Baladi Tomatoes – worth the wait

They have finally arrived.  I’ve waited eleven whole months just to have them.  I’ve refused the out of season frauds.  Sure, the frauds are produced all year long and come in a perfect round shape.  But they are flavorless, and injected with industrial pesticides and fertilizers.  And they are grown in plastic houses in the winter, completely against Mother Nature’s will.  It was early July in Palestine, and there they were at the farmers market.  I picked up an entire bucket of the ripe, heterogeneously shaped fruits.   I should probably pick up another bucket or two this week before the harvest is complete.  Baladi (local and heirloom) tomatoes are a treat in today’s Palestine.  Although baladi tomatoes were the only kind of tomatoes available in Palestine twenty years ago, they are becoming more rare.  The influx of industrial agriculture in Palestine has transformed much of our food production from a family-run-seasonal-and-organic-baladi operation to a non-seasonal-using-non-organic-fertilizers-and–embracing-foreign-seeds agri-business.   Thank goodness that there are still farmers who maintain traditional Palestinian farming saving seeds each year, respecting the land by feeding her natural organic waste and cultivating crops according to their season.   I try to buy as many baladi tomatoes as I can get my hands on.  I eat some fresh, and I dry the rest for eating during the rest of the year.

 

Tomato-Onion Salad

1 serving

1 medium tomato, sliced

¼ red onion, thinly sliced

chopped basil (as much as you want)

1 teaspoon olive oil

1 teaspoon of your favorite vinegar

a pinch of salt for taste

Mix all the ingredients and enjoy!

 

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Roasted Tomato and Zucchini

Sliced Tomatoes (as much as you want to roast)

Sliced Zucchini (as much as you want to roast)

Olive oil to cover all the vegetables

Salt for taste

 

Mix olive oil and salt with sliced vegetables.   Lay tomatoes and zucchini on a baking tray.  I like to place the tomatoes on top of the zucchini so that the tomato juices meld into the zucchini.  Bake for 1 to 2 hours at 190 degrees Celsius.  The vegetables should be golden.  You can eat these roasted vegetables all week long.  Store them in the refrigerator.  Toss them with pasta for a light vegetarian dinner.  Stuff some in a pita for a healthy vegan lunch.  You can even add humus (chickpea dip) or labaneh (yogurt cheese) in your sandwich.   For breakfast, you can add them to scrambled eggs.  Or you can just eat them as they are!  Roasting these vegetables intensifies their delicious flavor.

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Sun-dried tomatoes

Baladi Tomatoes

Salt

Olive Oil

Cut the tomatoes either in halves or quarters, depending on their size.  Remove the liquid and seeds from each half/quarter.  I save the seeds in a container for planting the next year.   Place the tomatoes on a tray.   Sprinkle tomatoes with salt.  And then place tomatoes in direct sunlight.  I take the tomato tray up to the roof of my home in the morning as it is extremely sunny on my roof.  I always bring the tomato tray indoors before sunset as I don’t want Palestine’s nighttime dew to dampen my tomatoes.  In the morning, I return the tomato tray to the roof.  It may take 3-4 days of placing the tomatoes under direct sunlight until they are completely dried.  Once the tomatoes are dry, place them in a glass jar and cover with olive oil.  Seal the jar and store in a cool place in your pantry.  I use sun-dried tomatoes in my cooking when fresh baladi tomatoes are no longer available.

 

Eat baladi tomatoes always!  Say no to the frauds!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wild Capers in Palestine

Check out my recent article in This Week in Palestine.

http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=4049&ed=220&edid=220

Sukari Apple and Plum Chutney

Most folks take summer vacations to get away.  But I hate leaving home in the summer and prefer winter vacations. Summers in Palestine are miraculous…at least to me.  I get so excited with the array of fruits coming of age ready to be eaten.  Each week the fellaheen (farmers) offer new things.  Some plants continue to produce all summer long such as the zucchini and eggplant, while others are available for a short stint, such as the sukari apples or mistikawi apricots, or heirloom tomatoes. Since they are so short lived, I want to save them for a rainy day.  I try to preserve them for a day when there are no fresh fruits.

At last Saturday’s farmers market, I over bought sukari apples and red juicy plums.  I tasted one and I bought the whole bucket.  They were delicious and ripe, but way too many to be eaten within the next week.  So I decided to cook some for home preservation and some for gifts to all the wonderful friends who save jars for me.

