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Abbie Rosner's Culinary Notebook from Northern Israel
Browsing All Posts filed under »olives«
The Hakura
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 […]
A Time to Pick Olives
November 10, 2012
Once again the olive harvest. I like to speculate that not an autumn has passed since they were first cultivated, back in obscure pre-history, that people haven’t gathered olives here in this place that I live. Taking part in this ritual makes me feel like the tiniest link in a very long chain. But the […]
Defying Closure
September 13, 2012
Looking out my window at the full-grown green olives weighing down the branches of our tree, I am reminded that the Jewish New Year does not begin neatly at the end of one traditional agricultural year and the beginning of another. These olives, last of the summer fruit to ripen, will only be harvested in […]
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 […]
A Hannukah Olive Oil Miracle
December 24, 2011
As you may know, we made plenty of olives this year – green and black – from our beloved Suri olive tree. But making oil was not on the agenda. Until Balkees pointed out that, to leave the massive amount of olives on our one other tree, of the Barnea variety, would be […]
My Olives Taste Good!
December 13, 2011
Ron and I cure olives every year – but always green ones. We have the technique down pat – and have even found a convenient shortcut for cracking the olives, in a handy little machine at the El Babour Mill in Nazareth (see my post from Oct. 9). But I love black olives too and […]
A Green Olive Harvest
October 9, 2011
The first serious bout of winter rain descended several weeks ago, marking a traditional and unofficial opening of the olive harvest season in the Galilee. In fact, late September is too early for olive picking, which generally extends from late October through November. But that first rain fulfilled its function of washing off the summer […]
Autumn New Year
September 17, 2011
After the dramatic autumns of my East Coast childhood, living in the Galilee has accustomed me to a more gradual and nuanced approach of the season. Here, the beginning of fall is marked by the brief appearance of a wispy white flower, a chill in the evening air, and the return of clouds to the […]
Cracking Olives
October 19, 2010
The olive harvest is officially underway here in the Galilee. At this point, though, relatively early on in the season, most people I know are picking olives for eating – the large scale harvesting to make olive oil will probably begin in another week or so. As we do every year, Ron, our good friend […]
February 1, 2013
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