Meal 87: Kazakhstan

Between the Jordan and Kazakhstan meals, we moved across the country, to Portland, Oregon. We took a three month break while settling in to our new city and a new house, and I took advantage of the time to learn about a country I knew next to nothing about. Powell's Books had exactly one book on the country, a travelogue entitled Apples Are From Kazakhstan. Thanks to the title, you've already learned one true fact about the country. In reading it, I learned a lot more about how this huge expanse — steppes and mountains and desert and farmland as large as Western Europe — went through a wrenching transformation in the twentieth century. A centuries-old lifestyle adapted from the nomadic days, which relied on livestock-grazing and the occasional orchard-growing to get the most out of a meager soil, was upturned by centralized Soviet planning, and large-scale farming efforts led to completely unnecessary famines as well as the emasculation of the Aral Sea as water was diverted to grow cotton. Truth be told, I didn't find the traditional Kazakh cuisine all that appetizing. The much-celebrated national dish, beshbarmak, came out as greasy broth, bland boiled lamb, and slippery noodles. To be fair, I didn't cook with horse meat or sausage, and I couldn't find fermented camel's milk, and maybe steppe-grazed Kazakh mutton has a better flavor and certainly would have been more freshly slaughtered than what I got at SE 122nd and Division in a sack labeled "LAM." So, we didn't have exactly what would have been served in any respectable yurt, but I have to imagine that even those foods would have benefitted from a little spice and some degreasing.

It was a smaller crowd for this first Nosh in the new place: Derek, Alondra, and Rachael.

Baursak | Fried puffy bread |Recipe

How can you go wrong with fried bread? The stuff of street vendors the world 'round, Central Asia has hopped bigtime on the wheat-dough-in-hot-oil bandwagon. Yes, they look like tofu squares. But they were a lot tastier, and went great with tea as an appetizer. Too bad this was the best part of the meal.

Chai | Tea | Recipe

Fermented mare's milk seems to be a very important part of Kazakh culture and hospitality, but my feeble attempts to find the milk of a horse utterly failed. Since there's apparently no substitute, I leaned on another, if not at all unique, tradition of drinking tea. At least the high (cow's) milk content pays homage to the high position of dairy within the traditional nomadic diet.

Kuyrdak | Meat and organs with onions | Recipe

I know a half-dozen places in New York where you could get lamb liver any day of the week. But apparently there isn't the critical mass to keep such a thing in ready supply even at the more ambitious Portland butchers, so calling around the day before proved useful only to learn that I could have gotten it with a few days' notice. I got a little obsessive with the hunt, and skipped out of a friend's birthday party at a bar to check if the fancy supermarket across the street might have something, and they indeed had a little frozen tub of calves' liver — good enough! Except it was hardly worth it, as the resulting dish, a supposed delicacy, was mushy, greasy, and bland. Sigh.

Beshbarmak | Boiled meat and noodles in broth | Recipe

The famous pinnacle of hospitality in this part of the world, this stew atop lasagna-esque noodles is embedded with ritual around giving different body parts to different family members based on superstitions about the effects on each person's virtue. All I had was randomly cut shoulder, I think, but I think that no matter the body part, boiling (without spices even!) really is probably one of the worst ways to cook lamb. Greasy, bland. Oh well, at least it was sorta fun to roll out and cut up the noodles — rolling out dough is something I've gotten a lot better at the past few years!

Chak-chak | Fried dough in honey syrup | Recipe

Whereas I suspect the above dish just is what it is, I know for sure I screwed this one up. It's promising enough: what could be bad about fried dough bits doused in a honey sauce? Well, failed technique, that's what. Rather than mixing the two components first in a bowl and then making the traditional pyramid, I misread the instructions, and made the pyramid before pouring over the syrup. Half the fried bits were oversoaked, half were totally dry, and there was a sticky mess from the spillover. Oops.

Fruit and nuts

I found essentially nothing about Kazakh desserts, but I did read that nuts and fruits are often served, so I scraped together some seasonal fruits (persimmon, apple) and some dried ones (apricots, figs) along with almonds. Went nicely with the tea.

