HaSovel

As I walk back to our apartment down Ibn Gvirol street, making my way from the Reading parking lot to Rabin Square, I pass the HaSovel pizzeria. HaSovel, roughly translated, means “The Sufferer” or “The One Who Suffers”.

It is usually closed when I pass by since he does not keep regular hours. On a good day, HaSovel opens at around 1 AM, and closes at five in the morning. That’s HaSovel. He doesn’t give a fuck.

There used to be a large neon-lit sign above the little corridor that is his pizzeria. Of course, it didn’t say “HaSovel”, or even depict a pizza. Instead, it was a black silhouette of a chimera-like creature with the head of a dog at one end and the head of a cat at the other. That’s HaSovel. Fuck you.

He took it down a few months ago, and when I saw that all that was left of the chimera-sign was a naked wall of flickering fluorescent lights unceremoniously strung together, I rushed to the neighboring business and asked, frantically, if HaSovel closed shop.

“No,” they said. “Why would you think that?”

“He took the sign down..!”

“Sometimes he takes the sign down!”

That’s HaSovel. Fuck signs.

It is close to 3 AM. I cross the street and make my way towards the counter.

The place is packed. Under harsh, bright lights a crowd of teenagers emanates a hostile, tense sense of immanent violence that can only be generated by the singular cocktail of sweatpants, cheap cologne and gelled hair with stiff peaks that shares the texture, grandeur and flakes of a cum-stained gym sock.

There are only two options on the non-existent menu. You either get a slice with egg (hardboiled), or without. Don’t like the topping? Fuck you. This is HaSovel.

I order a plain slice, but warn him that I only have large bills. “Do you have change?” I ask, politely.

“Hey, what the fuck do you think this place is?” The small, gaunt man behind the counter – HaSovel himself! - asks me through clenched teeth and hollow cheeks. “A drug station? Give me the money, take your fucking pizza, take your fucking change and fucking leave.” He waves a lukewarm pizza slice in my general direction, held between a dirty thumb and a dirty paper napkin. I grab it and scramble to catch the coins he dumps into my other hand.

“Thanks!” I say as I shove my wallet back into my pocket.

“Get the fuck outta here.”

As I continue walking down the street I bite into the slice and taste the MSG, garlic powder, thin crust and cheap tomato paste. Heaven. 

AMERRRIIIICAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!

'Muricah, you're monstrous. This video verges on the sublime.

Chef - The Movie

So my better half and I watched Jon Favreau's "Chef" yesterday. A lot has been written about it online already so I won't bore you with details, but it was very enjoyable - particularly, recognizing a lot of my personal mannerisms in the cooks on screen. (Is it good? Really? Are you sure..?)

Anyway, I left with a hankering for Latin American food.
Since I'm studying for a big exam, I won't burden you with words this time:

Sweet Corn

Plantains

In the oven, with olive oil.

skirt steak

done.

add the corn and chili peppers.

tomatoes.

When charred, bring back the steak with its liquids. 

Pour hot over diced mangoes, top with avocado, coriander and pickled onions.
Add a few generous squirts of lime juice.

Faqus Salad

It's not often that I come across an ingredient that I've never heard of before, let alone one that is considered local.

Reading Alma's wonderful post on Jerusalem (Warning: Hebrew), I became intrigued with the vegetable she called "Faquz".

After some Googling, it appears that what Jerusalamites call "Faquz" or "Faqouz" and the rest of Israel calls "Faqus", "Arabic Cucumber" or "Palestinian Cucumber" is a local version of the Armenian Cucumber, and that it's in season now.

It being exam period in Tel Aviv university and my having a big exam two days from now, this was the perfect excuse to procrastinate, so I got up and went to the Carmel market to see if the produce stalls have any in stock.

When I got there I headed for the Arabian stalls next to the Carmelit and was informed by the local stall owners that they're fresh out and that I might have better luck closer to Nehalat Binyamin. The stall owners there told me they don't carry Faqus but that maybe closer to the center of the market I might find something.

As I slowly honed in on one specific stall I also bought some figs, mint and, to my surprise, lime. It's either suddenly in season, or just that I've never noticed it before, but I was really happy to find some. And if there's lime, there's calls for ceviche, so I also bought a small trout.

Anyway, after touring up and down the Carmel market, passing several Taglit groups that were simply fascinated by the plastic junk gizmos and the stupid tourist t-shirts on sale, old women arguing with fishmongers and the Davka Gourmet cheese shop (which I don't buy at after seeing they label their Gruyere cheese as French in origin)  I found these babies nestled between some cucumbers and sweet corn:

It's difficult to see in this image, but they are slightly fuzzy and have a more rotund figure than regular cucumbers, besides the obvious differences in color.

