The New York Times Knowledge Network site is selling an online course called "The New Israeli Cuisine," for $145:
Come interact in a weeklong seminar with The New York Times’ Food writer Joan Nathan and Janna Gur, Chef and Chief Editor of the leading Israeli food and wine Magazine “On the Table.” …Chef Cohen is doing a special event with the Consulate General of Israel and the James Beard Foundation and course participants will see exclusive video on what he prepares as representative of new Israeli cuisine.
The story behind the course, from Ynet:
The idea of introducing an Israeli culinary course was initiated by the Israeli Consulate in New York and constitutes the first culinary course in the newspaper’s online university program…
Students of the online course will also get a chance to view Israeli star chef Haim Cohen prepare a meal based on signature Israeli dishes. "I’m glad that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is promoting the country through food. Maybe if people saw we have this type of culture their hostility towards us would be diminished," he said.
P.S. Before Israel invented hummus, it invented the tomato. From the New York Times earlier this week, "Israel begins campaign to improve its image":
One main message of the campaign is that Israel is a technically advanced and diverse society and that its government policies are not the source of regional conflict. It notes that a number of important agricultural breakthroughs have occurred here, including drip irrigation and the development of the cherry tomato.
That’s absurd on so many levels.
What the heck is “Israeli cuisine”?
It must be the same as an “Israeli salad”. Strangely enough, the “Israeli salad” has the same ingredients as a “Arab Salad” and “Mediterranean Salad”
So let’s go through a list of Israeli cuisine, shall we?
Ham and eggs? No
Bourekkas? Ummm well, not really. It’s Greek.
Baklava? Ummm well, not really, it’s both Greek and Arab.
Hummus? Umm, well. I don’t think David Ben Gurion knew what Hummus was growing up in Poland.
Well, hold on a minute. How about Falafel, that’s Israeli, isn’t it? No. Not quite.
Shawarma? Well, kind of.
Shnitzel? Israeli? No. Austrian/German.
Gefiltefish? No.
Kousa Mahshi? No.
Jachnun? No. That’s Yemeni
Couscous? No. Not Israeli.
How about Hamburgers? NOT COOL! Not Kosher.
OK, Burgers? Close. Let’s just leave it at that.
falafel No Arab
(Etymology: Ar falāfil)
Hamburger No American or German
link to en.wikipedia.org
Shawarma?
Etymology: Levantine Arabic shāwurma sliced lamb on a skewer, from Turkish çevirme, literally, turn, rotation, from çevir- turn
“Israel does not have a universally recognized national dish; however, many consider it to be falafel.”
link to en.wikipedia.org
…which would be something else they’ve stolen from Arabs.
They’re not talking street food or traditional dishes, Avi. In the area of haute cuisine, there is a distinctive Israeli style developed by a number of talented Israeli chefs. That’s not the problem here. Were the course not an Israeli government-sponsored PR gimmick to draw a happy face on racism and murder, we could have a debate about whether it is acceptable to celebrate Israeli culture (and especially food) while the Israeli government is intentionally starving a million and a half Gazans.
These guys make BDS too easy.
Shmuel, I know this wasn’t the point. I was just trying to mock the Bronner-Cherry- Tomato element of it all. Tough crowd. :)
…distinctive Israeli style developed by a number of talented Israeli chefs.
Distinctive, eh?
Is this something relatively new?
Avi: Distinctive, eh? … Is this something relatively new?
I don’t know whether the question is serious or not, but I think the trend started about 20-30 years ago, and Haim Cohen was one of the important players. Al Hashulhan (“On the Table”) has also played a part. The “distinctive” part has to do mostly with European-ME fusion, and breaking of traditional haute cuisine taboos.
It was serious.
Thanks for the reply.
Falafel is Egyptian link to en.wikipedia.org
Aparisian,
I’m not sure you want to get into the ancient ta’amiah-falafel controversy – especially when there are Egyptians and Lebanese in the room.
hahaha i must say the best Falafel i ever had was Egyptian. In Paris we have a Jewish Falfel street rue de roisiers. Sorry for Lebanese i prefer your hummus :p
Chef Cohen will be serving up the newest dishes from Israel, in particular…
smoked leg of infant Palestinian
It’s kind of idiotic, isn’t it? European Jews have been fighting an ugly, nasty smear that they cook children for centuries. And what do Israelis do?