One thing that was a pleasant success about the meal was discovering that Portland holds more promise for ethnic-market shopping than I'd expected. While small, and not particularly helpful for this meal, Roman Russian Food has a lot of the base ingredients I'll need for Slavic foods, and Mingala International Foods where I got the lamb has a surprising variety of global foods. Makes me hopeful I'll find plenty more.

Meal 86: Jordan

When you think of Middle Eastern food, you probably imagine hummus, tabbouli, falafel. While those foods are indeed popular throughout the region, they come from the Levant, essentially the region between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates which contains modern-day Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, plus pieces of Iraq, Israel, and Palestine. (Incidentally, confusion about how to translate the Arabic word for this region, ash-Sham, is why the terrorist organization based in Syria is sometimes translated ISIS (where the second S is "Syria") or ISIL (for "Levant"). One of the goals for this project is to highlight what's distinctive about a country, meaning in part what you can find there that's nowhere else. In this case, some of the core parts of the Levantine diet are so pervasive I couldn't avoid them, but rather integrated them in a distinctive way — with hummus as a part of a bigger dip, for instance, and particular local variations of regional favorites like baba ghannoush and mujaddara.

Fortunately, this type of meal scales well. For our very last meal as New Yorkers, we returned to the fantastic Hostelling International on the Upper West Side for two reasons: we wanted to host many more folks than could fit in our apartment, and even if we'd wanted to host there, almost everything was packed up or given away! It was a pleasure to host several dozen people on a beautiful night, and cook with friends old and new in the very ample basement kitchen.

Tremendous thanks to Najeeb, a colleague of mine from Jordan living in Dubai, who summoned the famous Jordanian hospitality I'd read so much about in an amazing and unexpected way — he insisted on paying for the tickets for some people to come and enjoy his country's food! Thanks to Najeeb, everyone who volunteered to cook was able to enjoy the meal at no cost. (And, of course, hundreds of people received meals from the World Food Program.)

Fattet hummus | Hummus dip | Recipe

You know that random mixed-up mess you have left on your plate after trying a bunch of dishes at a Middle Eastern restaurant? This dish is kinda like that, just pre-mushed-up for you, with chickpeas two ways — plain and as hummus — plus yogurt, tahini, pita, olive oil, pine nuts, and parsley. It's like for Levantine food what seven-layer dip is for Tex-Mex, and a tasty way to feed a crowd. Big thanks to Jason for whipping up the hummus and then compiling the dish.

Moutabal | Roasted eggplant dip | Recipe

If this dish of roasted eggplant, tahini, garlic and lemon juice looks a whole lot like baba ghannoush, well, you're sort of right. That's what it's called in Egypt, as well as much of the Western world. But if you order baba ghannoush in several other Arab countries, including Jordan, you'll get something also based on roasted eggplant, but more like a mashed-up salad with tomatoes and onions rather than this creamy dip. Anyway, what the Jordanians call moutabal is the more common one there, so that's what we made. Really not very hard to make, and very easy to tweak the levels of pretty much all ingredients to your liking. Don't forget ample pita.

Mukhalal | Pickled turnips | Recipe

The same mustiness with a hint of sweetness that makes roasted turnip an mild yet intriguing flavor makes for a bigger punch when pickled. The deep, earthy tones play off the bright crisp of the vinegar, all of which is made cartoonishly pink thanks to a few beet pieces that have been thrown into the mix for show. With nothing more than a bay leaf and a bit of chili, and of course a week of sitting on the counter, these few elements interact to create a condiment that is, rightly, hugely popular, a nice palate-cleanser after a bite of lamb, or a texture-enhancer to an otherwise mushy bite of hummus.

Mansaf | Lamb and rice over flatbread with sauce of reconstituted buttermilk | Recipe

Sometimes it's excruciating to choose what to feature for a given country from among so many options, and sometimes you see a certain dish declared in every travel article and recipe collection as the undisputed National Dish. Jordan is the latter type of country, as this bountiful dish of meat over two types of starch bathed in a rich sauce is the sine qua non of that famed Jordanian hospitality.

