instead of eggs for breakfast, or cracked over a bowl of vanilla icecream - heaven!

I've Got Chutzpah

What the heck is chutzpah? you ask...

Well, it is posting a picture twice, but I have my reasons.

I decided that it was time for me to participate in another blogger event, and this time I chose DMBLGIT. What that translates into is : Does My Blog Look Good In This, which is being hosted over at SpittoonExtra.

I say chutzpah as well, because this is a food photo thing and well, the mystery creature above hasn't been styled or tinted or manipulated in any way, except if you call peeling a pomello manipulation. But personally, I thought it was a really sexy photo - au naturel, you could say, and looking exceptionally edible in a weird squidgy sort of way.

In the meantime, I haven't been remiss about blogging - for some reason I couldn't access BloggerB at all yesterday and so I threw up my hands in frustration and went to bed at a reasonable time for a change (that has happened less and less since I started blogging, and I have a feeling that I might not be alone in this).

Tonight I was mudding. I now have an almost completed casserole - it just lacks handles, a very funky bowl, and the bottom half of a half-sized casserole that I think will be perfect for making The Bread - taller and narrower. Also perfect for making small stews for 4, baked potatoes, or to use as a tureen for soup.

I love playing with mud,

it was always my favourite childhood pastime.

I guess I haven't yet grown up yet!

Friday's at the Carmel Market

I love Friday's!

I think I may have mentioned that before.

This past Friday was no exception. The only difference was that I was very tired, not having recovered from Night Trippin' on Wednesday night.

It didn't really help that Thursday, instead of spending the day lolling about in bed and resting, I showered (boy did I need a shower!), napped for 2 hours and then went to a pottery class to make up for the one that I had missed the night before. And if that wasn't enough, the Jaffa Festival is on (which will get a post in its own right) and so I took advantage of that and went out to dinner to Jaffa Bar, which is owned and cheffed by Nir Zook who is one of Israel's top chefs and a real character. Needless to say, I didn't get to bed early.

The Carmel Market (Shouk haCarmel) is an amazing place. Almost anything can be found here.

SistR and I started off with warm poppy seed danishes (Israeli style), to stave off any hunger pangs that might induce us to buy more than we really needed.

The fruit and vegetables are (almost) all local. Stuff grown in-country has less than 500km to travel (from north to south) and less than 150km to go at the widest point. Seeing as Tel Aviv is just about in the middle, I get really fresh produce with almost no storage and travel time. I know that in the Canada most fresh produce is shipped in from elsewhere, except in the height of summer, sometimes travelling a thousand miles or more by road before making its appearance at the supermarket. Exotica has to travel much much more than that to get to almost any western country, but it is not part of my staple diet (or budget), so I am not fussed.

This being the Middle East, olives are a big deal. Alot of people I know (Spagetti Vampire's family for example) pickle/brine their own olives. But if you don't have the time, inclination or space, you can always go to the market and get ready mades. These have no relationship to the tasteless canned California black olives. These are bitter and you can see them glistening from the oil that has seeped from them. Syrian cracked olives are small and bitter and incredibly addictive. Much less clagging than peanuts, and they don't make your lips sore like the sunflower or pumpkin seeds that are the number one snack here. They are the perfect snack to go with before dinner drinks. And if you want to customize them, that is easy and quick to do, just add some aniseed, chili flakes, slivers of fresh lemon, oregano, thyme, rosemary or anything else that strikes your fancy, stir them up and let them sit for a few hours to blend flavours.

It's the start of mango season here, so everywhere you look there are big, fat, juicy mangos just waiting to be eaten. When I was a little girl my mom would cut the mangos into slices and we would share 1 between 5 of us. Mind you this was a good few years ago, when mangos were extremely hard to come by in Toronto. I would be put into the bathtub to eat the last of the fruit off of the seed. My hands would be dripping with juice and I would pretty well be covered head to toe in the stuff, my teeth were hairy with the fibres that I had gnawed on, but the seed would have not a single speck of edible material left. After that, all my mom had to do was throw the seed into the garbage and turn on the bathwater. Mom would put me to bed clean (except for the occassional fibre, which was well and truly stuck and wouldn't come out even with dental floss) and happy. I have since mastered the art of mango eating in public, but I learned my favourite way to eat them in Cayman - wear a bathing suit and go dive into the sea immediately afterwards!

What else is in season right now? Roma tomatoes, okra, batata (sweet potatoes), the peaches and nectarines are in their last days, I saw the very first of the persimmons this week, the peppers are looking extremely plump and zesty, and lemons are always available.

My lettuce and herb guys are from a moshav (a kind of co-operative farm community where people own their own land and houses) where alot of the farmers and/or their families are hearing impaired. The mother is deaf but she reads lips and we always have great mini-conversations where she tells me everything that is going on with her grandkids. The whole family helps to run their stall at the market, and over the years I have come to know them and like them all immensely.

