Cauliflower with tahini dressing and sesame and hemp seeds

It's almost two years since I went to Israel with the lovely David Lebovitz and Ms Marmite Lover, as well as Cambria from The Kitchn and Erin from Serious Eats. We were invited and hosted by Kinetis, and I had the most wonderful week exploring the Israeli culinary scene. One of the most memorable meals during that trip was lunch at Haj Kahil, an Arabic restaurant in Jaffa. (Read David's wonderful review of the amazingly satisfying meal here). The restaurant is focusing on "authentic Arab cuisine with a Galilee orientation", cooked by the Palestine chef Omar Iluwan:



The food was utterly delicious, and I was gorging on the dozen or more mezze dishes, all vegetarian and all utterly delicious. One of the most memorable dishes was a simple cauliflower with tahini (20 NIS, still on the menu). The pairing of cauliflower and tahini was still new to me and it was a match made in heaven. I missed it.

There's a recipe for fried cauliflower with tahini in Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's newst book, Jerusalem, but Haj Kahil's wasn't fried. It was mild and soft, simple cooked cauliflower, dressed with creamy tahini. Just when I was about to start inventing the bicycle again - or trying to recreate the dish I fell in love with in Jaffa - Clotilde posted a recipe for Cauliflower Salad à la Café Pinson. I made the dish with regular cauliflower on the day Clotilde posted the recipe, and have made it almost on a weekly basis since then. It's my favourite way of preparing cauliflower these days, alongside a simply roasted cauliflower.

As always, I've modified the way I make this cauliflower salad. I'm not too keen on flax seeds, either whole or crushed, and apart from the crunch factor, I couldn't see what they'd add to the cauliflower. I used lightly toasted sesame seeds instead - after all, the tahini is made with sesame seeds as well, so it seemed like a nice pairing. Also, hulled raw hemp seeds have a lovely moist and soft bite, so I've been adding these as well (the nutritious hemp seeds also called hemp hearts; you can easily buy them from Amazon, see here, here and here).

(Romanesco) cauliflower with tahini dressing and seeds
(Romaani) lillkapsas tahiinikastmega
Serves 4



1 large cauliflower, regular or Romanesco, cut into florets

Tahini dressing:
3 Tbsp light tahini paste
1 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tsp cumin seeds, slightly crushed
0.5 tsp fine sea salt
5 Tbsp cold-pressed olive oil

Topping:
toasted sesame seeds
hulled hemp seeds

Bring a large pan of water to boil. Season generously with salt. Add the cauliflower florets and boil for about 7-8 minutes, until cooked, but still with a bit of bite. Drain thoroughly and let cool to room temperature.

Make the tahini dressing. Whisk tahina, salt, lemon juice and cumin seeds until combined, then drizzle in the olive oil, whisking vigorously to create a nice emulsified dressing (Clotilde calls this "vegan mayonnaise"). Pour the dressing over the cooked cauliflower and toss until combined.

Transfer into a serving dish, sprinkle generously with toasted sesame seeds and hulled hemp seeds.

Enjoy either straight away, or keep in the fridge until ready to serve.

Here's a cauliflower version, dressed with tahini and topped with just sesame seeds:

3 things to do in Tel Aviv and 3 things to do in Jerusalem

Katrina (born in Tallinn) of The Gastronomical Me blog (written in London) dropped me an e-mail few days ago. I quote:

I'm flying to Israel tomorrow, for a week, will stay in Tel Aviv and Jeruselem and the Deadsea. I know you went there during summer through that social group. I've read a bit on your site already but if you were to pick say 3 places that surprised you the most, perhaps the places you don't think people are likely to discover just by wondering around, what would you recommend?

I had the pleasure of visiting Israel last June in the honorable company of David Lebovitz and Ms Marmite Lover as well as two lovely young American food writers. I haven't managed to blog nearly as much about the trip as I would have wanted, but here's my TOP 3 recommendations for both places. I have met Katrina on a couple of occasions, and think I have a vague idea of what would interest her - hope I'm not too wide off the mark, Katrina :D

JERUSALEM

1) Drinks and nibbles at the rooftop restaurant of the Mamilla Hotel. Wonderful views across the city during sunset, excellent modern Israeli food. We had nibbles there on the first night in town, just getting to know each other and our wonderful hosts Adi and Joanna (hi there!) and our packed itinerary.




(More Mamilla photos here)

2) A tour of the Mahane-Yehuda Market is a must - and I've actually managed to blog about that.