Mansaf means "explosion" in Arabic, and this dish does indeed look like a bunch of settled debris. But it's all layered for maximum deliciousness and texture sensation, with lamb-infused buttermilk sauce layered amongst the flatbread, rice, and lamb for full tastiness.

The most important, and most challenging, part of the dish is the jameed, which is dried buttermilk. I couldn't find the proper hard balls that the recipe calls for, the best I had was the Lebanese version called kishk, which is similar but ground and mixed with wheat. The advantage is that the powder allowed us to skip the soaking part, but the flavor and texture both felt a little too thin and mealy. I probably put in too much water and didn't stir it enough. It definitely showed promise, with a sort of smoky-tart flavor and, in parts, a lovely creamy texture. It was definitely good enough to eat, thankfully, because I bought over 30 pounds of lamb!

Mudardara | Rice and lentils with caramelized onions | Recipe

I included this to make the meal vegetarian-friendly, but found it quite tasty all the same. As far as I can tell, it's the better-known mujaddara, except explicitly made with brown lentils and rice, whereas other versions of the dish can use green lentils, or even wheat in place of rice. Anyway, it's a hearty comfort food, and while it takes time and care to prepare, it's very inexpensive.

Knafeh | Cheese and shredded filo pastry | Recipe

Take a feta-like cheese out of its salty brine, soak in several changes of water, then simmer to make darn sure all the salt's gone. Tear open a package of shredded filo and fry in ghee until it's crispy. Layer a pan with filo, then that weird cheese, then more filo. Wait, this is dessert? Yup! Because after baking on one side, flipping over, and baking again to ensure even caramelization, you douse the whole thing in a ton of sweet syrup.

You know what? This thing was pretty darn awesome, the runaway success of the night. And congrats to Elly, pastry chef for the night, who followed the spirit of the recipe by "summoning the courage of her convictions" when flipping the trays, beautifully executed.

It was a lovely evening, mild by late-July New York standards, and many of us transitioned out to the hostel's lawn, enjoying last nibbles of sweets, including a whole box of dates I'd forgotten about in the rush. After lots of hugs goodbye and a team effort to clean up, we rushed home to pack — and a week later hit the road to move across the country!

Meal 85: Japan

Japanese cuisine is a real delight of variety of cooking technique, flavor balance, textures and seasonal sensitivity, which is why it’s a shame that most Westerners only know it through the narrow (though tasty!) lens of sushi. Accordingly, for this meal, the last at our Brooklyn apartment, I resolved to get nowhere near the stuff, and instead showcase an admittedly small fraction of the rest of what’s on offer, with an inclination toward traditional summertime foods.

Having come of age during the height of America’s economic intimidation by and cultural fascination with modern Japan, that country had an outsized influence on my childhood. I first went when I was nine years old on a one-week elemetary-school exchange (who knew such a thing existed!) outside of Osaka, then again in middle school, high school, and then a few years ago for work. I went to a Japanese Saturday school for a few years, studied the language in high school and college, and cooked quite a bit of Japanese food with my parents throughout middle and high schools. Alas, I’ve lost most of the language, but I’ve remembered quite a few bits about the cuisine that helped in the research for and preparation of this meal.

I did as much prep in advance as possible, because we had a World Cup match to watch! After the US and Portugal played to an agonizing tie, a bunch of folks came over: Diana, Jeff, Elly, Erika, Carolyn, Matt, Catherine, and more!

Mugicha | Cold barley tea

Having grown up on the West Coast, I didn’t know about humidity, so when I went to Japan in August after graduating eighth grade, I was just about knocked on my ass. The saving grace was this incredibly refreshing, smoky-nutty barley infusion. The standard packaging is enough to make 54 liters of the stuff, which ought to give an indication of its addictiveness. If you’re closer to a Korean market, look for borucha, which is as far as I can tell the same thing.

Hiyayakko | Cold tofu appetizer | Recipe

At the end of a hot day, this simple little appetizer is a lovely way to ease into the meal. The softest tofu is topped with a bit of grated ginger and scallions, and kissed with a bit of a chilled sauce. Easy, gentle, inviting.