Zionists. The worst enemy of Jews worldwide.
“I’m glad that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is promoting the country through food. Maybe if people saw we have this type of culture their hostility towards us would be diminished,”
At last! They have got down to the core issue.
Israel is hated because people think the food is crap.
As I wrote in part of another post on the other tomato thread:
From Wikipedia
The Santorini cherry tomato originated in Santorini (Greece), and is known for its flavour and body. International conferences dedicated to the cultivation, horticulture and agriculture of the cherry tomato are also held at Santorini.
The Santorini seeds first showed up in Greece in 1818, and according to the santonet.gr website The older population of the island maintain the first seeds arrived from the Suez. The Santorinian captains used to stop there for supplies, and after trying the tomatina, they brought the seeds back. The crops were of course successful due to the dry climates of both Egypt & Santorini.
So, did Israel invent the chickpea and lemon too? Give ‘em a month and they’ll come out with that claim as well, or maybe the NYT Food or Science section will do it for them.
I didn’t know chickpeas was native to Odessa and Brooklyn :-)
Perhaps they can make a form of ration for the soldiers that bears the “Israeli” signature? So after they have murdered, destroyed and stolen from the Palestinians, they can sit down to a sumptuous meal celebrating their “culture.”
CULTURE
“The mark of Cain won’t sprout
from a soldier
who shoots
at the head of a child
on a knoll by the fence
around a refugee camp–
for beneath his helmet,
conceptually speaking,
his head is made of cardboard.
On the other hand,
the officer has read The Rebel;
his head is enlightened,
and so he does not believe
in the mark of Cain.
He’s spent time in museums,
and when he aims
his rifle at a boy
as an ambassador of Culture,
he updates and recycles
Goya’s etchings
and Guernica.”
Aharon Shabtai
a poem for a poem — this one is on topic in terms of stealing culture:
this ancient lion of ours
has been auctioned off.
proceeds will go to a charitable trust formed by the martin family.
one of these days
an iraqi is going to steal the mona lisa
and sell it for 57 million dollars
for the proceeds to go to a charitable trust formed by abeer qassim hamza’s family.
and it will be a popular news item
for many a web surfer to marvel at
and pat themselves on the back
for being informed.
perhaps they auction mesopotamia’s artifacts
and protect mesopotamia’s oil ministry
and write mesopotamia’s constitution
and stand guard at mesopotamia’s soil, rivers and skies
because the true owners
are too displaced
too tortured
too orphaned
too dead
to protect their own things themselves.
–the author is an Iraqi woman
Big mistake. Israel should not try to sell its cuisine. I remember when first exposed to Jewish delis in NY. My first reaction was that it was a mix of Eastern European peasant food and Northern European sea food. I like lox and pickled herring but those dishes are Scandinavian. Now Israel cuisine seems to have thrown in some of the more simple mideastern dishes that predated their arrival. This was really brought home to me when I attended an Egyptian wedding feast, there were many appetizers that are sold to us as Israel food, but the main and superior dishes were quite new.
Israeli cuisine should be considered an oxymoron much like German humor, Russian justice or French philosophy are.
Syvanen,
Like the cuisines on which it is based, Israeli food can be good or bad, to your liking or not. Like Israeli music, there’s a lot of fusion going on. I don’t see any oxymoron here, unless you consider the cuisines of other colonial and/or immigrant societies oxymorons as well (South African cuisine, comes to mind).
Regarding the broader subject of “Jewish” food, it is indeed generally local food (of the popular or peasant variety) adapted to Jewish dietary or other religious laws or customs (e.g. the prohibition against cooking on the Sabbath, festival themes, etc.). There are some dishes historically considered specifically “Jewish” – i.e. developed and popularised within a given Jewish community – sometimes due to dietary laws (e.g. unleavened cakes for Passover) and sometimes not (e.g. carciofi alla giudia – Jewish-style artichokes). Roman Jewish cooking is considered a part of traditional Roman cooking, with a number of distinctive dishes – widely recognised and appreciated as “Jewish food”.