(More Mahane-Yehuda photos here)

I also think Katrina would enjoy a quick khatchapuri at the Georgian café Hatchapuria (5 HaShikma St, just outside the market). Here's their lovely Adjarian cheese khatchapuri with soft egg:



3) Hummus and falafels, mint tea, cardamom-spiced coffee, mutabbaq - all on Via Dolorosa. We popped into a hummusia somewhere between the seventh and eighth station. Excellent first hummus indeed! We then followed up the stairs and just on the right at the end of the last station, stopped for mutabbaq, the super sweet Arab filo pastry, mint tea and cardamom coffee.




Both photos by David Garb, one of the photographers on our tour

TEL AVIV

1) Haj Kahil is an Arab/Palestine restaurant in Jaffa, and the lunch we enjoyed there was probably one of the tastiest and most memorable during the trip full of really excellent food. The mezze table alone was ten points out of ten, a wonderful selection of fresh and delicious vegetable dishes.



Here's the waiter with the main course - just before our "argument" whether I should have a huge portion as I was eating for two (pregnant with bebe number three, remember :)) - his view; or whether I should only have a small portion of that beautiful 8-hour-lamb, as there was a good-sized baby taking up all that free space in my belly already - my idea:

David Lebovitz has written a beautiful post about that restaurant and I would definitely go back for a meal or two when in Israel again. This is my Number 1 recommendation for Israel!

2) Eyal Shani's The Salon only opens twice a week (Wednesday and Thursday), 8 Ma'avar Yabok, Nakhalat Yitzhak, Givataim, telephone 052-7035888. Apparently it's hard to secure a table and it's pretty pricey, and definitely not a place if you want a quiet place to enjoy a meal. But I trust Katrina would enjoy the rowdy and positively crazy atmosphere of the place. The food was delicious as well, of course :)

Eyal Shani in action.

3) A leisurely breakfast at Manta Ray at Alma Beach. The food was good, but I have especially fond memories of having breakfast at the relaxing seaside café - the vibe and the atmosphere were great.  


Remember - there six recommendations are posted here with a specific food-loving girl in mind - might not be the same places I'd suggest to a retired couple or a young family with three small kids :)

A recipe for Shakshuka (shakshouka), or eggs nested in spicy tomato sauce

You'll find the recipe for this wonderfully simple and flavoursome basic shakshouka at the end of this post. The colourful selection of hot peppers and tiny tomatoes is from our greenhouse.  


I went to Israel back in June (see disclaimer at the end of this post), and fell in love with shakshuka (also spelled as shakshouka). Shakshuka is a northern African dish, originally from Tunesia or Algeria (depends who you ask from) that has become extremely popular in Israel over the last decades. We were told on several occasion that this is one of the two dishes that every Israeli man knows how to cook (I cannot recall what was the other one. Anyone?). I'm sure Israeli women are pretty good in making this dish as well, but yes, it's mainly men who boast who can make and eat the most fragrant and spicy shakshuka for breakfast :)

As with many traditional dishes, there are as many recipes around as there are cooks.  The hugely popular Yotam Ottolenghi has a version in his second bestselling book, Plenty, using onions and plenty of bell peppers and you can see him making his version of shakshuka in this video recipe on Guardian's website. The guru of Jewish food, Claudia Roden, includes a recipe for shakshouka in her epic The Book of Jewish Food. She notes that  

"This name us used for all kinds of dishes involving fried vegetables with eggs broken on top. A variety of vegetables, from potatoes and broad beans to artichoke hearts and courgettes, are used in Tunesia, where the dish originated, but it is the version with onions, peppers and tomatoes that has been adopted in Israel as a popular evening meal".

Claudia Roden also includes two variations in her book - one with spicy merquez sausage, the other with white Bulgarian cheese.  In another excellent book, Tamarind and Saffron, Claudia Roden provides two recipes, one with the merquez sausage, the other one with peppers and garlic instead of onions, which also happens to be my Allium of choice for this recipe.

Janna Gur - a popular and well-known Israeli food writer whom we had a pleasure of meeting twice during our trip to Israel (she's standing on the far left on this photo) - has included a recipe and several variations of shakshuka in her beautiful The Book of New Israeli Food: A Culinary Journey. Janna claims that there are just three mandatory ingredients - tomatoes, hot sauce and eggs, and her basic recipe includes garlic, fresh and canned tomatoes, seasonings and eggs (note: NO peppers!). She also includes varieties with onions and peppers, with spicy merquez or small cocktail sausages, "the Israeli Army shakshuka" with canned corn, baked beans and sausages, as well as the mild tomatoless shakshuka with spinach and feta.