Taking my loot back home, I examined the Faqus in more detail.

Ooooh, you touch my Tralalala

Besides the obvious similarity between the Faqus' seeds and The Mouth of Sauron's teeth its was very firm, slightly sweeter than a cucumber, and its outer skin (after I've washed and toweled it off to get rid of the fuzz) reminded me of a very thin layer of melon rind - but in a good way! All in all it was very tasty.

I cut it lengthwise and then into thin slices, and mixed it with the figs, mint, some lemon juice, olive oil and sumaq. 

The resulting salad was astonishingly good.

The sweetness from the figs mixed with the coolness of the Faqus and mint, alongside the acidity and tartness from the lemon and sumaq created a super refreshing salad which was a huge pleasure to eat. 

Served alongside cubed trout fillet in a quick salt and lime pickle, this was one of the better (and easier) meals I've treated myself to lately. And so should you!

Summer Ceviche

Hot town summer in the City
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the City
All around people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk hotter than a match head 

I love this song, and this version especially. Something about it manages to convey the sweaty, humid fatigue of deep summer days and the throbbing aliveness of the nights.
At times like these I crave cool, refreshing foods. Recently I've been living off of practically nothing but prickly pears, mangoes and water, with the occasional slice of industrial pastrami snuck at night straight from the fridge, but the fact that we've finally received our city parking permit and are able to park the car close to our apartment makes it harder to find an excuse not to leave the house and get some quality ingredients.

One of the cool things about Israel is that it is both very small and very geographically and climatically diverse, which means we can get excellent fresh produce of all kinds easily.

I let my mind wander for a bit, thinking about what I'd like to eat, and kept on returning to the tastes of Vietnam. The bright, fresh, acidic and spicy flavors and textures were exactly what I needed to cut through the heat, and so I headed out to the market to buy some coriander, basil,  ginger and cucumbers, with the intent of making a simple cucumber salad with sugar, sesame oil, rice vinegar, red onions and garlic.
But when I arrived at the market the produce practically cried out to me. Mouth-watering, bright red Italian plum tomatoes, deep orange mangoes and ripe avocados all winked and beckoned. Of course I bought some. And then I bought a fish (a Meagre). And then I realized what I was going to make was no longer even remotely Vietnamese - it was South-American with East-Asian influences, at best.

No matter! It's still delicious.
You can easily switch out the raw fish in this recipe with cooked, (I'd recommend pan seared or deep-fried), with other animals such as shrimp or chicken, or even leave out the animal protein altogether. It won't be a ceviche anymore but it will still make a great, refreshing summer salad.

Ingredients:
For the Salad

• 1 Italian plum tomato (or any other tomato you like), diced
• 3 medium-smallish cucumbers, cut in half lengthwise and then halved again lengthwise, then sliced as thinly as possible
• A generous handful of coriander leaves and another of basil. Use Thai basil if you can get it.
• 1 Mango, diced (I used the Maya variety but any will do.)
• 1 mediumish avocado, diced.
• One small red onion, sliced into fine slivers.
• 1 fresh fish fillet, cut into bite sized pieces.

Mix.

For the dressing:

• Juice of 1 small lemon, or two limes if you can get them (I couldn't).
• One large clove of garlic, minced or crushed to a pulp in mortar and pistil. 
• About three cm of ginger root, minced finely.
• About a spoonful of sriracha sauce
• About 3/4ths of a spoonful of sesame oil
• About 3 spoonfuls of canola or other neutral tasting oil
• About a spoonful of white sugar
• About a third of a cup of distilled vinegar
• About a spoonful of white rice vinegar

Shake well in a sealed jar to combine and pour over the salad.

I suggest cutting and adding in the fish and avocado last, just before adding the dressing, so that they don't oxidize too much.

Serve in a tortilla, in rice paper rolls, or as a salad, and enjoy!

And just because I really like how this photo turned out..

Tel Aviv's Chinatown, Green Thai Curry and Plantain Chips

Tel Aviv - the first Hebrew City.

At least, the first in a while.



While Tel Aviv's Hebrew character is certainly an important aspect in its description, it is also a City, with a capital C, which means a whole lot of things.
One of those things is diversity.
There is a considerable population of migrants in the country, and, happily for me, a large foreign community has formed in the southern side of town.

Like any migrant community, they've brought their food over with them, which means that although the Israeli palate can be quite conservative when it comes to spices, condiments and seafood, authentic versions of these can still be found here, catering to the foreign community.

Fresh, home-made Taiwanese pork cracklings (left) and an assortment of noodles (right)

So Noam (my photographer friend) and I decided to go on an excursion to the southern part of town, pick up some exotic ingredients and experiment with them at home.

