Coffee and sweets

Had to run an errand in Nazareth this morning but forgot that today is Sunday, so the market and most of the stores were closed, including the town's famous traditional bakeries and sweet shops known for their baklava, knafe, halva and lokoum (Turkish delight).

Nazareth is the sweet capital of Israel, manufacturing all kinds of treats, traditional and modern. While many of the town's visitors are Christian pilgrims, others come to enjoy culinary tours and workshops both of the old style Middle Eastern sweet shops and of the modern factories. 

I did get a delicous whiff of sweetness and vanilla driving by the Elite chocolate factory in an industrial area of the new town, Upper Nazareth. The factory manufactures some of Israel's most well loved bars such as Pesek Zman (Time Out) and the Shokolad Para range, "cow chocolate" with the iconic picture of a cow embossed on the candy bars.

There was one shop open in the Old Town, the original Fahoum coffee in thenarrow lanes of the historic market. Inside it looks as though time has stood still, spices and coffee in old style glass jars and old cabinets, elderly Mr Fahoum himself behind the counter in a crisp button down shirt and knitted vest. Today he has several shiny modern branches around town, but this original shop remains mostly unchanged in its basic simplicity.

I picked up a small bag of fresh ground Middle Eastern style cardamom coffee, worth it just for the aroma alone. Cardamom coffee may be one of my most favourite scents in the world.

The memory of lemons

I had a whole chicken in the freezer so decided to make shorbat tarbiya, chicken-lemon soup. It's one of a family of Syrian soup recipes with a lemony flavour, depending on how much you kick up the lemon juice it can range from a hint of lemon to lip puckering. I'm a big fan of the latter but I tone it down for my other half who is less fond of sour flavours.

My mother picked up these recipes from a Halebi neighbour. Shorbat tarbiya is a soup enjoyed by Syrians of all ethnicities, but its origins go back to the Sefardic Jews who found refuge in the lands of the Ottoman Empire when they fled the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century.

The historic Syrian city of Haleb (Aleppo, Aram Tzova) already had an ancient Jewish community so it was a natural choice for these Sefardic refugees who over time were absorbed in to the Halebi community, along with traditions and recipes they brought with them from the Spanish Sefardi community, including sopa de huevos y limon, an eggy lemon chicken soup, thought to be the origin of the Syrian shorbat tarbiya and the Greek avgolemono. Greece at that time was also part of the Ottoman Empire and also home to ancient Jewish communities who welcomed those fleeing Inquisition era Spain and Portugal.

Which I guess a lot of geography and history to pack in to a simple and delicious soup. I learnt much of this story from esteemed cookbook writer and food historian Claudia Roden, who's many books brought the wonders of Middle Eastern food to a Western audience going back to the 1970s. She herself was born and raised in Egypt, but her parents were Syrian, I think from Haleb.

My mother learnt a lot of recipes from her Syrian Jewish neighbour, and this soup became a favourite. It's especially interesting considering that my mother's family were originally Sefardic Jews from the Balkans who went north during the instability of the 19th century Ottoman Empire. Perhaps the lemon rich recipes she learned from her neighbour unlocked some latent taste memory from her great-grandparents?

So how to make the soup:

Cook a whole chicken in a pot with a few bay leaves, a few whole cloves, a whole cinnamon stick, a couple of balls of allspice, a few cloves of garlic. Cover the chicken with water and cook covered in the pot for about an hour, or under the chicken is cooked through.

Then take out the chicken and shred it with two forks, set aside. Then mix up the juice of about 3-6 lemons (depending on size and how sour or lemony you want the soup) with 2 tbsp of corn or potato starch and one egg, beat until smooth then beat in to the soup with a whisk while bringing the soup to a boil. When the soup has started to thicken season to taste with salt and a little granulated/dried garlic, pepper. To serve add some of the shredded chicken to each bowl, and many people add some rice or orzo too.

Cherry wisniak days

My great-grandmother lived with my grandparents in her old age. It was the first time since childhood she'd had a garden and she insisted on planting plum and cherry trees. Every spring and summer the whole family harvested the fruit and my great-grandmother set to work making fluden and assorted fruit pies, cherry and plum tzimmes and wisniak, with everyone else assigned jobs ranging from pitting the fruit to clean up duty.

