Hanukkah Flavors

 Hanukkah in Israel is syfganiot (doughnuts) filled traditionally with jelly, in recent years also dulche-de-leche or chocolate.

In Ashkenazim families it is also potato latkes, Here are my, a bit burned. I finally own  a food processor and can shred the potatoes in minutes.

In my husband's Sephardi family of North African origin Hanukkah food are sfinge and fricasse. Fricasse is a fried dough sandwich filled with tuna, pickled lemon, spicy harissa, sweet carrot salad, potato and onion salad and olives.  Sfinge is a sweet treat: rig-shaped fried dough dipped in sugar.

For me any meal is not complete if it doesn't include tahini. I became a tahini freak ever since we returned to Israel making it from the raw state almost daily and ordering any tahini-containing dish at the restaurants. This Hanukkah I learned to make simple and delicious tahini cookies. 

Try it yourself:

3 cups of flour

1 cup of raw tahini from the can

1 cup sugar

baking powder

200 gram soft butter (not salted)

Mix it all, make 40-50 little balls, place them on a parchment paper 2" away from each other, can add a nut on top of each ball, bake for 15 min at 350F (180C). They will still be soft when you take them out and slowly harden. Cool and keep in a sealed container. Enjoy! 

Pick Your Own.... Paprika

In Boston this time of the year we used to go to the Marino Farm in Natick to pick apples, pears or peaches. Yesterday we drove 2 hours North to a little spice farm near Haifa to pick our own paprika. Much lower scale and less organized but much cheaper than Marino Farm, The Spice Farm, was holding a 10-day Paprika Festival. Here are paprika bushes that we picked the ripe red peppers from:

This is a paprika bath where a few green peppers were hidden among thousands of red and everyone was invited to sift through for a prize. Nadia found one.

I am standing in front of the festival's poster and proudly holding a bag of picked paprika and a dry paprika wreath Nadia and I assembled.

Scarecrow.

This farm is a popular tourist attraction and frequently holds some tours or cooking classes, in addition to an excellent spice market. Worth a visit if you are passing by.

The view of Bahaian Gardens from the main Haifa street.

Then we met a local Arab friend for a coffee in the Fattoush restaurant in Haifa. The atmosphere and food in the restaurant were so good that we almost stayed in the nearby hotel overnight in order to enjoy the dinner. Alas, the hotel was all booked and we will have to return back to Fattoush one day.

With the coffee, I had a pistachio ice cream with tahinni and honey, which was so delicious I forgot to take a picture before it was gone. Little Nili swallowed her share helping herself with a spoon and both hands.  But then when Moshe's order of kanafeh arrived, I was ready with the camera:

It is a traditional Arabic cheese pastry served with a sugary-sweet syrup.

Here is the link for Fatoush if you ever find yourself in Haifa: TripAdvisor Fatoush

A sign at the entrance to the restaurant welcomes people of all colors, cultures and religions and the mix of languages, colors and friendly laughter on this main Haifa street leaves some hope that peaceful coexistence in this part of the world may be possible.

10 things we miss most about US

I hear that some of you started packing your bags to come here after reading my previous post about 10 things we really like in Israel.  It is indeed a fascinating country that is also very pleasant for a visit or stay. So, please come!

However, I am trying to paint an honest picture of our adventurous immigration.  With the excitement of the new life there is obviously a nostalgia for the old one. Here are 10 things that we miss most about US right now, six months after the move.

1. Friends. We all try to stay in touch via email, skype and phone but with a 7-hour difference and a shifted weekend (Friday-Saturday in Israel and Saturday-Sunday in the US) is it hard.  New friendships are slow to appear. People are warm and welcoming. However, here in Israel everyone is surrounded by a large and a tight family circle. Then, there are friends one grew up with - school, army, university. Who needs additional friendships when the weekends are so short? We were surprised to find that most people around are not interested to cross the boundary between acquaintanceship and friendship.
   