On the whole, the distinctive features of Jewish cuisine are comparable to variations within national cuisines, which tended to vary from town to town, village to village. When traveling in Portugal for example, I found that every village had its own particular cake. To the extent that Jews lived and ate apart from non-Jews, they developed variations on the local cuisine, and sometimes even a unique dish or two. Of course even among Jews, there is more than one way to gefilte a fish.
In New York, it was Eastern European Jews who popularised their versions of Eastern European food, just as a particular group of Italian immigrants might popularise the food of their region or even town (note for example, the Neapolitan origin of many foods widely considered “Italian”).
BTW, there is no such thing as “pure” local cuisine. All cuisines are “fusions”, incorporating products and techniques from elsewhere. The same goes for just about every aspect of human culture.
One of the prized posessions in my kitchen in “Kuchnia Zydowska” – possibly first post second world war publication of Jewish Cookbook in Poland.
There are some superb recipes in it. But – no hummus, falafel and very little tomato.
A friend of mind visited Poland a number of years ago, and (jokingly) exclaimed “they serve Jewish food everywhere here!” But of course, the pleasure is in the variation – food that is similar, but with a certain twist. On the other hand, my father (of Galician extraction) could never get used to my mother’s excellent Lithuanian Jewish cooking. Nothing – from the gefilte fish to the kugel to the holushkes – tasted quite the way it “should”. Friends and familiy would just shake their heads and chalk it up to “mixed” marriage.
The very idea of an Israeli cuisine is laughable, and the only commenter who has tried to make it less so is Shmuel (and then only because I didn’t know what kugel and holushkes meant, until I googled them, and immediately identified them with dishes I know well).
I agree that there is ‘Jewish food’ derived from Ashkenazi origins in Russia, Poland and Slovakia, and this can look quite strange to goyim in other countries. It most resembles Irish and Scottish food, neither of which are very distinguished, and mostly concern ways of presenting potatoes, which may be fun, but hardly worth spending $145. All other Israeli food is of local Turkish origin, as is most Greek.
Avi,/b> presents an incomplete list, not a single one of Jewish, let alone Israeli origin
Let me list a few dishes which the ‘Israeli Chefs’ will not be presenting:
Anything at all combining milk and meat products
No dishes containing yoghourt or cheese, or ‘insects’, together with meat. No cheeseburgers. No Surf ‘n Turf.
Shrimp cocktails – (or anything else with ‘insects’ in it, such as lobster and crab dishes, or even Strawberries and Cream, where the fruit just might have some grubs in them)
Let alone ham and bacon Beef doesn’t do well in Israel, so that leaves just chickens and mutton (and fish).
Doesn’t leave much for the most creative ‘Israeli Chef’ to work on
Richard,
My examples were not of Israeli food, but of the Eastern European Jewish food I grew up with – not very popular in Israel (to say the least), despite a certain revival since the large wave of immigration from the FSU. Eastern European Jewish food is generally treated with the same contempt reserved for the Yiddish language. Some people might speak/eat it behind closed doors, but it’s not something you do in public or take pride in.
There are a number of different identifiable cuisines in Israel, some of which are heavily influenced by or virtually identical to other cuisines. First of all, you can find Jewish cooking from just about everywhere, in homes and at restaurants. My comment above, about Eastern European Jewish cooking as a kind of “regional” variation, goes for all of these cuisines. Jerusalem-Sephardic cooking, for example, has its own variations of Turkish dishes and flavours, and Tripolitan Jewish food does some great things with North African cuisine (not found in Arab or Berber cooking, according to my Libyan mother-in-law). The second most obvious component is Palestinian (Syrian-Lebanese) – sometimes simply copied and sometimes modified – also combined with more general “Mediterranean” food.
Then there is the world of chefs and upscale restaurants, who have definitely developed a distinctive Israeli style, which tends to combine the above elements, also using local ingredients in non-traditional ways. Just to give a banal example, tehina-based frozen desserts or millefeuilles. A lot of this cuisine is decidedly not kosher (although that is not the kind of cooking Israeli embassies will promote – unless they want to create a coalition crisis). They do some great things with seafood, although milk-meat combinations and pork are less common – not for religious reasons, but because that is not the way the cuisine has developed (for various reasons).
