May 11, 2010 | 9:52 am

The Hummus Wars

Posted by Rob Eshman

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Finally there’s a Middle East war we can enjoy.

Last January Israeli chefs cooked up a five ton plate of hummus, that otherworldly combination of garbanzo beans, tahini, garlic, lemon, salt and the secret ingredient.  The dish entered th Guiness Book of World Records as the largest.

This week, chefs in Lebanon fought back.  In a village about 5 miles east of Beirut, 300 chefs came up with a dish weighing 11.5 tons, CNN reported.

This is a good sign for all of us interested in Middle East peace and appetizers.  There is no better proof that Israelis and their neighbors have more in common than their history of war and conflict than their mutual love of the same food.  Sharing the same food isn’t sufficient to keep people from killing each other, but it’s a good place to start building on commonalities, rather than differences.  If food can lead us to God, it can also lead us to peace.  Arguments over who invented hummus and falafel rarely end in blood.

And these hummus wars provide a good jumping off pointb for deeper truths about today’s Middle East:

1. Lebanon is making a major push to reach the West for investment and tourism.  It is trying to refashion its image in the States in a big way—including several pages of advertorial insert in last week’s Newsweek.  What says “Welcome!” more than a big plate of hummus?

2. Israelis have long seen Lebanon as a natural partner for growth and cooperation.  Both are small countries with an educated, Western-oriented, diverse and ambitious population. In Shimon Peres’ Middl East pipe dream, trains would run from Tel Aviv to Beirut, creating an international corridor of trade, development and culture.

3. Lebanon and Israel share an entrepreneurial, outward-looking spirit.  It’s not a coincidence that they both see the internationla potential of hummus.  The dish has been around thousands of years, but it was the Israelis who jumped on the idea of making it an international brand.  Sabra?  Tribe?  Miki?  Israeli.  I suspect they’ll get competition sooner rather than later from Lebanon.

Meantime, here’s an even deeper truth: you can make your own hummus that tastes far better than the packaged stuff.  Just don’t use canned chickpeas.  Here’s the recipe.

“What we have been trying to do is just what the Greeks have done with feta cheese,” said Fadi Abboud, president of The Association of Lebanese Industrialists.

The Israelis have a different point of view.

“Trying to make a copyright claim over hummus is like claiming for the rights to bread or wine,” said Shooky Galili, an Israeli whose blog, dedicated to all things hummus, bears the motto “give chickpeas a chance.”

May 7, 2010 | 1:03 am

Is Sushi Dead?

Posted by Rob Eshman

Tonight on my way home from a lecture I ate in a popular Japanese restaurant in West L.A. The chef/owner joined me, and we fell into talking about the state of fish.  This is a man with 30 years experience in the Japanese restaurant business in Los Angeles—sushi, bento, ramen, robata, teriyaki combos, you name it. He didn’t want to be identified, but trust me, you’ve eaten his food.

While I ate his food and sipped his cold sake, he drank iced green tea bobas.  I was eating a piece of grilled local yellowtail, telling him how much I liked the flavor of a relatively local fish. 

“Sushi is over,” he said, pretty much out of the blue.  “The price goes up and the quality is going down.  It got too popular.  Everything is farmed, now in Japan even tuna is farmed, and it is all fatty, not fatty and lean, like in the wild.  Here people will eat farmed salmon, but in Japan no one eats salmon sushi—it has parasites.”

The problem, he said, is that there is almost no more good wild fish left.  When he first came to the States, 98 percent of tuna was sold in Japan.  Now everybody wants tuna, including China and India and Russia.  The wild stocks are crashing, and there;‘s no point in pretending what’s left can sustain all the gazillions of sushi restaurants.

He himself is moving away from sushi toward other Japanese foods: izakaya, ramen, robata, fusion. It’s time to teach Americans to eat parts of chickens and pigs they never tried before, to get them accustomed to beef heart and chicken combs like they got accustomed to sea urchin roe and eel.

He was going on and on about getting Americans to appreciate Japanese chicken like they appreciate Japanese fish.  One brand, Jidori (it translates as “ground chicken”; i. e. free range,” in Japanese, ji= ground and tori= chicken) is raised on farms around Central California and has a deep, rich flavor, could please even the most dedicated eel-eater.

The man wasn’t being sensitive to the fate of the oceans, or nostalgic for the last big eye tuna—just practical.  But he was attuned to the problem now, before it’s too late—a businessman paying heed to those who are listening to what science and nature are saying. The more we love food, the more we have to obey nature: one ties us inexorably to the other. The technology that helps us track and kill the last tuna also helps us get and spread more complete information on the fate of our fisheries, and gives people like this chef the chance to make the right decision for his business, before it’s too late.

