Israel…A great place to eat if you like that stuff…

Lunch in Herzlia…

In Israel, the work week begins on Sunday and ends Friday around 1pm. Most shops and reataurants close early for Shabbat. We found this shawarma restaurant still open, invitingly waiting for us to have lunch.  In Israel, shawarma is a street food and offered in meat restaurants. It was most commonly made of lamb in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s, a switch was made in favor of turkey or chicken. Shawarma is served in a pita  or a lafa and is usually eaten with salad,

hummus or french fries.

The bakery…

It seems like there is a bakery on every block in Herzliya. This bakery has wonderful mandel bread and cakes. …

Shabbos lunch with Joy and Shimon…

Eileen’s friend Joy invited us over to her  house for Shabbat lunch with her family.

We had a wonderful home cooked meal starting off  with avocado salad… and tabouli salad which is traditionally  made of bulgur,  finely chopped parsley and mint, tomato and onion, seasoned with lemon juice and olive oil.

For the main course we had cholent.Cholent is a traditional Jewish stew simmered overnight, for 12 hours or more, and eaten for lunch on shabbat (the Sabbath). Cholent was developed over the centuries to conform with  Jewish religious laws that prohibit cooking on the Sabbath. The pot is brought to boil on Friday before the Sabbath begins, and kept on a hotplate, or placed in a slow oven or crockpot  until the following day.

There are many variations of the dish, which is standard in both the Askenazi (Eastern European) and Sephardi (Spanish/North Africa) kitchens. The basic ingredients of cholent are meat, potatoes, beans and barley. Sephardi-style hamin uses rice instead of beans and barley, and chicken instead of beef. A traditional Sephardi addition is whole eggs in the shell (haminados), which turn brown overnight. Ashkenazi cholent often contains kishke – a sausage casing or a chicken neck skin stuffed with a flour-based mixture. Slow overnight cooking allows the flavors of the various ingredients to permeate and produces the characteristic taste of cholent. Joy’s cholent was a combination of both as her family is Askenazi and Shimon’s family is from Turkey.

For dessert we had strawberry shortcake. Joy’s daughter Lital is an accomplished pastry chef recently returning from working in NYC at  Nobu. Needless to say the cake was wonderful.