I have the recipe and all the ingredients. But preparing these little wild spinach filled pastries is one of those tasks that is more fun with a friend, and so I took the two bags of greens I’d gathered and went to visit one of my most esteemed culinary mentors, Um Malek, at her home … Read More »
galilee
Winter Does Not Apply
February is arguably the dreariest month of the year, and at this point my family and friends in the United States and Europe are paralyzed with winter fatigue. While winters here in the Galilee are generally mild, this past month we’ve been treated to several snowstorms and in recent days I’ve even had to pull … Read More »
A Fresh Look at Some Local Foods
I was flipping through some photographs I’d taken recently, and found these three images, all which show interesting ways that indigenous local foods are processed in Galilee Palestinian society. This is a photograph of luf (arum palaestinum), which was collected this winter during the season it grows wild in the area around Nazareth. I took … Read More »
Jordan Chickpeas
Christmas in mainstream Jewish Israel is a non-event, but in the Galilee, where 50% of the population is Arab, it’s another story. In those Arab cities and towns where there is a Christian population, Christmas lights and decorations light up the evenings, and nighttime Christmas bazaars attract visitors, regardless of religion, over the weekend before the … Read More »
Spot the Spinach
If mallow is flamboyant, then wild spinach is coy. Can you spot the shiny, diamond-shaped leaves in the crowd? This has been a bumper year for wild spinach and I have been gathering it in large sacks. In my kitchen, these tender, iron-rich leaves generally are used to make a filling for a filo-dough pastry. But … Read More »