I’m the last one to defend Israeli ideologies, policies or actions, but the fact is that, if you’ve got the money and can stomach the moral and political side dishes, there is a certain, very enjoyable style to Israeli haute cuisine.
I would guess that the kitchens are one area where Palestinians and Israelis likely collaborate.
Pretty soon it will become the target of BDS, because you never know when you are purchasing something with some influence of some Israeli.
And, all collaboration or cross-fertilization is by definition, a “stealing” of culture.
nope as BDS follower when i go to the supermarket i just buy French made humus and boycott the one who comes from Israeli settlements!
Yeah, I can see them happily gathering together in the kitchen of one or the other, all happily collaborating on cooking. Since when were you, Dick Witty, a proponent of cross-fertilization?
Here are the 751 no go areas in France where even the police won’t go.
link to i.ville.gouv.fr
Unfortunately the French have much worse problems than what type of hummus they eat. How very sad.
Julian’s been touring the hate sites again.
Although if art imitates life, Witty, the Palestinians are only allowed into the kitchen via the service entrance after a strip search, while the Israelis swipe a bunch of Arab recipes, mash them with Eastern European dishes and then “Hebrewcize” their names.
Still on about your “freedom fries,” are you, Julian? Heh.
Aww, does your heart bleed for the French Julian? The poor French who have become the “victims” of their own colonial atrocities, they cannot get enough. First they rob, steal, destroy, and than the people that they have sacked become citizens (a sort of debt collection), but the French are not satisfied and must confine these victims twice over now to poverty and commiseration in various ghettos. Where little boys are so fearful that they take their lives into their own hands by trying to hide from the brutality they are inflected with in a dangerous power station, only to be electrocuted.
I tell you Julian, when you look upon the devastation of Haiti that a mere apology (that all of these colonial “adventurers” seem to be able to muster) is not enough to pay for the multiple atrocities. While the newly disenfranchised roam the streets of Paris facing another future stolen in the name of “Western civilization” -
IS PARIS BURNING?
“With us there is nothing more consistent than a racist humanism since the European has only been able to become a man through creating slaves and monsters .” Sartre, Preface to Fanon’s Wretched Of The Earth
THE RAGE OF THE PEOPLE
Hhaha Julian you are so fucken moron! This is 90% of the French regions LOL. Ile de france for ex is the region of Paris, do you think Police won’t go to Paris HAHAHAHHA you are so fucken moron ZioScumbager.
Shmuel,
Most of the examples you listed sound like individual recipes, not something that has a distinct national or ethnic origin, in the collective sense. Surely, there are chefs all over the world who are constantly coming up with their own new styles of cooking. But, when someone hears Sushi, they think Japan. When I hear Tehina-based desserts, I don’t necessarily think “Israel”.
I’d really like to hear more about the “distinctive” aspect of this cuisine. Convince me.
Avi,
It’s not distinctive in a national or ethnic sense. It’s more of a “school”, identified with Israel because that’s where it developed. It does however have characteristics that reflect Israeli soceity – a mixture of different traditions, ME/Mediterranean climate and raw materials, European influences, and a kind of iconoclasm that classic French or Italian chefs would never dream of.
I was interested for a while, many years ago, but lost interest for a number of obvious reasons. If you are not convinced, that’s fine by me. If you want to learn more, there’s plenty of material online, in Hebrew, starting with Al Hashulchan.
Well, there’s not much point in reading about food. So, I’ll try to prepare some of the dishes and let my taste buds decide.
I’m the last one to defend Israeli ideologies, policies or actions, but the fact is that, if you’ve got the money and can stomach the moral and political side dishes
I think the nauseating political and bigoted illness that prevails in Israel would prevent any person of “good taste” from keeping down whatever he or she eat. It’s like having a beef bourguignon or a lobster thermidor at the same table where Dershowitz or Goebbels are seated.
Shmuel Naples (Neapolitano) is in Italy.
RP: Naples (Neapolitano) is in Italy.