Last, but not least, there's a recipe for shakshuka in Rebbetzin G. H. Halpern's rather humorously written Confessions of a Kitchen Rebbetzin, using plenty of bell peppers (green, yellow and red), garlic cloves, eggs and spices. Rebbetzin goes as far as claiming that shakshouka is probably the dish Israelis enjoy eating most:

"What Israelis really dig is Shakshuka - a well seasoned North African dish of eggs in hot tomato sauce. The best and nicest (and most barbaric) way to eat it is straight from the pan, no utensils needed, by dipping thick chunks of simple bread."

Here are some of the shakshukas we  enjoyed during our trip to Israel*. First off, the large Shakshuka at restaurant Cordelia (Chef Nir Zook), Old Jaffa, Israel. Challah bread (on the background) is perfect for scooping up the spicy tomato and egg dish:
 

Here's a "single portion" shakshuka at Manta Ray, Jaffa, Israel - about to be devoured by the colourful Ms Marmite Lover. Note the thin layers of grilled cheese on top of the shakshuka - wonderful, if not traditional, addition. Another fellow traveller, David Lebovitz, mentions shakshuka in his extensive post about Israeli breakfast.
 

As the eggs play such an important role in this dish, it's best to use the freshest organic/free-range eggs you can afford. Luckily, our backyard chicken keep us well stocked with eggs at the moment and of course, I used eggs from our own chicken. Here are our Orpington chickens, Buffy and Fluffy, earlier this year. They're excellent layers:


My recipe below is pretty basic - just garlic, tomatoes, seasonings and eggs. Although you can use fresh tomatoes during the summer time, I'll include canned tomatoes in the recipe - the fresh tomato season is coming quickly to an end here in Estonia, and you wouldn't want to use the flavourless winter supermarket tomatoes here. You'll find links to fancier and more elaborate versions below. Somehow I prefer this dish to be very basic.

As hinted above, you need a good bread - no pita bread (that's for eating hummus!), but a nice challah or a bloomer or a crusty country bread to scoop up all the shakshuka from the pan!

A simple shakshuka recipe 
(Shakshuka ehk teravas tomatikastmes küpsetatud munad)
Serves one

1 Tbsp oil
1 large garlic clove, crushed
200 g chopped tomatoes
a generous pinch of chilli flakes or a scant teaspoon of harissa
a pinch of ground cumin
a pinch of ground caraway seeds
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 eggs

Heat oil in a small frying pan over medium heat. Add garlic and fry gently, until garlic is golden.
Add the chopped tomatoes and the seasonings, stir, cover and let simmer for 10-15 minutes, until the tomato sauce is well flavoured and slightly thickened. Taste for seasonings - add more chilli or other spices, if necessary.
Using a spoon, make two dents into the tomato sauce and break an egg into each one. Sprinkle some salt on top and heat for another 5-6 minutes, until the egg white is thickened and the egg yolk is half-cooked (if you prefer your egg yolk fully cooked, cover the pan or transfer it under a hot grill for a few minutes.

Other foodbloggers writing about shakshouka (in English): 
Kitchen Parade (September 2012; Alanna hosted me generously - and fed me, of course - in June 2008. Do check out her blog, if you're not yet familiar with it)
The Wednesday Chef (September 2006)
Smitten Kitchen (April 2010; Deb crumbles feta cheese on top of her shakshouka)
The Bojon Gourmet (October 2011)
The Leftover Queen (May 2012)
The Shiksha in the Kitchen  (July 2010)
A Sweet Spoonful (March 2012, incl. fennel!)
Cook Republic (May 2011)

Other foodbloggers writing about shakshouka (in Estonian):
Ise tehtud. Hästi tehtud. (August 2011)

 * Disclaimer: I spent six days in Israel in late June/early July as a guest of a non-profit social start-up Kinetis, more specifically their Vibe Israel programme. This particular trip hosted five international food bloggers and writers, introducing them to the multifaceted and pluralist Israeli culture and cuisine. 

See other posts about my trip to Israel.

Endomela ice cream shop in Akko, Israel, and a recipe for a wonderful apricot sorbet

 
You'll find the recipe for this wonderfully aromatic and flavoursome apricot sorbet at the end of this post.  

Endomela is a play of three Hebrew words, Ein-Dome-La. The meaning? "Similar to none" or "Unlike no other". This is the name of a small ice cream parlour in Akko (known as Acre in English), a small town in the Western Galilee region of northern Israel. Akko was first mentioned on the tribute-lists of pharaoh Thutmose III in the 16th century BC, and is considered to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in this part of the world. A place with history indeed.

We visited Akko in the midday heat in the middle of the hot Israeli summer, so it was hard to grasp that the city is a home to some 45 thousand inhabitants. I guess that most of them were hiding in the safety of their cool and possibly air-conditioned homes and not wandering around the streets.