She died before my time but my grandmother continued the tradition. I remember summers with my grandmother listening to the stories while we harvested the fruit and made my great-grandmother's recipes.

All except the fluden. That was more fiddly work, so she generally did that alone and I never did quite learn how my grandmother made it. Classic fluden recipes, are with apple, but in my grandmother's family they were always with plums and cherries.

For years after my grandmother passed I have tried to recreate her cherry and plum fluden, but never quite figured it out. The only one I ever found that came close was this cake made by a bakery at Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market. Whenever I would walk past I'd think of my grandmother, buy a few pieces from this stall and try to work once again on reconstructing.

The version from the market was known locally as "Smadar cake", famous for being sold at the old Smadar cinema as a snack.

Last time I walked by was just before covid shut everything down I was sad to see that the elderly man who usually worked there was gone and so were the pies that reminded me of my grandmother's fluden. The young man behind the counter didn't recall the cakes I was talking about, pointing out instead a whole bunch of other fruit pastries the bakery still made.

I do however make tzimmes every year starting with strawberries in late winter, then spring cherries and apricots, summer plums, peaches and nectarines, just like my grandmother used to. Some flavoured with vanilla, some just with a stick of cinnamon.

I always put some away in the freezer to enjoy during the autumn festive season just like my grandmother did, bringing back the fond memories of coming home Rosh Hashana afternoon after a long morning of services at the synagogue to big cold glass beer mugs full of chilled tzimmes topped with a little cream. My grandmother had horrific arthritis in her later decades and could barely walk as far as her garden gate let alone get to shul even for the High Holy Days so she prayed at home. 

I wish now that I would have taken the huge clay jars used to make wisniak that were originally my great-grandmother's. I'm not sure where I'd have space for them but maybe they'd inspire me to try to reconstruct that recipe too. At the very least they'd be special reminders of those distant childhood summers. 

Give me shelter

The screaming shriek of engines jolted me awake the other night, or should I say morning, just before 3am. It sounded like a jet fighter but was actually the roar of an Iron Dome anti-rocket missiles launch to intercept incoming rockets from Gaza.

Shortly afterwards the air raid sirens sounded. I hastily roused my soundly sleeping husband to check on the children and run for the shelter.

Thank God we had put the youngest ones to bed in the shelter. Two of them were snuggled in to duvets at either end of the worn old sofa that just about fit in the small room. Another had made a cosy nest of plush blankets and pillows on the floor. It would have been too complicated to wake or carry three little kids to the shelter in the 90 seconds we have to seek cover before a rocket strike.

My older children had woken as soon as the siren went and were already in the shelter when my husband and I got there, tiptoeing over their sleeping siblings to find space in the cramped claustrophobic windowless underground room. 

Mercifully the two youngest slept through the siren, slumbering through the blood chilling howling wail, the thundering and thudding of interceptions and possible strikes. 

We'd already had sirens earlier in the evening. Over the last couple of days the pattern has repeated over and over, usually after dark, a few times in the wee hours, us and the older children rushing bleary eyed, still half asleep in to the shelter, checking that everyone is there and shutting the safety door behind us, listening to the war outside only slightly muffled by the shelter's reenforced concrete walls and heavy steel blast door.

My youngest are too young to really understand what's happening, just that there is a bad man in Gaza who is shooting at them. They don't say they are scared, but they are clingier, more unsettled than usual, wanting to stay closer to Imma and Abba.

They are calmed by the knowledge that they know what to do when there is a siren because on the last day of nursery school before all educational frameworks had to be closed their kindergarten teachers did safety drills explaining to them what to do when the alert sounds, how to quickly and safely rush to the shelter, how to protect themselves by lying on the ground with their hands protecting their heads if they are caught out in the open or to seek cover in a stairwell or windowless room if they find themselves in a building without a shelter.

My middle son is old enough to be curious and ask questions, but still too young and innocent to grasp the full horror and danger of the situation. He is a deeply spiritual child, happy to recite Psalms with during the raid, confident in both God and the good people working to protect us from the rockets. 