Thanks for the info, Richard. I live in Rome and have some idea of where Naples is. My point was that regional variations or even unique regional dishes are often confused with the whole. In the case of “kosher” deli, Eastern/Central European food is identified only with its Jewish variations, and in the case of Neapolitan food, the regional variations are identified with the national cuisine as a whole.
On the shoulders of giants, makes new giants.
Of course there are MANY Israeli cuisines coming from the very diverse cultural combinations there.
PR is ok. That objecting to Israeli PR comprises the bulk of stories recently, indicates very slow news days.
Syria and Lebanon each have recently hosted food PR.
Both Syria and Lebanon are considered food destinations for “those in the know”.
Hi Dick Witty how are universal humanist? have not see you commenting the last couple of days on the hot topics.
Given the stories about Mossad terror squads assassinating in the names (literally) of Jews with nationalities other than Israeli? I’m guessing Witty’s been busy worrying about where his second passport has wandered off to.
Really funny that Israelis are always told to watch their Israeli passports when traveling abroad, because they might be stolen and used by terrorists. What they don’t tell you is to watch your foreign passport at home, because it might be stolen and used by state terrorists.
LOL I waited to see Witty on these topics but in vain
Don’t forget a recently discovered favorite, Roast Gazan made more tasty by cooking in white phosphorous imported from the US, a favorite of Ethan Bronner and Linda Gradstein. Just remember to eat it while it is still smoking. Yummy and glatt kosher to boot.
There’s a new Israeli kidney stew that supposed to be quite pricey, and the recipe was obtained from some rabbi in New Jersey.
Costs an arm and a leg is the problem. Of course, it doesn’t have to be your arm or leg — from what I hear, they’ve partnered up with the IDF and the Israeli Ministry of Health to make this delightful recipe affordable to a select few.
And it doesn’t stop at the cherry-tomato level. As Gabriel Ash once noted, “Israel want peace; Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East; the desert blooms; kibutz; Israelis invented antibiotics, the wheel, the E minor scale; thanks to the occupation Palestinians no longer live in caves; Israel liberates Arab women; Israel has the most moral army in the world, etc.”
Thank God I was born after Israel’s invention. Otherwise, how could I have lived without all their other inventions? As an Argentinian, am I sufficiently grateful that they gave us tango, soccer, grilled meat? Am I aware that the first Spanish grammar was written by an Israeli in the few precious moments of rest that he took while he was developing the pineapple?
You didn’t have to wait until Israel’s invention to see this sort of propaganda. Nazi Germany was old hat at nationalist mythology and techno-racial supremacy, too.
Hasbara buster. “Am I aware that the first Spanish grammar was written by an Israeli in the few precious moments of rest that he took while he was developing the pineapple?” LOL.
I’m beginning to think that the place to be is Latin America. Tell me this shit doesn’t go on in Argentina or Uruguay. I think I would love to spend my nights doing the tango, and eating. I was going to head to Europe, specifically either Italy or Spain, perhaps the south of France where I can speak the language and find stinky cheeses. But if these bastards start war I want to be as far away as possible. So hasbara buster, just how bad is the economy in Argentina? Is it in any danger again?
Palestinian pate is an Israeli favorite.
It use to be that Germany invented everything, and now Israel has done so.
Hey, just a minute. What about chicken soup, Israel must be a veritable Mecca of chicken soup.
the cultural initiative from the Levantine that I admire and would like to learn more about and see expand: mondoweiss dot net/2010/01/engaging-in-the-struggle-not-with-guns-but-with-culture.html#comments (thanks yet again, Phil)
link to palestinianheritagecenter.com
meditating on the differences among the way people delight in Italian cuisine, appreciate the small Palestinian Heritage Center, but resent Israeli PR campaigns and Brooksian lists and declarations of how uber Jews are — Italians don’t claim that they invented the grape, just that they enjoy it; the Palestinian Heritage Center is NOT a state-sponsored campaign intended to white the sepulcher, but rather a single person’s display of the pride and joy found in her culture.
Israel’s effort is contrived, and planned deception. If Israelis are so smart, why can’t they figure out that people get angry when they find out they’ve been pwnd?