Kyuuri to wakame no amasuzuke | Cucumber and seaweed pickles | Recipe

Thanks to the preponderance of sushi restaurants, about the only bit most people experience of the wide world of Japanese pickles is the little bit of ginger — which, sadly, is usually died pink to cover over imperfections. (You know ginger is naturally a very pale yellow, right?) Since I didn’t have time for some of the long, salt-based pickles that can take months or even years, I went for an overnight marinade of thinly sliced cucumbers and the spindly wakame seaweed in a tangy-sweet blend of rice vinegar and the curious sweet rice wine known as mirin. Another refreshing and appetite-stimulating starter.

Goma ai shingiku | Chrysanthemum greens with sesame sauce

Blanched spinach with sesame sauce was a common first course for Japanese meals at home growing up, but I'd never realized until Elly mentioned it that the dish can be made equally well, and in a slightly more exotic fashion, with chrysanthemum greens. They're a bit more bitter and herby than spinach, and more toothsome, but still shrink down to almost nothing just the same. With the thickly textured yet gently flavored sauce, it's another good addition to a lineup of summer nibbles.

Miso shiru | Miso soup | Recipe

As with most simple soups, the key is the broth. At the heart of this and just about every Japanese soup — and, heck, many Japanese foods beyond soup — is what’s known as dashi, made with wide strips of natural-MSG-laden kombu seaweed and impossibly thin flakes of dried shaved bonito called katsuobushi that lends an utterly clean fishy flavor.  While I have cooked dozens of Japanese meals in my life, I’ve never made dashi from scratch, and I’m glad I did: as with so many things, a little extra effort lends a flavor that’s purer and more satisfying. The miso, made from fermented soybeans and adding a bit of body and tang, is but an afterthought, stirred in at the end right before a baptism of tofu, wakame seaweed, and scallion nibbles. Despite the heat, everyone finished their bowl!

Saba shioyaki | Broiled mackerel | Recipe

Some of the best foods are truly the simplest, the ones that combine the good fortune of fresh ingredients with just enough manipulation to bring out its best. They happened to have local mackerel at the neighborhood farmers market (though I think it’s more accurate to call fishermen hunters than farmers!), and all I did was salt the filets long enough to draw out a bit of liquid, and broil them skin-side-up for about ten minutes. I’ll leave it to you to decide if the wedge of lemon on the side was cheating on nature.

Negima yakitori | Chicken and scallion skewers | Recipe

Through this sweet-glazed chicken kabob, Japan has made a world-class contribution to the constellation of grilled meat. In contrast to some other dishes that delicately present subtle flavors in genteel portions, yakitori is bold, brash, and brutish, rich and meaty chunks rippedp with the teeth off a skewer held by increasingly sticky fingers and washed down with a big gulp of beer. And unlike the neatly arranged bento and other precisely apportioned food, yakitori is ordered one after another, the empty skewers totaled up to calculate the bill.

This was certainly the most labor-intensive dish, and one that admittedly most Japanese home cooks wouldn’t do — it’s the equivalent of making your own ketchup. But just as homemade ketchup tastes better than the already-good bottled version, so does this yakitori sauce. Once thickened and cooled, it’s used in abundance, generously slathered time and again on the grilling skewers to lacquer on layers of salty-sweet richness. It turned out great and everyone enjoyed it; my one improvement for next time would be to cook them half-way before the guests arrive, because it took longer than I’d hoped to grill them all up from raw.

Zaru soba | Cold buckwheat noodles with dipping sauce | Recipe

Along with mugicha, the barley tea, my food memories of summertime Japan are full of these cold buckwheat noodles. Slightly chewy and surprisingly easy to grip with chopsticks, they’re run through a  soy sauce-dashi dipping sauce — zaru is an onomatopoeia for the sound the noodles make when sloshed through the sauce — then slurped as a cooling delight. Zarusoba often serves as the end of a meal, a cheap and filling way to top off the tank if the more expensive protein and vegetables didn’t suffice. I love the texture, the flavor, and the temperature, and of course the memories they all evoke. Somehow I always manage to finish my bowl.