 

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April 29, 2010 | 1:13 pm

Rob on “Good Food”

Posted by Rob Eshman

What better way to spend a bit your Saturday than listening to “GOOD FOOD” with EVAN KLEIMAN on KCRW, this Saturday at 11 am?

This Saturday, I’ll be one of Evan’s guests, talking about ways to make LA food culture better.

You can also hear a live stream online at www.kcrw.com; podcasts/on-demand/web videos at www.kcrw.com/goodfood

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April 21, 2010 | 6:24 pm

Santa Monica Farmers Temple… I mean Market

Posted by Rob Eshman

So I walked through the Santa Monica Farmers Market this morning before it opened.  Officially they can’t sell before the opening blast, but they will, they do.  I just bought some ramps and some tangerines for the office, but really, I went because it is a breathtaking place to be before the crowds come. 

When I left home, my wife was at her desk reading a medieval Jewish text on spontaneous prayer, the kind of prayer that comes straight from the heart, unfiltered, without the aid of text or liturgy.  That’s exactly the feeling I had at the market, and that I tried to capture in this video.  Watch my video:

Find more videos like this on EveryJew.com

 

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April 20, 2010 | 6:17 pm

In Tel Aviv, Life Is (Unrelentingly) With People

Posted by Rob Eshman

There are cities you wander alone, and cities you don’t.

In Tel Aviv, you don’t.

It’s not that the streets are dangerous. Israel’s homicide rate is less than half that of America’s, and violent crime against tourists is all but unheard of. I’ve spent many nights alone in Tel Aviv, walking back to my hotel at 1, 2, 4 a.m. — and I never for an instant felt scared.

I just felt — alone.

Tel Aviv is a ridiculously convivial city. There are hummus and kebab dives, English-style pubs, cafes that date back to the pre-state reign of the Ashkenazi poet-warriors.  There is a new wave of top-notch dining rooms serving inventive dishes prepared from local ingredients. There are a dozen open-air places on the beach.  There are discos stuffed with Birthrighters and the Israelis who hit on them, an entire scene of late-night underground clubs and, in the north of town, the Old Port district, a newly renovated wonderland of eateries that never seems to close up or empty out. And as I walked past every one of these spots, one fact became more and more obvious: Nobody, but nobody, eats, drinks, smokes or sits alone.

This is the nation that gave the English language the word kibbutz, which translates literally as “gathering.” 

And gather they do.

Come morning, Tel Avivians are drawn to smoke their a.m. cigarette and sip their café hafook — a coffee drink somewhere between a weak cappuccino and a strong latte — in numerous cafes. There is a deep attraction to what the novelist Aharon Appelfeld calls “the benevolent human environment” of the cafe — understandable in a country that faces such malevolence just beyond its borders. 

At Café Tamar on Sheinkin Street, a circa-1941 lair of writers and other romantics, I most often see tables of two people or more taking their coffee and newspapers together — different newspapers, depending on the readers’ political bent, but sitting at the same table.

There, anyone who dares sit down alone soon draws the attention of Sara Stern, the septuagenarian owner.  On my last visit, she seemed visibly perturbed that a stranger — me — had no one to worry over his eating habits. I had left my half-eaten grilled cheese untouched for a few minutes too long.

“Why aren’t you finishing that?” she asked, in a voice that channeled my long-dead bubbe.

“I’m not really that hungry,” I said.

“So I can reheat it for you.”

“That’s OK,” I said. “I’ll eat it.” 

And I did, as Ms. Stern stood by me, keeping me company.

In every other big city, I have felt comfortable being alone.  American bars venerate the loner as much as our movies do. Web sites like Yelp and Chowhound have busy sections devoted to solo dining, not
to mention solodining.com.

There’s no such Web site in Hebrew.

One night in the Old Port complex, I turned my solitude into a game.  I was in the city for work and hadn’t made dinner plans. I walked the promenade, seeing how long it would take me to find someone eating alone.

I never did. 

I settled for an outside table at Bnei HaDaiyag.  There are better fish restaurants in the city — Mul Yam, Manta Ray and Shtsupak come to mind — but this place was packed, and it was 11 p.m., and I figured I would just blend in.

“You’re waiting for someone?” the hostess asked.

“Just me,” I said.

“Alone,” she said, and showed me to a table by the water.  In Hebrew, the word for alone —  levad — resonates like a biblical plague.

