There are a surfeit of cookbooks on the shelves, everything from pretty books that rattle off lists of ingredients whose duplication in the styled photos is next to impossible, to classic tomes that assume a complete apprenticeship to a master chef and years of professional experience.

I own both kinds.

Having cookbooks is a way to explore worldwide cuisine without leaving your reading chair. It mixes the exotic with the familiar and ignites the imagination. Cookbooks, for me, are a way to kick-start my creativity. I process kosher substitution in my head to see whether milk can be reasonably substituted or whether just plain water will do, or if veal or turkey can stand in for pork. It’s well past the point where I flip past a recipe simply because it’s not intrinsically kosher; anything can be kosherized. (more…)

Machane Yehuda in Yerushalayim is a riot of sound and smell that can be completely overwhelming for anyone their first time there. It is here in this public market that one can find the mundane and the exotic. Mostly the mundane.

Having come from the US, I am accustomed to a wider variety of ingredients than is available in Israel. This is simply a demand issue, because anything can grow in Israel. It aggravates me and I often complain how there are a grand total of fourteen vegetables in Israel, and little in the way of varieties among them. There are something like thirty varieties of cucumbers in the world alone, and considering this is the Israeli salad capital of the world, I haven’t seen a kirby since I made aliyah. Don’t even ask about the pickles here. Lower East Side sours are part of our heritage for crying out loud!

For the most part, the vendors of Machane Yehuda are owned or supplied by three or four vendors. There are, however, a few vendors that regularly stock vegetables and food materials that aren’t on everyone else’s displays. Of course it’s premium stuff, for a premium price, but then how many times a week are you eating King Oyster mushrooms?

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