Sukari Apple and Plum Chutney

1 kilo sukari apples, chopped, cores discarded into your compost pile

½ kilo ripe plums, chopped, seeds discarded as well

½ cup sugar

¼ cup of your favorite vinegar

Place apples, plums, and sugar in medium pot over medium heat and stir periodically.  As you stir, mash the apples and plums with the base of the spoon.  As the fruit softens and cooks, add the vinegar.  The vinegar should be added after 30 minutes of fruit cooking and stirring.  Continue to cook over low heat and stir periodically.

While the apples and plums are cooking, I boil water in a large tea kettle.  I pour the boiled water into the jars and onto the lids that I plan to use.   I want to make sure that the jars are clean and sterilized.

The apple plum chutney should be done within 40 minutes.  The apples should be soft and mush.  The plums should have dissolved into the thick sauce.

Pour the water out of the jars and fill the jars with the apple plum chutney and seal with the lid.

Save in your pantry for a rainy day.  Or give as a gift.

Eat the apple plum chutney on its own, or with granola, or over plain yogurt, or on buttered toast.

Note:  I like to taste my fruit and so I do not add a lot of sugar.  I like the tart of the plums with the sweet of the apples. But you can add more sugar for your preference.

 

 

Arugula, sukari apple, and walnut salad

It’s been unseasonably cool this summer.  I usually like to have my dinner on the porch during the cool, breezy summer evenings in my hometown of Al-beirh.  But lately, it has been chilly, leaving me to dine indoors.  And while my vegetable garden also seems to be craving for warm, the arugula that has spontaneously sprouted is happy.  I don’t usually grow arugula in the summer.  The warm weather causes the plant to flower rather than produce a continuous supply of delicious peppery leaves throughout the winter season.  But the arugula came out on its own, since I left my winter plants in the ground to seed.

An unexpected treat.  I needed a unique summer salad for my winter arugula.

The sukari apples, a small Palestinian heirloom variety, have just been harvested.  The sweetness of this apple should pair nicely with the spicy bite in the arugula.

Ingredients:

One medium bowl full of freshly picked arugula leaves, rinsed

3 sukari apples (these are small), chopped

a small hand full of walnut pieces

Dressing:

¼ cup of your favorite olive oil

¼ cup of your favorite vinegar

1 tsp. of your favorite mustard

½ tsp. brown sugar

Place all the dressing ingredients in a jar and shake until mixed well.

Place apples and walnuts in a bowl with the arugula.  Add the dressing.  Mix thoroughly.  Eat.

A special wintery/summery salad!

Summer Treats: Fig-Thyme Ice Milk

I was scanning Facebook and found a status update from the Nourished Kitchen blog for homemade orange creamsicles.   Mmmm.  I haven’t had an orange creamsicle in years.  My childhood orange creamsicles were not homemade.  They came in a box, individually wrapped, and preservative infused, just like many of my other childhood snacks.  I used to relish in them as a kid during those hot and humid summers in Virginia.  Sometimes, I licked the orange sherbert slowly in anticipation of the cream inside.  And other times, I impatiently bit the top off to quickly access the creamy center.  I reviewed the Nourished Kitchen recipe.  Simple.  I have all the ingredients except cream and orange juice.  Citrus season is over in Palestine.  And I have not managed to find cream from any of the local farmers.  I had whole raw goat and sheep milk from Amin’s farm in Al bireh.  I have been told that if I let the milk sit for a while, the cream will separate.  But I have not been able to wait and watch.   I always consume the milk before giving it a chance to separate.  I love heating a cup of the raw milk with a teaspoon of local honey – a perfect breakfast or afternoon comfort.

The dafur figs are in abundance during this time of year in Palestine.  The other varieties of figs don’t ripen until the end of the summer season.  But the dafur appears in May; large, plump and full of red juice to satiate our thirst.  I had plenty in the fridge from last Saturday’s farmers market.

My herb garden has been screaming for a trimming.  I started with the thyme.

Ingredients

2 cups thyme tea sweetened with 2 teaspoons of your favorite locally produced honey

4 cups whole raw milk

4 yolks

5 large ripened figs, peeled, and chopped

3 pinches of vanilla

Make thyme team by boiling water and adding fresh thyme.  Allow tea to steep and cool.  When lukewarm, strain tea, add honey, and mix well.  Set tea aside and allow to cool.