One teen has an understanding of the gravity of the situation, but a mostly calm and practical nature that makes him interested in watching the news and trying to follow the developments. He is concerned but not terrified. Facts and information comfort him. 

My oldest though is almost an adult. Highly intellectual and extremely well read she is more than aware of what the war around us means. With each air raid her anxiety grows as the cumulative sleep deprivation takes its toll, overwhelming her usually matter of fact approach to crisis situations. I don't dare give her melatonin or anything else to help her sleep for fear that she will sleep too deeply and I won't be able to get her to the shelter. There is no space for all the children to lie down in the shelter together at the same time. 

During the most recent alert I screamed her name across the flat, worried she was deeply asleep and hadn't heard the siren. Usually I keep my voice very calm and soothing, trying to give my children strength and confidence through routinely following the safety protocols, but tonight I was worried that she wasn't coming to the shelter and that I would have to run to the other side of our home to wake her, no way I or my husband would be able to carry an adult sized teen. 

But here she was, running pell-mell, half asleep towards the shelter, where she curled up with her hands over her ears on to the nest of blankets on the floor next to her slumbering youngest sibling. Outside the siren kept wailing. She begged for quiet, for the children who were awake to stop chattering but at the same time for something to distract her from the situation. 

So we started to sing "Shir La Maalot, esah einei el heharim", Psalm 121 to the familiar tune made famous in Israel by the Sheva band, a recording my oldest loves. 

A Song of Ascents
I lift up my eyes to the mountains, from where will my help come?
My help comes from God, Who made heaven and earth
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved
He who protects you will not sleep
Behold, the Guardian of Israel neither slumbers not sleeps
The Lord is thy Guardian
The Lord is thy shade by they right hand
The sun shall not smite you by day, nor the moon by night
The Lord shall protect you from all evil
He shall protect your soul
The Lord guard thy going out and coming back for now and forever

And slowly my child calmed as we sang softly, gently, melting away the siren, the bangs and booms outside, shrinking the world down to just us, the children snuggled with their cuddly toys and blankets, the comforting Hebrew words and the familiar tune.

One small step?

Why is this happening now? Is it to do with Ramadan, land rights, Bibi, Yom Yerushalayim and so on?

I may be wrong, but I think those are all more minor "hooks" to hang a new round of conflict on, but I don't think they are what is motivating Hamas. I'm going to put the issue of PA elections on one side, though I think that is also relevant, and look at the Israeli elections, or should I say, electoral chaos?

It seems to me that the Hamas response is due to the change in the Israeli Islamist party which has broken ranks with the main anti-Zionist Israeli Arab political parties and said that it wants to put the national conflict aside for now and focus on domestic issues it has in common with Israeli Jews in order to better provide for the needs of the Israeli Muslim community.

It's maybe one of the biggest impacts of this covid year which has put so much focus on local policy from the economy to public health to the balancing of protecting public health while protecting freedom of worship and so many related issues.

In April 2020 the leader of the Islamist Party, Mansour Abbas, also addressed the Knesset on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, to express his solidarity with the Jewish people's suffering during the Holocaust, emphasising that this was a day to put aside the national conflict between Jews and Arabs. 

Abbas has been meeting with rabbis from across the spectrum, from Hareidi to religious Zionist. Recently the head of Israel's Islamic Party has been going to the home of Israel's most senior religious Zionist rabbi, Rav Druckman, senior in the Bnei Akiva yeshiva system, and meeting there with him and other senior religious Zionist rabbis, having interfaith dialogue, talking about issues they can cooperate on.

Yes, so far the actual politicians haven't agreed on a coaltion, Smoterich remains resolutely opposed to working with Islamists, but the rabbis, the spiritual leaders are trying to build bridges to the Muslim community. This is a huge step forward in reconciliation and one can only hope more grassroots understanding and good relations. Yes, it is motivated by political expediency on both sides, but also a realisation that covid and Israel's electoral stalemate have brought, that different communities have to work together or the political system will remain permanently gridlocked.

Hamas is livid about what it sees as "betrayal" and "normalisation" between Muslims and Jews in Israel. It needs to incite a new round of conflict to stay relevant, and to block this attempt at building better Muslim-Jewish relations in Israel, and maybe healing some of the animosity, because any kind of normalisation or interfaith understanding makes Hamas irrelevant.