Meal 84: Jamaica

I was surprised to read in my research for this meal that a lot of Jamaicans wish they'd never gone independent from the United Kingdom, missing the economic stability and lower crime of that bygone era. It turns out that this tropical island, which on the surface is about as different as possible from that European one, has a fair amount more in common with it than you would think, at least through the lens of food. The patty, for instance, is probably directly derived from the Cornish pasty. The saltfish in the national dish was introduced through English trading ships, as was the quirky and beloved starch-on-a-tree, breadfruit. Even sorrel, that cheery drink, came on slave ships from West Africa. That said, it's held on good authority that jerk meat is a homegrown creation, and in fact allspice, found throughout the cuisine as mostly a spice for savory dishes, is native to the island.

Our guest of honor was Lois, from Jamaica! We also dined with Heather, Sarah, Brian, Chris, Betsy, and Christen. Despite the fact that it looks like I was pasted in the front there, I swear I was actually there, it's the lighting.

Planter's Punch

There's plenty of disagreement over whether this drink comes from South Carolina or Jamaica, but either way, this drink is a sweet, tropical refresher. Tropical juices and grenadine (which I made from scratch by boiling down pomegranate juice and adding sugar) hook up with dark rum and a dash of bitters, and voilà. There are as many recipes as bartenders!

Sorrel

The word in Spanish for the flower, and the rich red drink it makes, is jamaica. So I’m not at all surprised that the island with the same name loves to drink what we call hibiscus and they call sorrel. It’s got all the color and staining power of beets, with a fruity sourness reminiscent of pomegranate without the sweetness. Accordingly, when making a drink from the dried sepals, you sweeten it after a boil and long soak, and sometimes even add other flavors like ginger and clove. I made this one fairly tart, and Lois said she liked it that way, so hooray. Just be sure to not spill any on yourself or the stain will likely not come out! Goes very well with rum, by the way.

Saltfish and ackees | Recipe

While jerk is by far the best-known Jamaican food up here, the undisputed national dish is a breakfast food that looks like scrambled eggs but is made from an oily fruit and a salty dried fish. It’s curious that, even though they’re surrounded by abundant seas, the national dish is made from long-preserved fish from Canada, but colonial legacies will do strange things. At least the fruit is quite native: ackees look a bit like oversized lychees, but aren’t very sweet. So long as you remember to soak the fish overnight, the dish is a cinch to whip together, and tastes quite a bit better than it looks or sounds. I’d definitely eat this salty, moderately greasy, and tasty plate as a hangover cure.

Patties | Recipe

A Jamaican patty is flaky, tinged yellow with curry, and traditionally stuffed with an allspice-heavy, moderately spicy ground-beef filling. I did that, as well as a vegetarian version with chorizo. As I continue to struggle with pastry, I gave up rolling out big sheets of the patty dough, and instead rolled out individual rounds, which was tedious but worked ok. The patties baked up nicely and were really quite yummy.

Jerk chicken | Recipe

Once you’ve whipped up the off-white marinade, heavy with onions and the classic thyme and allspice, you’ll wonder how it’ll turn into that super-dark coating that you think of when you think of jerked meat. Well, it takes patience: first for the long marinade, and then the slow grill, but darken it will. It turned out so damn well: I’m sure part of it is due to having used tender local well-raised chicken, but that long marinade just took it to beautiful, spicy, flavorful places.

Breadfruit

Ever heard of the Mutiny on the Bounty? The ship was on a mission from the Caribbean to the South Pacific to bring back samples of the tree that grows this big, fleshy, surprisingly bread-like fruit that was rumored to be super nutritious, as cheap food for slaves. It turns out the scaly fruit is kind of a health dud, and the slaves originally refused to eat it, but it eventually became a beloved part of the cuisine of the islands. It’s easy enough to cook: just roast it whole over fire (like I did) or in an oven (if that's more convenient), and cut it open. So what’s it like? Well, it looks like one of those smooth-skinned avocados blown up to several times its size, and tastes something between a banana and an artichoke. They’re kinda hard to come by — this was the fourth Nosh for which I looked in West Indian markets for breadfruit and the first time I got them — so if you happen to see it, do yourself a favor and give it a try. I doubt you’ll develop a craving, but you probably won’t hate it either.