   
2. Boston's sports frenzy.  We still are part of the Patriots, Red Sox, Bruins and Celtics Nation. We feel the pain of the Patriot's Super Bowl loss but have no shoulder to cry it on. We watch games deep into the night, wear T-shirts, read Boston Globe and pack our emotions into emails to our Bostonian friends.   Israeli sports scene is also contentious and engaging but it will probably take us years to get hooked.  
   
   
   2011 Bruins' victory
3. Naor misses winter, especially the sunny Boston snow days when he could play outside with the friends bundled in a snowsuit building snow forts, fighting snowballs, sledding from the high-school slopes. 
   
   
4. Kids miss quiet and discipline at school and frequently come home tired from the noise. Large classes (27-40 kids) and non-strict rules lead to teachers spending 1/3 of the lesson time screaming for silence. Yes, screaming for silence...
5. We (parents) miss longer school day and more homework.
6. Not worrying for our survival. In the US you worry about keeping your job, lose your sleep thinking about your mortgage, or stress over saving enough for summer vacation, afterschool activities or college. All these worries are valid here as well, but can be obscured by a helpless worry of a potential war. Is Israel serious about bombing Iran? Is Iran serious about sending rockets to Tel Aviv? Where will these rockets fall? Unfortunately, the only things we can do is finding where the nearest bomb shelter is and ordering gas masks from the town hall. Fortunately, we are slowly getting used to living in uncertainty and this doesn't affect our daily mood.
   
   Gas masks for adult, youth and baby...
7. Better hospital conditions. While the professionalism of doctors and nurses is comparable with the US, the luck of resources in government-ran socialistic medicine is felt everywhere - number of people per hospital room, ratio of patients per nurse and therefore attention that every patient gets, hospital food and equipment. 
8. Trader Joe's - there is nothing like it in Israel. I believe that Trader Joe's is the working parents' friend allowing to spend minimum time serving delicious, rather healthy, not expensive, kids-friendly and interesting meals.   Without it I find myself constantly busy with feeding a picky family of five from raw ingredients.
9. Variety and simplicity of online shopping. In the recent years in Boston I almost stopped going to stores altogether (except Marshalls, TJMax and Filene's Basement). Why spend 60+ min driving, parking and browsing through Toys-R-Us, Mac Cosmetics, or West Elm when you can order anything online in 5 mins? Surprisingly in such high-tech country like Israel online shopping is in the embryonic stage. Every little purchase is an hour-long project.  One of the problems is that postal workers do not come with a car and do not carry any packages. There is also a heavy taxation on the US-ordered stuff. 
10. US Holiday Spirit. We did try celebrating Thanksgiving this year. Since no one in Israel is usually buying a whole giant turkey,  I had to order it from a supermarket a few days in advance. The turkey did not look at all like a fat American bird, it was an anorexic dead creature with a long neck. My husband's mistake of asking the butcher to remove the bird's skin turned it into a horror picture. We did cook it and ate it but I am still asking turkey's forgiveness for these deeds.  Move here did earn us Jewish holidays with the family that we have been longing for for so many years. But we still miss the other holidays - the sweet anticipation of Halloween, Thanksgiving flavours, the Christmas cheer on the streets and shops, an Independence Day with a parade, 5K run and fireworks in our town. These are part of the traditions our kids were born into and we all enjoyed for so many years.  
    

10 things we like in Israel (more than in the US)

1. Food. As everywhere around the Mediterranean, food  in Israel is a top priority and investment. It is elaborate, flavorful, and usually spicy. It is also pretty much the only thing that unite everyone in the region: Arabs, Jews, Christians, Druzes; secular and religious people; political right and political left.
   