Whisk the yolks and milk in a large bowl.  I used free-range chicken eggs from Deir Ghassaneh.  Add vanilla and mix.  Add the cooled thyme tea and mix.  And finally…add the figs and mix.

I didn’t have popsicle molds, but I collect glass jars.  I filled several small and medium sized jars with the mixture and placed in the freezer.

I had my first serving four hours later.   It was not my childhood orange creamsicle.  The thyme and fig give a subtle refreshing flavor to the icey and creamy milk.  No preservatives and 100% seasonal.

I found my new creamsicle.

Spring Harvests from a Winter Garden

I finally picked the last of my winter garden bounty last weekend.  Onions plucked out of the ground.  And fresh green chick peas along with their mother stem yanked from the earth.  The chick peas make a good snack, better than a bag of chips, shell and stem biodegradable, unlike the aluminum packaging of a bag of chips.  Good food shouldn’t have to come in a package or a bag, right.

I love winter gardens in Palestine.  Just plant and wait.  The winter cold and rain is all that is needed for Palestine’s winter garden.  And for a lazy farmer/gardener such as my self, a winter garden is heaven.  Summer gardens are nice with their vine ripe tomatoes, okra, and zucchini, but they are so high maintenance.  You have to water, and you have to do it frequently.

Of course, there is the baali summer garden.  No irrigation is needed.  Local, baladi seeds are planted at the right moment and left to grow and develop under the sun.  The traditional Palestinian peasants still produce summer harvests in the old baali methodology, but I have not figured out the right equation to make this work for me.  I planted tomatoes for my aunt on my first spring in Palestine.  But then summer encroached, with all of its side effects including increased withholding of our water resources by the Israeli Occupation.  No water to bathe, let alone to water the tomato plants.  The tomatoes died.

My winter garden was full of flavor.  Arugula, spinach and radish for wonderful winter salads.  Potatoes and broccoli for soups, stews, and stir fries.  And ground and body nutrifying fava beans (foul), chick peas, and peas.  Palestinians have historically planted these three in the winter in order to build the soil for the summer garden.  Our ancestors cared for our land, respecting its limits to ensure annual production.  This is in stark contrast to the practices of some farmers today who use plastic green houses and chemical pesticides to produce the same two to three vegetables all year long, destroying their land in the process.  This trio is considered nitrogen fixators.  A friend of mine refers to it as ‘green manure’.  (for more information, see http://www.soilhealth.com/soils-are-alive/how-do-soil-organisms-affect-plants/p-03.htm ).  In my five years in Palestine, I’ve grown to cherish these simple nitrogen fixators.  Harvested in the spring, they provide a melody of green and warm before the summer yield.

 

 

 

(green foul photos courtesy of Vivien Sansour)

Foul

Although most Palestinians eat foul, along with hummos and falafel for breakfast, I have never been a major fan of foul.  The dried broad bean is soaked, cooked, and smashed into a dip with lemon, garlic, and olive oil and then served with bread.  It’s bitter and dense, and after eating with hummos and falafel, most diners are in a comatose state.  But then I tried the fresh foul, green fava beans, from my garden…  The spring offering from my winter garden has given me an opportunity to prepare traditional as well as new dishes.  I’ve also tucked a few bags in the freezer for a later craving.

I’ve been experimenting with my green harvest.  One evening, I sautéed ground meat with foul and potatoes, and smothered them with my favorite Indian spices.  Another week, I went vegetarian and combined peas and freekah, green cracked wheat, cooked over medium heat and mixed in a bit of tomato paste and chana masala spices, and stirred periodically until the water was absorbed.  And then Amineh, one of our master chefs at the Majhoul restaurant, taught me to make maqloubeh, a Palestinian stove top casserole served up side down, using foul as the star vegetable instead of the typical cauliflower or eggplant.  Free range eggs are also in abundance during this time of year.  I take advantage of these delicious, smaller in size eggs, with larger more pronounced yolks to feast on omelets.   Simply sauté potatoes and peas and add the egg mixture to create the most satisfying breakfast or lunch or dinner.