We were in Akko for a reason, of course. As we were exploring the culinary delicacies Israel has to offer, we had arrived to have a light lunch at a famous seafood restaurant URI BURI, meet the man behind the restaurant, Uri (Jeremias) Buri (pictured just below), visit his ice cream shop and enjoy a private tour of his recently opened beautiful boutique hotel Efendi and finish with a "light" tapas-style lunch at the hotel restaurant. I'll write about the fish restaurant and the hotel another time, today I'll give you a peek into his ice cream shop, the smartly-named Endomela.



Here's Uri Jeremias aka Uri Buri and me in front of his ice cream shop in Akko. American journalist Eric Westervelt described Uri Jeremias in his article for NPR.org as having stepped out of a Tolkien novel, with "his thick, long, elfish beard, ample paunch and mischievous smile". My 3,5 year old daughter is convinced that I was served ice cream by Santa Claus/Father Christmas himself :)

Uri (Jeremias) Buri had been making and serving ice cream at this fish & seafood restaurant for years, but as the restaurant's kitchen is tiny, he had to move out his ice cream business into separate premises. He opened Endomela within a short walking distance from his restaurant just over a year ago. In addition to a number of sweet sorbets, ice creams and frozen yoghurts, he also makes some intriguing savoury combinations. We had a taste of this wasabi-sorbet, served with smoked salmon, as well of arak-flavoured sorbet destined as a palate-cleanser between various fish courses at his restaurant. 



Uri scooping some of his lovely ice cream for us. (Photo by Noa Magger). We got to sample pretty much all the available flavours.


Endomela's ice cream selection. (Photo by Noa Magger).

All ice cream is made at the premises and in small batches. At the time of our visit, they were churning a very refreshing pineapple sorbet. My very favourite one was Endomela's mint ice cream - so fresh and minty, definitely not your regular beach-front chocolate and mint concoction (you can see it on the right on the photo above). Uri told us he uses a combination of spearmint "Nana" (Mentha spicata, Israelis call it sweet mint or nana) and the highly aromatic Emperor's mint or Roman mint (Micromeria sp)  to achieve the immensely refreshing and bright minty flavour.

The runner-up was Endomela's apricot sorbet. Yet pretty much everything else we tried was wonderful as well - cardamom ice cream, passionfruit sorbet, halva ice cream, lime and poppyseed frozen yoghurt - you name it.

I've made apricot ice cream before, but not apricot sorbet, and that's what I decided to replicate at home first. As the reigning king of all things ice cream and sorbet, David Lebovitz, was also taking part in our trip to Endomela, I decided to use his recipe as a base. I know David provides his recipes both in Imperial and Metric, but his starting point is still the pound and not a kilo, so I did some minor revisions (if I'd ask for 900 grams of apricots or 110 grams of chocolate chips in a store, I'd get very weird looks. While these amounts would make perfect sense to someone who's grown up with pounds and ounces, then 900 grams (2 pounds) of apricots and 110 grams (1/4 of a pound) of chocolate would make perfect sense. For us, it's a weird 100 grams less than a kilo and a funny 10 grams more than 100 grams, if you know what I mean). I also reduced the amount of sugar just a tiny bit, as the apricots I was using were very sweet and very ripe (ripeness and the amount of fruit sugar are related, you see).


The Bergeron apricots @ Marche de Saint-Antoine, Lyon, France. August 2009
 
My favourite apricots for making all kinds of desserts are the French Bergeron ones. This time I used a lovely Spanish alternative - dark orange, very sweet and just a perfectly slightly acidic. You may add more sugar or a dash of lemon juice to the sorbet mix, depending on the type of apricots you're using.

Apricot Sorbet
Slightly adapted from David Lebovitz's excellent book The Perfect Scoop
Makes about 1 litre



1 kg very ripe apricots (that's just over 2 lbs)
250 ml/1 cup water
200 ml/170 grams caster sugar (that's 1 cup minus 3 level Tbsp)
0.5 tsp vanilla extract

Split the apricots in half, remove the stones, and cut each half into thirds.
Place the apricot pieces and water in a medium saucepan, cover. Cook over medium heat for about 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until apricots are softened and begin to fall apart.
Remove from the heat, stir in the sugar and let the mixture cool to room temperature.
Once cool, pureé the mixture in a food processor or blender until smooth. Season with vanilla. Cover and chill thoroughly in the refrigerator, preferably overnight.
Freeze the mixture in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Similar posts:
Erin Zimmer of Serious Eats writes about Endomela: Snapshots from Israel: Uri Buri and his ice cream.
Other posts about my trip to Israel.
Other ice cream and sorbet recipes here on Nami-Nami.
More ice cream and sorbet recipes on David Lebovitz's blog.

