There’s a restaurant nestled in the hills south of Jerusalem in a small village called Nes Harim that is worth a visit the next time you’re looking for something a little quiet, better than average. Pichonka is a rustic, spacious place with comfortable wicker chairs and a comfortable ambiance that surrounds you from the moment you enter until your meal is complete.

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Also known as, “what the heck is wrong with that celery???!?”

A walk through Machane Yehuda will reveal these enormously long celery-like vegetables on display at vendors throughout the market. A closer inspection reveals spike-like growths along the edge of the ribs, but they’re actually leaf buds. They leaves themselves look somewhat jagged.

Cardoons are relatives of artichokes, members of the thistle family. They’re also relatives of the milk thistle, which is that really tough weed you get in your Israeli lawn; it’s the one with the white-veined leaves with the sharp thorns on the edges. Cardoons supply a necessary enzyme for vegetable rennet, and there are cheeses made using this form of rennet. Slow down, caseophiles; it’s found in the stamens, which are already cut off before they reach market, not the stalks. You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?

Like an artichoke (and I imagine other non-edible thistles), cardoons can’t be eaten raw, owing to a horrendous bitter aftertaste. Most recipes call for boiling the cardoons in water with the juice of 1/2 a lemon. Good advice. Their subtle flavor once cooked can be easily overwhelmed by stronger flavors, so if you’re going to try this, it would be best to star in its own dish frittered, roasted, sauteed, braised or in a soup, with a minimum of competing flavors.

The bounty of fish indigenous to the Mediterranean, coupled with worldwide imports to Israel, gives those of us here an almost unprecedented number of choices for fish to cook. To help sort out which is which, I have compiled a list of fish that can be found in Israel.

It is a shame that fish cookery for most people comes down to salmon, tuna, and gefilte, with the occasional overbaked-in-oil tilapia (musht). The wide range of choices – fresh and frozen – available here can really broaden your repertoire and palette.

To add to the confusion. not all fish have the same names. My method for determining the correlation between Hebrew and English was to determine the scientific name of the species, then use several resources to determine the exact Hebrew name for that species, or, in case of conflicting information, I used a consensus. Read the rest of this entry »

There are some things that just taste better when you’re feeling bad. It’s a personal thing, and for me, it changes depending on how badly I’m feeling. Carbs is the obvious stand-out winner in the comfort food category, probably because it helps absorb whatever’s upsetting you, but not all of us like the heavy feeling that pasta gives you.

For me, tomato soup has always been my go-to comfort food. Open a can, pour the contents of the can, plus a can’s worth of milk into a small pot, bring to a boil. Simple, straightforward, satisfying. Now that I’m not fourteen anymore, I don’t have to rely on a prepared can of soup concentrate to soothe my turgid, er… soul, but taking a couple of hours to make a whole pot of soup while feeling lousy isn’t always practical. Enter the egg.

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Meat in Israel is a long-standing source of frustration for new olim, especially those from North America. It’s as if cows in America are somehow built with different parts, and trying to find the right piece of meat for your recipe becomes more confusing than it should be. Couple that with the now-permitted hindquarter meats, and you more than double the number of cuts available that people may never have seen or heard of before. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, they number the meat like you’re in kindergarten, making you feel that much more stupid.

Enough is enough. I present my definitive guide to buying meat in Israel.

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