After a rainy and cold winter, Palestine’s Spring rewards those who are patient.

a day in deir yassin

A Day in Deir Yassin

They call it Givat Shaul.  The traffic court is in Givat Shaul. Nabil asked me to serve as his witness to the traffic accident that occurred near the Hizma checkpoint last year.  Even though a Jerusalemite, Nabil did not know his way around the ‘other’ side of town, and we hailed a couple of guys who looked Palestinian to ask for directions.  They were not Arab, but we did manage to find out where the beit mishbat was located.  We were foreigners in this land.  We parked in the underground parking and headed to the court.  The lawyer was not there.  The court clerk asked us where the lawyer was as Nabil’s hearing was at 10:30am.  I dialed the lawyer and he explained that the appointment was at 11:30am.

“No, your appointment is at 10:30am”, yelled the court clerk in her broken Arabic.

“Give me the phone”, she demanded.

And off she went in Hebrew yelling at the lawyer.  My Hebrew is extremely rusty and I could only make out about 50% of what she said.  Your appointment is at 10:30am, and you are late, why are you late, why are you not here, and so on. 

We waited.  Nabil asked me if he could go out for a cigarette.  A 54 year old man is asking me if he can have a cigarette?  I think he thought he was going to prison and wanted one last smoke.  But I said no.  I can not stand being in an Israeli court, and you  are asking for a puff. 

A young Palestinian teen-ager was escorted by two Israeli police into the court room.  He was handcuffed; wrists and ankles.  I wanted to know what he did, but we were asked to leave the court room. 

An older Palestinian arrived in panic looking for the court room.  He asked everyone.  No one would help him.  He spoke in Arabic.  The court’s public attorney asked him to relax and whether he spoke Hebrew. 

“Do you know Hebrew?” asked the public attorney.

“Yes, I know Hebrew, but I will speak in Arabic.”

 God bless him. 

I think he was the teen-ager’s father.  Thirty minutes passed and the Israeli police escorted the boy out of the court room, boy still in handcuffs.  He was a baby.  The public attorney told the father to pay 4000NIS at the post office and his boy will be released within 30 minutes of the payment. 

It was our turn, but I was not allowed to stay in the court room.  I sat on the bench watching Israeli civil servants walk to the Pepsi machine and to the bathroom, and then back to their office.  Everything was in Hebrew.  I read the signs.  I had a lot of time.  The dress code amongst Israeli civil servants was loose, at least compared to my experience as a civil servant in the US government as well as the PNA.  Tight fitting, mini dresses with plateau shoes or heels seemed to be the norm.  I was the odd ball in my long black pants, cardigan sweater, and flat shoes.  A female cop sat next to me to drink her ice coffee from Aroma.  I peaked into the court room.  Proceedings still in process.  When will they call me to the stand?  Will they give me a Quran to swear on?  What language will I use?  I don’t like the Arabic translator in the court room. 

They call it Givat Shaul.  It is cluttered with strip malls and government buildings, and Israeli civil servants of all shapes and colors.  There is an underground parking lot where you get a ticket and you pay through a machine before you exit the parking lot.  Everything…everything is in Hebrew.  If you don’t know the language, you are totally out of luck. 

But this is Deir Yassin.  It is difficult to find traces of this Palestinian village today.  Most has been erased to make room for this thing called Givat Shaul.  But this is Deir Yassin, and will always be Deir Yassin.  On April 9, 1948, the population was massacred by the Zionist terrorists. The city was depopulated in order to host Jewish immigrants in an expanding Givat Shaul.  This is Deir Yassin.   

Donor Impact on How We Eat in Palestine

Check out my article on Nora’s blog.

Guest post: Donor Interventions in Palestinian Agriculture: Helping Hand? Or Slap on the Face? by Aisha Mansour

Broccoli in Palestine

I realize that most people are thrilled with this unseasonably warm weather in February.  Not me.  We still have one more month until Spring and I want the cold for one more month.  For the sake of broccoli.  Yes.  Cold and broccoli are complementary.  My broccoli bush showed off her large voluptuous florets in the depth of last year’s unusually cold and rainy winter.  But this year, my broccoli bush can hardly shoot out a floweret.   She’s the same broccoli bush, but surviving in different winter climates.

Broccoli is a perennial.  If watered occasionally during the summer, the broccoli bush will survive to produce the following winter.  I got the seeds from the US, so my broccoli is technically not baladi (local).  But according to an agricultural engineer friend, seeds become baladi after five years of cultivation in a specific environment.  This means my broccoli will become Palestinian in another three years!