   
   
   
   
2. Friday rituals. For the secular crowds in Israel, Friday became a sacred day, much more special than Shabbat.  Most of the adults do not work.  Kids are in schools or day-care till around noon. The adults enjoy these few hours of freedom by relaxing in coffee shops with partners or friends, then stopping at the neighborhood markets to buy Shabat hallah, weekend newspaper, flowers, pastry and other last-minute food.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   The majority of shopping is usually done in advance. Then, there is cooking for expansive Shabat dinner or anticipation of going over to the parents' house, Galei  Zahal radio in the background. Those who do not cook, enjoy a sweet rest in the afternoon. And at night, everyone puts on festive clothes and goes over to meet the rest of their families for large, noisy, late and delicious dinner. For young adults this all is just an prelude to continuing the night by going out with their friends. They get back home only around 2-4am and sleep till noon on Shabbat.
3. Public display of affection.  Parents are openly "devouring" they kids on the school steps or playgrounds, while kids comfortably enjoy it and giggle. Relatives express love for each other openly in person or on the phone. Even our kids started saying "I love you" to us a few times daily. Adult men can greet each other with a kiss without any embarrassment. Lovers behave like there is no one around, sparking the air with affection and sexuality.
   
   
   
   Image from Flickr, distributed under CCL.
4. Warm clean sea and fantastic beaches. 
5. Passion for life. It may be the warm and passionate Mediterranean blood, an antidote to the daily political stress, or something else, but Israelis live to the fullest.  Even on the weekdays, even those with kids, all eat, drink, laugh and party till late. Fun opportunities are never missed for the sake of sleep. Tel Aviv is rightly advertises itself as a city that never stops.
6. Flower bloom instead of snowstorms in February.
   
   
   
   Image from Flickr, distributed under CCL.
7. Relationships: warmth, hospitality and easy-going. Anyone and anywhere you are visiting, you can expert to be seated and fed anything from a coffee-and-cake to a full meal. If you run out of eggs, salt or sugar - feel free to knock on your neighbors door. Pregnant or visibly sick, everyone - garbage men, market sellers, bank employees, or supermarket bag packer - will be wishing you a safe and healthy delivery and a quick recovery.
8. Strong women. They work (even with 3-5 kids), they manage kids-school-babysitter-activities logistics, they cook (very well), they do most of the housework, they dress well and look great, and they mostly spoil their husbands. They are smart and opinionated leaders.
9. Playground gyms - sportex.  Someone somewhere got an ingenious idea that in a country like Israel with mostly sunny and warm weather gyms should not necessarily be indoors. Now you can find adult gym equipment corners in every park. Why not build some strength,  while your kids are playing at the playground?   Why not work on the muscles after finishing your morning jog or on the way to work?
   
   
   
10. Abundance of exotic fruits and vegetables. Brown tomatoes, spherical zucchini, sabres, papaya, kiwi,  guava, anona, persimmon, pomelo etc. And if you, like me, do not know what to do with them, any shop seller or fellow shoppers will gladly offer you a few recipe suggestions.
    
    
    
    
    
    Image from Flickr, distributed under CCL.

Next to come - 10 things we miss most about US

4 months progress

A few weeks ago the kids stopped saying their heart-breaking "When we go back to America" sentences:
"When we go back, can we live in the same town we used to live?"
"When we go back, can we go to the same school?"

They are doing well and feeling much more confident in school, and finally are able to navigate through the not-so-consistent class schedule and homework assignments. New for us all - homework, exam schedule and all the updates are posted on a school website for which each kid has a login. It took a few months for our 8-year-old to figure out how it all works and now she finally feels secure and proudly independent.

We can spot some buds of close friendships that kids begin to develop here, but the nostalgia for their friends and life that they had left in the US is still strong and painful.  It seems that the older the child the more difficult it is to penetrate the already established circle of friendships at school because class lists are kept the same from year to year.  The older the child, the more of a language depth and common experiences he needs to establish strong friendships.  In Boston, so much of the boy activities centered around playing or talking about sports - Patriots, Celtics, Red Sox.  The language of sport is rather different here.

A major source of happiness for the kids was discovery of  American-style bagels, Philadelphia cream cheese and Wacky Mac&Cheese in a local supermarket.  Now the kids miss only their US friends.

