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Abbie Rosner's Culinary Notebook from Northern Israel
Browsing All Posts filed under »baladi vegetables«
Green Anew
How does one mark the arrival of spring when the entire winter is full of flowers? With more flowers for one thing, and the late-night fragrance of citrus blossoms teasing into my bedroom window. But there are other reminders that, over the thousands of years when survival for the people living in the Galilee was […]
Winter in Eden
March 1, 2013
In my last post, I talked about the “hakura” – the Arabic term for a kitchen garden next to the home, which was once traditional in rural Arab villages in the Galilee (and is, like so many other such traditions, becoming a thing of the past). Now I’d like to report on our own hakura, […]
The Hakura
February 1, 2013
I recently received a telephone call from a man named Adel, from the nearby Bedouin village of Ayedat. He is in the final stages of submitting his master’s thesis and needed help with editing the English abstract. I frequently edit English texts on you-name-the-topic, but when he told me the subject of his thesis, I […]
Timeless
July 12, 2012
Living in the Galilee, I am occasionally gifted with transcendent moments of timelessness – where the landscape and the scene that unfolds within it have more to do with thousands of years of history, than the blink of an eye of the latest decades. At least once a summer, together with Balkees and Muhammad, Ron […]
Pining for Fakus
June 30, 2012
Summertime – and fakus are in season. Fakus are like a downy, zucchini-skinned cucumber but tangier, crunchier and more refreshing than your average cuke. They are eaten raw, without peeling – their fuzz is as inoffensive as that of a peach. I first encountered fakus in the “baal” vegetable field of friends – who grow […]
A Meal With What You Have
June 17, 2012
I believe there is an art to creating a satisfying meal out of what you have in the larder. The other day, I was fortunate enough to be at my friend and culinary muse, Balkees’s home at lunch time, when she was doing just that. So what is in Balkees’s kitchen on an early summer […]
Kareh-ah: Another waterless wonder
July 22, 2011
For lack of a better name, I call these “bottle squash”. Their name in Arabic is “kareh-ah”, where the last syllable is pronounced as if you just received a gentle blow to the stomach. They are a summer vegetable that is commonly found in Arab produce markets here. Until I started spending time in the […]
A Tomato Education
July 15, 2011
More on the subject of “baal” tomatoes… For some weeks now, I’ve been trying to coordinate with Balkees a time that we could go together to visit our friends where they are growing their waterless summer produce. I’ve been enjoying these amazing vegetables, through her, but there is nothing like visiting the field and picking […]
Tomatoes Without Watering
July 2, 2011
It’s tomato season and all of a sudden these quintessential summer fruits have taken center stage. First, through Slow Food Movement connections, I recently had the good fortune to meet Roberta – a lovely US ex-pat who gave up city life to live on a farm in the Po Valley, learn Italian cooking and raise […]
March 21, 2013
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