But not before we picked up some of the best Dim Sum in the country.

Proud owner

I love this neighborhood. Yes, it is shady, and it's not exactly safe to walk its streets after dark, but where else can you find dried squid and black Chinese vinegar next door to a Sudanese restaurant?
Not to mention that this is the only place I know in the country where one can easily find cassava root and plantains.
It's small, run down, unknown, hardly visited by Israelis and, as far as Southeast Asia goes, caters mostly to Thais and Taiwanese, but in my mind it's the city's Chinatown, and I can't help but love it.


As this post is an initial probe into the culinary curiosities this part of town has to offer, I thought I'd buy some ingredients which are pretty ubiquitous and play around with them.


The day's loot:

• Salted shrimp fry
• Dried Galangal root
• Dried Kaffir lime leaves
• Dried lemongrass
• Black Vinegar
• Plantains

I also bought pork tenderloin and heart. The tenderloin isn't that interesting, but ever since I laid my eyes on the pork hearts at the Kingdom of Pork butchery I knew I had to buy one and play with it.

 On the bus back home I started wondering how I was going to bring all of these ingredients together into one coherent recipe. I've never cooked with Galangal or Kaffir lime before, and never even tasted salted shrimp fry, but once I actually gave it some thought it became pretty obvious that the dish was going to be a curry of some kind - and so, I proudly present my improvised green curry recipe.

I've never made green curry before, but I did know that its base contains ground dried coriander seeds, ginger and greens like parsley, coriander or basil. Incorporating the vinegar, shrimp fry, Galangal, Lemongrass and Kaffir lime leaves into that was just a matter of grinding up the dry spices together, grinding the wet ingredients together, and mixing the two.

Left to Right and Top to Bottom: Dried coriander seeds; Grinding; Ground coriander seeds, dried lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, Galangal, white pepper and curry powder; Fresh basil, garlic, shallot, ginger, salted shrimp fry and black vinegar; GREEN CURRY PASTE!

I then flash-fried the tenderloin in a hot wok, removed it, added the green curry paste and coconut cream and then returned the tenderloin to cook with the sauce.

Lest we forget our plantains, I decided to make oven-cooked plantain chips as a side.

I cut the plantains into fairly thick strips, added olive oil and coarse salt and threw them into the oven.

And that's it!
At first I was a bit worried that chips won't serve as an appropriate side for a curry, and that maybe rice would have been a better choice, but the sauce worked beautifully with the plantains, and I will definitely repeat this combination in the future.

MODS:

I feel this recipe would work great with fish.
The only thing I would change is when the protein is added. With fish, I would skip the flash-frying phase and add the meat directly to the cooking curry sauce, and let them poach in it.

TL;DR

Ingredients:

• 1 Pork Tenderloin

For the wet part of the curry:

• 1 tin of coconut cream
• A generous amount of fresh basil leaves, stems removed
• Fresh ginger
• Salted shrimp fry
• Black vinegar
• Shallots
• Garlic

For the dry part of the curry:

• Dried coriander seeds
• White pepper
• Curry powder
• Dried Galangal root
• Dried lemongrass
• Dried Kaffir lime leaves

***

• Plantains - in the "still-green-but-starting-to-show-spots" phase
• Olive oil

Instructions

For the curry:

Using either a mortar and pistil or a spice grinder combine the dry curry ingredients until they form a uniform fine powder, and put the powder aside.

Using the same mortar and pistil or a stick blender combine the wet curry ingredients until they come together as a pesto-like paste. Add the powder and combine both.

In a hot wok or deep pan flash fry the pork tenderloin after it has been cut into bite-sized portions with a bit of canola oil and kosher salt until it is cooked from all sides. Remove from the wok.

Add the green curry paste to the pan, stir and quickly add the coconut cream. When the paste has dissolved into the cream's liquids, add the pork and let all ingredients cook for a few minutes.

For the plantains:

Remove plantain's skins and cut into thick slices. Place on a baking sheet with parchment paper. Salt liberally and pour olive oil on the slices. Place in a pre-heated 230 degrees Celsius oven and bake until crisp and golden. 

Let me know if you try this recipe, or if you've made green curry before and would do anything differently!

Finally, enjoy this sunset I saw from the Yarkon bridge this Friday:

-Adam

A little somethin' somethin' to balance my previous post

As promised, a decisively non-vegan recipe to balance out my last post.
This little gem was sent to me by a very good friend, and this blog's future photographer.

We're working on an exploratory post that will be published sometime soon, but in the meantime, here's a link to a recipe that requires a dead marmot and a blowtorch.

If you're in Israel and know where I can procure food-grade marmots let me know! :D