Whew! It's been a busy week - starting a new semester and a new job. I haven't had a lot of time to either cook or write about cooking. I pick up this free magazine here in New York, and they had a section this week on classes people who are out of college can take. One of them was a class on how to write about food, and the appeal of it was "Everybody eats, and nearly everybody can write." I would like to counter that with - not everyone is inventive. That's why you need Ilanica's food blog. That very inventiveness served me well while in seminary. The school food was awful, and Israeli meat made me super sick (that's when I stopped eating meat - though there were other reasons involved. If you've ever eaten a meal with Gil Locks in the Old City of Jerusalem you probably know half of them.) Luckily, vegetables were edenic and pretty cheap. So for dinner every night I would go to Yoram's Fruit and Vegetable store, pick up some delicious fresh produce shipped in locally from the kibbutzim of Northern Israel and the Galilee, and return to my apartment to see what I could muster. Of course, it was different every time, but usually, it retained a distinct flavor, based on my own preferences, and my hungry friends would flock to my apartment to share the spoils. I have other creations (thanks to Yoram) that are unique to my time in Israel and in my apartment (dorm) there, but my salad was the particular thing that people seemed to talk about.
Even now, when they visit me and I make some lunch and it's a salad, they taste it and wistfully say, "Oh, this reminds me of Israel! It's apartment ten salad!" (If you were in Israel with me, imagine that said in Esther Faigy's idiosyncratic admiring voice).
Fruits and vegetables are actually a tricky thing in Israel. In biblical times, all your produce needed to be tithed for the scholars and priests. We don't do that anymore, obviously, but within the boarders of the biblical land of Israel, very specific percentages are separated and not used, in rememberence of very specific things. The Cohanim tithe, the Levi'im tithe, the tithe the Levi'im gave to the Cohanim...the tithe our biblical ancestors set aside to be eaten only in Jerusalem, and of course, the tithe for the poor. Fruits and vegetables are considered unkosher in Israel if they haven't been through this process before they're sold or used in restaurants. So ironically, it can be harder to keep kosher in Israel, but also in some ways it can be more meaningful. Thankfully, I wasn't there in a Sabbatical year, where no produce from Israel is allowed to be used at ALL, to give the hardworking soil a rest every seven years. I would have starved.
So! Anyway. While it's hard to make a salad into a recipe, especially because my measurments are usually pretty imprecise, I'm going to try and list here some of my favorite salad toppings and attempt to quantify my methods:
-Firstly, the lettuce. People are generally divided into two distinct and loyal parties - tearing vs. chopping. I would like to take this opportunity to vehemently declare my allegiance to the chopping camp. For some reason, it tastes so much better - maybe because the crispness is more evenly distributed, or because it gives it this uniform aesthetic that is the constant amid the chaos of the randomly interspersed vegetables. So, chop that Romaine lettuce. Sometimes I'm in the mood for larger pieces, but generally, a smaller strip works great. Too small and it's shredded, though, and that's only good for tacos. Mixed greens are also GREAT. Sometimes I mix them with the shredded Romaine, especially if they cost a lot. I love the textures, colors, and consistencies of the standard spring mix (which makes me ideally qualified to be impressed by Barak Obama...if any of you remember his argula comments a few months ago, I thought that was quite funny).
-I always put in tomatoes and cucumbers, the standards. I generally cut them quite small, Israeli-style. My favorite is Roma tomatoes - they generally ripen all at once so you have more of the tomato that's perfect and red and juicy. I also leave the peels on the cucumbers, because I'm lazy.
-ALFALFA SPROUTS. Not the icky chinese-food style sprouts they like in Israel. I hate those.
-Avacados. Always and forever.
-Sometimes I put in peppers, of any color, cut into little cubes.
-Okay, you may not go for this, but I always put fresh garlic in my salads. I cut it verrrrry small (one of my apartment-mates told me that this means I will make a good wife, presumably because I'm patient. Hear that gentlemen? If you marry me, your garlic will always be properly minced!) and toss it in with the rest of the salad. I read in a fancy cookbook that you're supposed to cut a garlic clove in half and rub it in the bowl before putting the salad ingredients in it. I thought it was a good idea, but I actually never do it for some reason.
-Red onions baby. If you keep them in the fridge it won't hurt your eyes to cut them.
-Sometimes I put mushrooms in the salad - sometimes portabella, if Yoram had them that day.
-I almost always put some sort of nut in my salad. I prefer walnuts - chop them so they're not huge and mix them on in. Slivered almonds (unslivered work too) are great. Sunflower seeds are a great addition. So are pine nuts.
-I really hate sweet stuff in salad. Strawberries do not belong in a savory salad, nor do craisins. I know that a lot of people seem to think it makes the salad gourmet, and I guess what works works, but please don't let the regular-old savory vegetable salad die, it's too wonderful!
For dressing I like the standard fresh lemon juice, olive oil, balsalmic vinegar thang. With as many fresh herbs as it makes sense to buy - but parsley is my absolute favorite for salads. As is cilantro. I actually don't think I ever learned a lot of the names for a lot of herbs in Hebrew, so I think I may have used some things that I do not know the name for in English but were pretty good.
So that's my apartment ten salad. I hope that name sticks. I hope you all save the mangos for dessert, at least once or twice, and not stick them in a perfectly good lettuce salad.
Also - one Miriam from California purpotedly tried my Physics Fry-Fest, and according to one Rivka, one Miriam's sister, it rocked. I'm still waiting for testimonials...