To be clear, I don't think brotherly love has broken out between Israel's Islamists and religious Zionists, but interfaith dialogue and intercommunity cooperation is a start, a way for people to get to know each other better and maybe through that come to make a real peace with each other. Even if not coalition comes of their talks, a door has been opened, contact made. One can only hope and pray that this will be a building block toward better relations between different communities and a way forward to real peace one day. That is what has Hamas spooked and anxious to ignite another war.

Strawberry fields forever

I can't believe I just bought another kilo of strawberries, but it's end of season now and finally they are affordable.

Earlier in the week we went strawberry picking at a local farm and came home with 5.5 kilos worth. Should have lasted a few days right? We polished them off for dinner that night, nothing else needed, just a side of creamy water buffalo yoghurt. Some of the best strawberries ever.

We hadn't planned on strawberry picking but a spring heatwave was rolling in (yuck) and a local farmer was worried that his ripe crop would go bad on the bushes before it could all be harvested, so for a small token fee the general public was invited to bring baskets and buckets and to come pick as much of the ripe fruit as they wanted. For the price of a 500g punnet of strawberries in the shops we picked several kilos worth. It was a great deal and so much fun.

Some of the strawberries were already starting to become overripe. They looked gorgeous hanging on the plant but if you touched them they disintegrated in to a red gooey mess. We come out of there looking like we'd done a murder, stained head to toe in red juice. There was plenty of perfectly ripe fruit though, and I mean perfect, as in peak sweetness and flavour, needing to be consumed on the day they were picked.

What we didn't eat on the day I turned in to my grandmother's strawberry tzimmes, essentially a simple cold fruit soup, just cook the berries with water and a dash of cinnamon and vanilla, then chill and serve in the heat of the day either from the fridge with a dollop of sour cream or yoghurt or semi-frozen from the freezer as a slush in a big beer glass. A little slice of heaven.

Strawberry fields forever.

Water and honey

We had just arrived at the waterfall at the end of this delightful riverside trail in northern Israel, everyone just standing there enjoying the sound of the water when someone broke the serenity of the moment to shout "Look up there!!!"



So we looked up and at first saw nothing, but then we looked higher and near the top of the cliff above us was a sight I have never before seen in real life - a wild bee hive, pale golden honey combs nestled in crevices of the dark rocks metres above our heads.



So we stood at the end of the trail between these two astoundingly beautiful natural phenomena, the waterfall and the natural bee hive, marvelling at both the sight we had come to see and the unexpected bonus we came so very near to missing simply because we were too captivated by the gushing, rushing waterfall to look up behind us and see the wonder what was hiding in plain sight. 

All along the trail we were surrounded by dense clusters of blooming hycinth squill, their tall blue-purple stalks creating mini-forests all around, perfuming the air. Nestling closer to the ground were the last remaining end of season oriental hyacinths, little patches of lilac-blue, most now faded, some completely withered, but so delightfully fragranced that we still smelled them before we saw them. Even closer to the ground were end of season cyclamen, patches of white-pink and bright green heart shaped leaves still blooming bright and strong among the rocks. Here and there we spotted pure white star of Bethlehem and wild garlic flowers. It was a paradise for bees, how logical for them to build themselves a home in the rocks amid such bounty. 

Mah rabu maasaykha, how wonderous are Your creations. Tiny wild creatures without the power of speech, unable to apprentice or draw up plans, but intrinsically able to work together to build stunning works of art and delicious, nutritious food from a dazzling array of flowers. How blessed are we in this world that not only do we have the pratical benefit of bees, but an asthetic one too, the honey process could be utilitarian, but instead Hashem created a system that includes adorable furry bees, bright gorgeous flowers with delightful fragrances, eye catching honeycombs and geometric shapes.What a gift to the world. 



I have visited so many apiaries around Israel and each time I find myself astonished anew at the fascinating and mysterious world of bees, but what a blessing and a privilege to finally see a wild hive in its raw and natural state just minding its business up on that cliff above one of the most popular trails in one of the most popular national parks in the country.

Wishing you much sweetness and good health from "Land of Milk and Honey".