* Disclaimer: I spent six days in Israel in late June/early July as a guest of a non-profit social start-up Kinetis, more specifically their Vibe Israel programme. This particular trip hosted five international food bloggers and writers, introducing them to the multifaceted and pluralist Israeli culture and cuisine. Visit to Uri Buri restaurant, the Efendi Hotel and the adjacent ice cream parlour Endomela in Akko/Acre in the Western Galilee region of northern Israel was part of that trip.

The obligatory market post: Mahane-Yehuda market in Jerusalem

Which food lover doesn't like visiting a proper food market when travelling? I believe there's none. Here are some of my photos from the visit to the main market in Jerusalem exactly one week ago.

Also known as Machne Yehuda or simply the Shuk, Mahane-Yehuda market is one of the symbols of Jerusalem, the capital of Israel (and one of the non-religious kind). The market dates back to the Ottoman period (the first stalls began their trade at the end of the 19th century), and has seen several redesigns and developments during the last 100+ years. Today the market covers a rather large plot of land, and hosts stalls that offer everything from flowers to household goods to art to food. We, the foodbloggers, were obviously focusing on the numerous market streets specialising in food (that'd be Eitz HaChaim street, Machane Yehuda street, HaTapuach street, Eliyahu Banai street, HaShaked street). Our tour guide Zvi took as to several of his favourite food spots at the market. 

Beautifully fragrant fruit teas:


A fruit vendor. Cherries, peaches, plums - all were in season right now:



A great range of olives was sold at the market. Many indigenous olive varieties are grown in Israel (f. ex. Souri, Barnea, Nabali (Balladi)), as well as internationally known Manzanilla, Kalamata, Picual, Novo, Leccino, Fishulin.


This cheeky vendor offered everyone a taste of some rather fierce yellow pickled chillies. Luckily I was warned before I went for it :)


Baked goods:



A great selection of fresh pastries. See the rugelach on the back (you'll find my two rugelach recipes when clicking on the link)?


Halva Kingdom had couple of stalls at the market. Halva Kingdom has been making and selling home-made halva in Jerusalem since 1947, and opened a stall at the Mahane-Yehuda market back in 1986. They sell over 100 different halva flavours and types (we had a chance to nibble a mocca-flavoured one, which was lovely). Their halva is made using sesame seeds from Ethiopia at a factory in Mishor Edomim industrial settlement. The sesame seeds are ground in a millstone and then mixed with sugar until a sweet and thick paste is formed:


Israeli climate is perfect for growing figs. Again, several varieties are grown across the country, the one on the photo should be honey-sweet and pale pink Byadi. I had a chance to eat them later during the week again (and that's where I was told the variety of figs), and they're extremely soft and luscious and sweet.


A fresh vegetable stall:


I was bemused by the cucumbers at the market. They look exactly like mini versions of our "regular" cucumbers - shiny, long, smooth and slim, just much smaller. Our "small" cucumbers that we eat a lot during the summer - 10-12 cm in length, crunchy and crisp as they are - are prickly and chunky, like you can see on the third photo in this old post of mine.

Getting hungry was inevitable with all that fresh and delicious-looking food all around us, so Zvi led us to the Iraqi market (built in 1931) and more specifically, to a wonderful Georgian café Hatchapuria (5 HaShikma St, established in 2009):

The shopkeeper Tango Shavit (pictured left) treated us to three different types of Georgian cheese bread - hatchapuri (the traditional bread with cheese in the middle), acharuli (the boat-shaped open-top bread filled with cheese and topped with an uncooked egg that you mix yourself with into the very hot cheese filling) and magaruli (a simple hatchapuri that's topped with cheese and baked until crisp), as well as some Georgian pickles and the popular sweetmeat - walnuts dipped into thickened grape syrup and hanged to dry (churchkhela, pictured on the left).



Some funny crocheted kippah/kipa skullcaps were also available at the market:

Similar posts:
FoodBridge on Mahane-Yehuda market and our tour of Jerusalem (an Israeli foodblog written by US-born Sarah)
The Kitchn on Mahane-Yehuda market (post by Cambria Bold)
Other posts about my trip to Israel.

If you're visiting the market and want some guidance, then this English-language website dedicated to the market might be a good place to start.

Disclaimer: I spent six days in Israel in late June/early July as a guest of a non-profit social start-up Kinetis, more specifically their Vibe Israel programme. This particular trip hosted five international food bloggers and writers, introducing them to the multifaceted and pluralist Israeli culture and cuisine.