East and West Machane Yehuda Market

Machane Yehuda is the pulse of culinary Jerusalem. I’m sure you’ve read that before if you’ve been reading my blog posts. Surrounding the two streets of the market itself are a number of stores that range from health food ingredients to kitchen utensils.

I was wandering through Machane Yehuda with some family late last night – late for the market, where only a few of the restaurants and shops remained open – and as I was leaving I spotted a row of ingredients on a shelf through the open door of a shop located just outside the market on Agrippas. Asian ingredients. Lots of them.

We detoured into the shop and I started cataloging the ingredients in my head for future reference. There was all manner of bottles sauces, but several varieties of seaweed (kombu, not just nori)… several varieties of miso… several types of dried mushrooms (not just shiitake)… flours… noodles… curry pastes… Philippine ingredients… Indonesian ingredients

Whoa.

I would have gladly taken an hour or more to go through the store three, maybe four more times. It happened that we were biding our time until the movie started, and it was getting closer to when we had to return to the theater. I turned the corner of the store and saw a wire rack with dried ingredients. I picked up a package of dried leaves and turned them over. Even before my eyes found the English name of the ingredient, I spotted it in Hebrew:

Kaffir Lime Leaves

I couldn’t believe it. It was yet another sign – amidst all of these other ingredients – that the far reaches of the culinary world were stretching all the way back to Israel. These leaves, and the scores of items left for future visits, opened up a wide range of recipes that would otherwise lack the nuance and depth of authenticity that these necessary ingredients provide. Kaffir lime leaves are an essential element to Southeast Asian cooking, especially Thai cuisine, one of my favorites. Greedily, I looked for more packages, but as it turned out I was holding the last one. For now, I’m sure.

Many of the kosher ingredients were Taste of Asia, which has the Star-K certification as well as London’s kosher certification. There were non-kosher ingredients, which is sad, especially in the heart of Jerusalem. However, since I’m not buying them, I’m not going to spend any more time than it takes to make sure what I want does carry a hashgacha.

 

East and West

Mahane Yehuda Market

47 Agrippas St. Jerusalem

02-623-0332

http://www.eastwest-food.co.il

 

See you there!

Comments

comments

2 thoughts on “East and West Machane Yehuda Market”

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.