Ice creams: Grape-nuts | Mango

Turns out Jamaica has a pretty big ice-cream culture, so for my final act before selling my machine, I whipped up a few frozen treats.

I was surprised as you probably are to learn that Grape-nuts ice cream is one of the most beloved flavors in Jamaica. (Weirdly, it also is in Maine.) I can see why: there’s something about how the malt plays off the sweet and cream, and the crunch in contrast with the soft, that’s just really delightful. The mango ice cream, with a squeeze of lime, was pretty alright too, though I think the chunks of fruit were too big and got kinda icy.

Meal 83: Israel

One way to look at cuisine is the interface between what foods are available and the cultures of the people who live there. We get a fascinating case study in the foods of Israel, a young country in an ancient land, with most of its population zero to two generations removed from some other place, whether near or very far. Israeli food is very much not what we think of in the U.S. as "Jewish food," for a few good reasons. I could get into ethnography and census counts, but this is a food blog, so just think to yourself whether matzo ball soup and brisket roasts sound good in a hot environment. Frankly, I don't blame Israelis, including those of Ashkenazi descent, for ditching the food of a poor people in a cold climate with short growing seasons, and instead preferring the abundance of the Mediterranean. There's a reason the Garden of Eden is placed somewhere around there!  (Incongruously, Israel has also developed a far less holy snack-food industry.)

Rather, much of the food in Israel comes from the Mizrahi, which essentially means Jews from places that aren't culturally European, including North Africa, the Middle East, and central Asia — depending on who you ask this includes the Sephardim, those whose lineage goes back to Spain. It's unclear to me whether such staples of the Israeli table like hummus, falafel, and shawarma come from these immigrants or were borrowed (or appropriated, depending on your view) from the Palestinians; if anything, my guess is that both factors reinforced each other. That said, the Mizrahim brought other foods, like kibbe soup from Iraq, and the fish dish you'll see later. (Speaking of Palestine, as it's a permanent observing state of the UN, it'll get its own meal later on.) The last notable group is Ethiopian, though it doesn't seem like they have a huge impact on the standard Israeli table.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Sarah, my buddy from high school, who now lives and works in Israel. She's an assiduous follower of the blog, and was a tremendous help in sorting through the menu, steering me in the right direction (turns out Israelis don't really make falafel at home!), and pointing out things I may never have come across because they're almost too obvious to anyone who knows the culture (minty lemonade!).

Our guests for the evening were Martyna, Russell, Jessica, Miriam, and Rob!

Limonana | Minty lemonade | Recipe

It's so goofy as to sound apocryphal: this most refreshing of drinks is not only an invention from within the past 25 years, but it came about as the invented subject of an ad campaign meant to prove the value of out-of-home ads (think sides of buses). Apparently enough people were enticed by the promise of a minty lemonade with a catchy name that they started asking for it at restaurants, who pretty quickly figured out how to make it.

Whenever and however it was invented, it's a shock this beverage isn't found anywhere in the world it gets hot. Tart lemon is refreshing, cooling mint is refreshing, and the addition of sugar and seltzer make them a delight to drink. In this version I made a simple syrup with mint, but you could just as easily muddle mint in the glass.

Sarah made it clear that to be a real Israeli summertime event, we ought to also mix arak, an anise liqueur similar to raki or ouzo, with grapefruit juice. As she had warned, we found it pretty vile.

Hummus | Chickpea dip | Recipe

While time-consuming, it's easy and cheap to make hummus from scratch. It takes an overnight soak and several hours of simmering, but the final step is a mere blitz in the food processor and you've got your own fluffy, creamy dip that's as garlicky, salty, tangy, or oily as you want it. For those of us who are, uh, sensitive to garbanzos, you may find that when you give the a long soak and a slow simmer, they're a lot more digestible than their commercially prepared counterpart.