One of my Friday-at-the-Carmel-Market rituals is to stop off and get a fresh juice. This has usually been from an old guy with the world's filthiest looking hands. They actually aren't filthy, they are just stained from all of the carrots, oranges, grapefruit and pomegranates that he handles day in and day out. I love carrot juice, and red grapefruit juice is wonderful when they are in season, but my favourite has to be pomegranate juice. Their season is only just starting, but I couldn't resist and I got a glass freshly squeezed to sip on while I meandered. The colour was a gem-like ruby red and it smelled of pure pomegranate, but when I had my first sip I understood why he had tried to get me to have it mixed with apple juice - it was soooooo sour! I think I will have to wait for another couple of weeks before I try it again.

Another amazing thing about the market is the sheer variety of sweets that are available. From halvah (regular, vanilla, chocolate, pinenut, almond, pistachio or a really interesting variety that looks like threads that have been squished together haphazardly and is the from the Ramleh area), to gummy bears and worms and fried eggs, to liquorice whips, chocolate umbrellas, hard candies, soft candies, chocolate in all of its amazing variety with all kinds of 70%- 90% bars available, though I still haven't seen any extra special exclusive stuff like Dagobah or its ilk.

The Carmel Market is one of those places where, even after 10 years, I still feel like a tourist - I have to stop and stare at everything and I walk around with a silly grin on my face.

But then again, I seem to walk around like that most of the time anyways!

Click here for more pictures

Hot Fun in the Summer Sun

45 Degrees and having a blast!

What could be better than playing in the water on a hot summer's day?

Here in Israel there seems to be an innordinate number of waterparks relative to the overall population. Within about 30 minutes drive from downtown Tel Aviv there are at least 3 (including one in Tel Aviv proper). I guess this is a result of living in a near desert climate with sunshine most of the year. Some of them even have hotels associated with them. During the recent conflict in the north of the country alot of people were evacuated. The smart ones, who had children and money, moved into them - taking advantage of built in kid friendly services. Where would you rather stay if you had some rambunctious kids in tow?

I have found that there seems to be a tradition of extravagance here when it comes to celebrating openings of companies or having employee picnics. None of your "ok, we'll meet at the park for a potluck barbeque, softball and tag".

The owners of the telecom company that I work for also happen to own a major credit card company, a national chain of florist shops, clothing chains etc etc etc... They had a subsidized employee fun day at a waterpark just north of Tel Aviv on the grounds of Kibbutz Shfayim. As a token thank you to SistR for being just that, I took her and Jesamine for a day out.

We are sensible people, me and SistR, we didn't intend to pay the extortionate prices that amusement parks charge for the smallest little thing, so we brought a healthy picnic breakfast of yogurt, cucumbers, carrots, bourekas, hard-boiled eggs and fruit; we had snacks including popcorn, watermelon and Bamba (the most popular children's snack in Israel, kids start eating the stuff as soon as they can put there hands in their mouths).

To drink there was a big thermos of coffee for the big kids, diluted apple juice for Jes and lots of water for us all. Of course we bought icecreams - what is a day out without a 'scream?

We were out of the house by 8:30 and had entered the park by 9am. This was actually self-protection on the grownups part - we wanted to be "outta there" by lunch time. Israeli children are generally completely out of control. There is a very laissez faire attitude here and children are indulged to an extent that I have never, ever seen anywhere else. Imagine a few thousand children getting wound up on sugar for four hours- the typical Israeli children's breakfast is a pita or sandwich spread with artificial chocolate spread - and allowed to run riot. On top of that the sound system is played at distorted full volume by an adolescent crew whose main job appears to be to jump up and start dancing at every opportunity. Self-protection, uh huh!

Admittedly they did import some Capoeira experts(?) from Brazil to give demonstrations and mini lessons, but in the 45 degree temperature we had that day they looked like they might just pass out!

And of course there were a few crimes against humanity committed!

The fun, of course was to try and let the water fall on you and to stay cool in spite of the sun...

...overall, I think we succeeded!

Of course, after all of that fun in the sun and acting like a 7 year old for most of the day I needed a dose of reality, so I met friends at the beach for dinner...

Before I started on real food I was weaned on breastmilk and homemade babyfood. No bottles and Gerber for me or my sisters. I remember a little dolls' cutlery set made of tin and a cast iron pot with a real hinged handle that had a capacity of about 2 tablespoons. The first thing I remember "cooking" was a cheddar cheese soup. I was about 3 years old, so for me soup was a liquid first and foremost. I didn't understand about roux and heat, melting and simmering. Nor did I understand the concept of western esthetics and hygiene - I went about making my soup in the same fashion that chicha is made. I don't remember, but I am sure I enjoyed the finished product as much as my dolls did, if not more!


When I started going outside without supervision I used to treat my friends to mudpies made in my sand bucket. Even then I shopped for in season local produce, taking only the choicest freshly dug earth, making sure that there were no roots or stems or wriggling earthworms lurking at the bottom to make this less than palatable. I. would judiciously add water enough to make an emulsion and then I would whip the mixture vigorously with a twig broken from a maple tree. What resulted was almost a mousse that was smooth and light, with a froth on the top like the crema from a topnotch espresso .