I’ve been harvesting my little broccoli flowerets frequently this warm winter season.  Leaving them on the bush for too long under the warm sun will cause them to flower and seed, thus becoming inedible.  Broccoli can be enjoyed in many different ways.  I have been eating them raw or in a salad.  I also chop the flowerets and the attached leaves and add them to soups and stews.  Broccoli is really good in split lentil soup.  The leaves of the broccoli bush are edible, but slightly tough.  It’s best to eat the leaves in a slow cooked sautee mix, soup, or stew to give them time to tenderize.  The tiny broccoli flowerets are especially delicious sautéed in olive oil and a sprinkle of salt over a low heat.  Don’t go anywhere.  The broccoli will burn quickly.  For breakfast, I add eggs and cheese over the sautéed broccoli for an awesome weekend frittata.  (Spinach is also in season and can be added to the morning frittata.)

I also give my mom instructions in the morning for our broccoli dinner.  My mom grew up in a completely baladi household without broccoli.

“What should we cook with that broccoli?” my mom asked one morning.

A simple stir-fry for a mid-week dinner would satisfy everyone.  Chopped boneless chicken breasts and baby broccoli flowerets gently sautéed and served over Um Hekmat’s baladi wheat, instead of the typical rice base, would be ideal.  Um Hekmat gave me some wheat that was harvested in the plateau fields of Deir Ballout.  I love using the wheat for its nutty flavor and nourishing texture.

I carefully provided my mom with a detailed explanation to sauté the broccoli and chicken in two tablespoons of Ameen’s semnah (clarified butter).  The semnah does not burn, I told her.

“No, no”, stated my mother in her authoritative mother voice.

“I will cook the stir fry in our olive oil.  It’s much better”, she said.

My mother left the stir-fry cooking unattended while she paid a visit to our pantry to refill the olive oil canister.  And the chicken-broccoli-floweret-stir-fry burned.  She saved it just before it turned into a blackened ash.   And we ate it that evening for dinner.  The smell of ‘burnt’ crowded our plates.  We ate in dull silence.  Perhaps I should have left the flowerets to seed on the bush.

 

***If anyone wants some seeds, please send me a message.

 

A weekend breakfast treat – eggs with sun dried tomatoes

 

Most of us go through a bit more effort to produce a hearty breakfast on our weekends.  We sleep in – even longer when its cold and rainy outside – and then we roll out of bed craving our warm coffee mugs and thinking about a mid-morning-comfort-food-breakfast.  My weekend breakfast always includes eggs.  The smell of eggs crackling in hot olive oil with a bit of salt, pepper, and herbs is delicious.  Sometimes I add chunks of fresh white cheese, jibneh, from Ameen’s goat farm.  This year I am adding a special treat to my eggs; home-made-sun-dried-tomatoes.  Yes.  Home-made.

The tomato harvest season was especially short last summer.  Random weather swings ruined most of the local heirloom tomato crops.  This meant that a limited amount of local heirloom, baladi, tomatoes was available in the market.  I bought as many as I could get my hands on.  I hadn’t had a tomato since the last summer.  And I refuse to surrender to the large-beautiful-pesticide-infested-non-tasty tomato that is available all year long.  I made enough sun-dried tomatotes to fill two jars.  Enough to give me an injection of satisfaction until the next tomato season.

Sun drying tomatoes is easy and cheaper than buying the imported kind.  I also find home-made-sun-dried-tomatoes more tasty than the store bought.  This is probably because I choose only the baladi tomatoes to sun-dry.  Baladi tomatoes in Palestine are often grown in the traditional ba’ali farming technique in which tomato seedlings are watered only once during the planting.  The tomato plant is left to grow and mature without irrigation, eventually producing a flavorful fruit.  Tangy and salty right off the vine.

Making your own is simple.  You basically slice the tomatoes in halves or quarters, scoop out the juice and seeds, lay them on a large sheet, and sprinkle the tomatoes with salt and your favorite dried herbs.  I used rosemary that I picked and dried in the Spring.  Put out the large sheet of tomato slices in the sunniest area that you can access.  It is important to remember to bring them in during the evening before they are re-moisturized by the sky’s dew.  Tomatoes will need two to four days to dry out.  Then you stack them in a jar and pour olive oil to cover all the tomatoes.  Olive oil is a great medium of preservation.  Put away your jars of home-made-sun-dried-tomatoes until the winter when you are craving a taste of the past summer.

I’ve also been using my sun-dried tomatoes in pasta dishes and soup bases.  Heaven in the midst of winter’s cold dampness!