Pita | Flatbread | Recipe

Respectable bakers say that when it comes to normal loaves of bread, bad bread should be eaten hot to mask the lack of flavor, and good bread should be allowed to sit for a bit. But I really like hot bread, so flatbreads allow me to indulge my taste and maintain my amateur-baker pride. Flatbreads are also generally pretty quick and easy to make, the only annoying part being frequently bending over and pulling things into and out of a hot oven. My trick is, whenever possible, to make flatbreads on a griddle on the barbecue, which makes access so much easier.

Unlike the thin and rather sparse pitas we most often see here, Israeli pitas are thicker and spongier. I found I got the right thickness by putting a ball of dough on a plate with slightly raised sides and using a rolling pin along the edges of the plate, making for about a half-inch-thick piece of dough. (I use a horizontally-grooved hand-carved chapati roller I bought for fifty cents at a Mumbai antique shop. You could also use a wine bottle.) Too much sauce soaks right through a normal pita, while this thicker variety is well-suited for sopping up all manner of dip and sauce, or for making your own little sandwich with. Yum.

Salat yerakot | Chopped salad

It's really nothing more than tomato and cucumber with sumac, lemon juice, and olive oil, the sort of thing that's eaten pretty much anywhere those ingredients grow. But what makes it Israeli is how incredibly finely chopped everything is. Apparently it's a point of honor of Israeli chefs. I found it made things really watery as you can see, as every stroke of the knife squishes more juice from the tomato — was I supposed to drain some of it?

Chraime | White fish in spicy tomato sauce | Recipe

We can thank the Sephardic Jews of North Africa, many of whom emigrated to Israel, for this easy, simple, yet really tasty dish. The flavors play off so well, the tang and spice of the sauce with the oily-sweet, fleshy fish. And it's so easy to throw together: throw together ingredients you probably have on hand (including that humblest of staples, tomato paste), pop in whatever firm fish you happen to find (the recipe calls for sea bass but I had an easier time coming by swordfish thanks to Trader Joe's), and you're done. Tasty dinner in 20 minutes.

Yerakot kluim im daloreet, krooveet, ve'batzal adom | Roasted vegetables with tahini sauce | Recipe  

Sarah made it clear that adding cauliflower to the meal would lend a real sense of authenticity, and that Israelis love their roasted veggies, so that's how I made the cauliflower, along with butternut squash and red onions. Instead of roasting in the oven, I threw everything in a basket on the grill. The veggies got moderately charred, but the crowd didn't seem to mind, it all got gobbled up.

Kebabim | Ground lamb with pine nuts and tahini sauce | Recipe

In Israel, kebab doesn't mean meat chunks on a skewer, or a big ol' spit (that's schwarma in Israel, of course), but rather spiced ground lamb patties. Pine nuts add a bit of crunch and the mint is a refreshing balance to the rich lamb. I grilled them like hamburgers, then we doused them in a tahini sauce. They also worked well as a sandwich inside the pita. I ended up with way too much of the meat, which I then froze raw for future meals.

Yerushalmi kugel | Peppery caramel casserole | Recipe

This is one of the few foods I found that can be called historically Israeli, as in, invented by a Jewish community living there before the creation of the state. It's a curious dish, a noodle casserole that blends an oily sweet caramel with fresh cracked pepper, and bound together with eggs. With a long, slow bake, the top and edges get good and crispy, and the inside stays moist. Is this a dessert, a snack, or a light meal? It could be any of that.

Rugelach | Chocolate-walnut-jam rolled cookies | Recipe

For years I've heard stories of my ancestor, Fannie Danab, who was such a good cook that she never taught anyone her techniques, since she didn't want anyone to be a slave to the kitchen like she was. All the same, my grandmother worked to replicate her recipe for rugelach, the crispy little rolled-up cookies that, along with schniztel, are one of the few Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jewish foods to have become firmly implanted in Israel. The recipe here is, according to my mom, pretty close to what my grandmother would make, so here you have it, third-hand.

The secret to the flaky dough is cream cheese and of course butter; I decided to keep this meal kosher, so it was Tofutti and margarine here. I rolled out rounds (it's thankfully a pretty forgiving dough), spread out a really tasty strawberry-raspberry jam, sprinkled with chocolate and walnuts (not hazlenuts, because I used what I had), sliced into wedges, and merrily rolled them up.