While our parents visited us in the US yearly, the kids never had strong connections with them because of the short visit time, impatience in overcoming the language barrier and busy schedules. Now, partially due to the lack of local friends and partially due to kids' growing confidence in Hebrew, the grandparents and the kids are re-discover each other. First time I see our kids voluntarily call their grandparents and request their visits. The kids genially enjoy grandparents' company - playing games, talking, traveling, eating together.  And from the grandparents side it is no longer just hugs and kisses (from the Sephardic side of the family) and critique of kids manners and behavior (from the Ashkenazi, Russian, side) that we witnessed during their US visits; there is a real connection and understanding of kids' worlds.

I fill silly to admit that I was and am no longer alarmed by every ambulance siren and do not rush to check the news asap, imagining a terrorist attack somewhere nearby.  I am finally ready to explore a crowded open street market or a shopping mall without major safety hesitations. Here is a savory meal that I split with my sister-in-law at a Turkish cafe in a vibrant Carmel Market.

We enjoy daily sunshine, warmth and colorful year-around blossoms. In the last months in our Boston suburb, waking up in a quiet of a morning with birds chirping, I thought that we will never be able to enjoy the same in Israel.  It is true that the central part of Israel is much more crowded and you are more likely to hear your neighbors' whereabouts than birds' songs. But here we are, in Tel Aviv, waking up with a bird chirping and the birds are no less beautiful than in Boston.

High holidays with the family: the best of it, the worst of it, plus the food.

Proximity to the family has always been a big source of discussion for all the Israelis in the US who, like us, found themselves bringing up their kids half way across the world from the rest of their relatives. The arguments were:

• Kids need a family to be loved by.  They also need someone (other than webkinz)  to reciprocate with affection and care.  The larger this circle of love and support is, the more comfort and confidence it gives our kids. However, this love is also expressed through the smoochy lipsticky kisses from your aunt and you being called strange chicken names like"Kapara sheli."
• Who are we going to invite to our son's Bar Mitzvah? Not enough relatives in the US, too many relatives in Israel.
• Parents are getting older and it is so difficult to advise, support and help them from across the ocean.  On the other hand we can provide them with a secondary medical opinion and some material support from the US.
• Israel offers a plenitude of family babysitters. Chess or biking with grandpa is priceless. But don't be surprised that your kids have learned a song from grandma about teacher's underwear by the morning. Or that your mom told your son that boys don't cry.
• Need help moving furniture? If this would be in Israel I could call my brother, brother-in-law or my uncle.  Whom can I call here on a spur of the moment? At the same time, no favors taken means no favors returned.
• You are used to getting family phone calls once-a-week, in Israel everyone will be calling you daily.
• Your weekends, they belong to you in the US. In Israel, they are shorter and they belong to your extended family.

All these short previews we played in our heads turned into realistic melodramas since we arrived to Israel.  However, while in the dark cold night in Boston we were focusing on the worst of it, waking up in sweat, terrified of the consequences of the decision we made, the reality turned out to be much more pleasant and manageable. Kids really enjoy seeing grandparents on a weekly basis. A grandma stopping by for lunch (and bringing delicious food with her!), grandpa coming to babysit anytime we need to go out, grandma playing the tooth fairy, another grandpa on call with any Tanakh questions. While our kids' social life here are still fragile, the friendship and care of the family pad them with enough self-confidence to be very happy.


There are of course challenges. During the holidays we are laughed at when we are trying to explain that seeing the family day after day is too much for everyone. I go berserk observing the typical Middle Eastern table chauvinism with women cooking, serving men and cleaning the dishes off the table and trying my best to make sure our kids do not absorb it.  My Sephardic mother-in-law is reprimanding me for not folding my husband's clothes in his closet, while my Ashkenazi mother is openly showing her surprise that my husband's academic position does not come with car benefits like management positions in the industry. Taking this all with a sense of humor and some understanding helps us stay calm.