From there I progressed to helping my mother in the kitchen, though I suspect I hindered more than I helped. But the memories are there of pricking her special Christmas shortbreads with an extra large fork, or buttering and flouring the pans for a cake. By the age of five I was a specialist in hamburger patty patting and corn shucking. I could also pour a beer with a two finger head on it, being extra careful to tilt the glass just so.


When I was a little older I was allowed to make supper once a week, choosing what we would eat. At the time (and even today when I am feeling particularly vulnerable) my favourite meal was roast chicken with roast potatoes, green peas and pan gravy. So every week that is what I made. No matter who was cooking, my mother, my sister or me, dinner always came with a big bowl of salad that always had carrot coins and green onions and a finely chopped hardboiled egg, sometimes it had leftover broccoli or raw cauliflower, sometimes tomatoes, sometimes corn.

My mom's salad dressing recipe was (and is) the simplest, tastiest dressing ever; and it is made directly on the salad, no faffing about with bottles or whisks. It is put on the salad in this order: salt and freshly ground pepper, oil – depending on whether it was for everyday, or for good, mom would use either corn oil or olive oil, but if it was for semi-good then it would be half-and-half, and Allen's salad vinegar (Heinz also does a salad vinegar, but I don't think it has the same flavour). The oil and vinegar was poured on to the count of seven (said not too fast, but not too slowly either, after all, you want dressing on your salad and not the other way 'round). Give the whole thing a toss, taste for seasoning and serve. That's the whole recipe, but don't forget about the chopped hardboiled egg, it "finishes" the dressing and is the final touch for the salad.


I did have a few (well, many) disasters, memorable among them was my steamed steak dinner with mashed potatoes. This is what happens when everybody is telling you to hurry up they are starving and you are about 7 and of course your head is not yet filled with useful bits of knowledge. I knew that you put the lid on a pot to make it boil quicker, so it made sense to me that if I put the lid on the pan where the steaks were busy sizzling away they would cook quicker too. Graciously, everyone ate their dinner. The steaks tasted ok, but were an appetizing shade of grey that nicely set off the bilious green of the Brussels sprouts and the creamy colour of the billowy clouds of lumpy mashed potatoes (the lumps were left in deliberately as my sister trained us all to like them that way). At least the salad had nothing anybody could complain about!.

A Childhood Remembered...

Chez Pim's question of What Weird is Weird is a bit of a thing to make you go hmmmmm.

This question certainly goes along with the 5 Things to eat before you die ... Should you include the weird in with the essential or are they mutually exclusive?

I grew up as one of a very small handful of Jews in a whitebread suburb of Toronto. That didn't mean that life was all gefilte fish (with its salty-sweet jelly) and matzoh ball soup. Our great treat was octopus tentacles from Chinatown - though my younger sister always called them testicles. This might sound fairly normal now, but back in the late sixties and early seventies this was not kosher (in more ways than one). We also ate salted plums in these amazing little flowered packets, squid in their own ink, and all kinds of exotica including trying roasted caterpillars in S.Africa.

My mom is very adventurous and so we were exposed to any number of weird and wonderful foods. I was violently ill after sea cucumbers, but love chicken feet and have eaten krill, just scooped from the sea, that wriggled on their way down. I even remember eating whale way back before the bans - it was strong and musky and rubbery, but that could have been because it was tinned.

Weird was eating Kraft Dinner for the first time at 14 (even though all of my friends grew up on the stuff). Weird was toasted white bread with white sugar and margarine. Normal was clamming at Cape Cod in May and waiting impatiently for mom to get out her Swiss Army knife and shuck those babies so we could suck them back with no lemon, seafood sauce or mignonette to hide the flavour of the briny deep.

Weird was all the things we didn't have, like Tang - the drink of astronauts, and Marshmallow fluff, grape jelly (100% pure sugar and artificial flavour) and Spagetti O's. Normal was crying desperately when the family cooked the lobsters I had just been playing with, and crying again when they didn't leave me anything except the swimming legs to eat.

Weird was TV dinners and jello with RediWip creme. Normal was going across the valley and picking wild black raspberries or eating wild russet apples that were tiny and hard and so sweetly sour that they made the long walk through the woods to get them worth every minute.

Weird was always the word applied to me by my friends, but I think their meaning was someone who wasn't a part of their genetic or inherited culture. Back then they would never have dreamed of eating raw fish, now they exclaim over the salmon sushi they had for dinner last night. But if you offered them ice fish, they would probably roll their eyes up and turn away, muttering to themselves "Yuck, how gross!"

Accepting the weird as normal makes life much more interesting and opens you up to the possibilities that life has to offer.

Oh, and the meaning of the top picture - well, isn't eating raw eggs, rotten grapes and oil a little bit weird?