To our surprise, we are enjoying time with the family much more than we anticipated.  While we have been concentrating on the benefits it can bring our kids, we completely forgot how much calm, happiness and sense of purpose it can bring to us and our relatives. 


Binding all the family gatherings is of course food. Large potluck meals with 2-3-4 tables assembled in a row. When our 16 piece Crate&Barrel plate set is not enough.  When everyone brings large bags with homemade bread, salads, quiches, chicken, meat, fish, hummus or desserts and everyone takes someone else's dishes left-overs for the day after.  These are meals that tell family stories. Here are some dishes from our Sukkot gathering:


Moroccan soup (Chrira - Silk) from my sister-in-law


1 kg beef meat 
3-4 bones
1 cup brown peas
1 cup hummus beans from the can (or dried hummus that have been put in water overnight)
2 cups of fresh tomatoes crashed in blender
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup lemon juice
4 liter water
1 cup noodles
1 head celery
1 bunch of parsley
1 bunch cilantro
3 onions, diced and fried
1.5 teaspoons black pepper
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
salt


Dry and clean canned hummus beans from any transparent shell.
Add meat, bones, peas and water and boil for 2 hours on a medium fire.
Meanwhile dice and fry onions.
After 2 hours add onions, celery, cilantro and the rest of ingredients into the soup and boil for additional 30 mins
5 min before the soup is done, add noodles and flour mixed with 1/2 cup of water.


Delicious eggs stuffed with mushrooms from my mom's collection (Russians love mushrooms and know how to pick them and cook them)


10-12 eggs. To my surprise eggs are sold in dozens in Israel despite the use of the metric system.
400 gram of any mushrooms,
2 large onions
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 teaspoons sugar


boil hard eggs and remove the shell
cut each egg in two halves, removing egg yolk into a large salad bowl
mush all the egg yolks in the bowl
dice and fry onions and add to the yolks
cut mushrooms into small pieces and fry, adding soy sauce and sugar when they start to brown
add mushrooms to the yolks
mix all the ingredients in the bowl, adding mayo
place all the egg white halves on the flat plate
make little balls from the mix in the bowl and fill the yolk holes in the whites
refrigerate, take out of the fridge an hour before serving




Colorful salad from my dear Bostonian friend Julia (kids friendly - they are always happy to help make it and gladly eat it)


use equal volume of hard  boiled eggs, radishes and cucumbers
cut them all in equal size small pieces
add salt and mayo
serve in a transparent bowl to enjoy the purple-green-white-and yellow mix


Chicken in Cola sauce from our Israeli friend in Boston - Amit Milshtein

Fry onions (cut to rings) in a little vegetable oil.(2-3 onions)

Add soy sauce to the browning onions (half a cup)

Add thinly sliced garlic cloves (the more the better)

Throw in some boneless skinless chicken thighs 

Add coke (half to full cup).

Add some chili powder and black pepper.

Close the pot and let cook for 30 minutes.

You could also add some dry plums with the chicken, if you like it.

This can also be cooked in the oven, if you just throw all the above ingredients in a bowl, mix and let them marinate for an ghour in the refrigerator, then throw them all in a baking pan, cover with aluminum foil and cook for one hour. At the end remove the alum foil and let it get a little crispy on top.

Salmon with Maple Glaze (a Gourmet recipe. Remember there used to be such an amazing food magazine...)


Need: 1 large salmon

glaze:
1/2 cup maple syrop
1 tablespoon ginger
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1.2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon minced garlic

scallions or parceley for decoration

In a small heavy saucepan simmer all the glaze ingredients for about 20 mins and let cool.

Clean salmon, cut into slices, salt, and put in a lightly-oiled shallow pan for broiling. Broil in the stove or grill without the sauce till salmon looks ready and no longer rare in the middle. Put a teasppon of sauce on top of each salmon piece and decorate with scallions when serving. Serve the remainder of the sauce aside so people can pour more on the plate.