A waitress came over with an assortment of appetizers in individual dishes that begin a Middle Eastern meal — hummus, tahini, two kinds of eggplant salad, Moroccan spicy carrots, olives, roasted hot
peppers, tomato and cucumber salad, leben and olive oil, spiced herring.

“That’s fine,” I tried to stop her.

“It comes with the meal,” she said, continuing to deal me plates. “It’s meant to be shared. Do you still want to order a main course?” 

The idea was ridiculous.  Unbidden, she had just deposited more food on my table than I eat in a day. People strolling by — there were hundreds of them, two by two by two — glanced down at my table, then up at me, their faces registering surprise, or pity, or something terribly amiss in the universe.

But, tough. I was alone. I was happy to have a night out, 10,000 miles away from the routine of work, wife and kids, in a lively city by a beautiful sea. “Yes,” I said, “I’ll have the fish.”

I ate happily, never once looking up at the people looking down at me.

Then a young, attractive Israeli couple sat down for dinner — at midnight.  Don’t these people ever give up? 

The woman looked at my table full of food and actually snickered at the man. “What’s going on with him?” she whispered to him in Hebrew.

“Leave it,” he shot back.

They talked, I ate.

But halfway through my fish, my rugged American individualist façade cracked. I didn’t strike up a conversation, but I resorted to another ubiquitous and perfectly acceptable Israeli behavior: I reached for my cell phone in a good restaurant. It was 1 in the morning on the Old Port, but 3 p.m. in Los Angeles. I called my wife. We talked for an hour while I finished my dinner. I was in Tel Aviv, but I wasn’t alone.

Rob’s Favorite Dine Alone Spots in Tel Aviv

Banana Beach
22 Herbert Samuel St
Tel Aviv Hike Tel Aviv
03-5107958

As at similar places on the sand—La La Land, Café Metzizim, La Mer—you can stake out your own bit of beachfront and stare at the Mediterranean. Simple but premium-priced drinks and food.  No shoes required, friends optional.

Bistro “Fluid”

The name sounds like what drains from the kitchen’s sink, but the place is a find. The chef only uses what’s fresh in the Carmel Market just down the street.  The daily menu (hence, “fluid”)  is on a blackboard and only in Hebrew. Whether you speak it or not, the meal begins with a conversation with the friendly staff and diners at nearby tables—What’s good?  What’s that you’re eating? Hey, where are you from?  Within minutes, voila, new friends. 

Café Tamar
57 Sheikin St.
03-5284997

You’ll fit right in with the aging journalists, artists and assorted hopeful souls who have made this Israeli institution a second home since 1941.  The cheese toast—a large, thin sesame seed bagel filled with cheese and pressed on a panini grill—is a comforting substitute for a flesh-and-blood companion.

Dr Shakshuka
4 Beit Eshel St
Tel Aviv
03-5186560

The turnover is fast and the tables long.  Shakshuka is eggs poached in a mixture of sautéed onions, peppers and crushed tomatoes.  You sit and you wolf down the most acclaimed version of this dish in all Israel, then you leave.

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April 6, 2010 | 6:26 pm

The Sephardic Diet

Posted by Rob Eshman

Let’s review. In the ‘70s there was the eat-only-grapefruit diet. In the ‘80s, I knew a woman who followed the eat-all-the-blueberries-you want diet. “They have no calories!” she enthused. “You can eat as many as you want!” Then the cavities and fainting spells kicked in. In the early ‘90s, a few dear friends sacrificed their heart valves to Phenfen. That brings us to the current fads, those protein- or carbo-heavy diets, which duke it out for best-sellerdom and celebrity endorsements. It makes me nostalgic for blueberries.

My own take on dieting is supremely simple-minded:

1. Eat more sensibly than you want to.

2. Exercise more than you want to.

Don’t we all know what sensible eating means by now? Not too much fat, and good fats at that (olive oil, nut and seed oils, etc.); more grains and vegetables and fruits; less meat (lean), dairy products and fish. Am I missing something? Is another 30 years of diet scams and food fads going to change this?

That’s where my new fad diet idea kicks in: Sephardic cooking can be a different matter. Think of the ingredients: a lot of vegetables, couscous, rice, beans; meat in a cameo, not starring role, very little dairy products aside from yogurt, and olive oil instead of schmaltz or butter or margarine. It’s as if God favored His children from the Levant, then turned to the Ashkenazim and said, “I hope you know a good cardiologist.”

If you know your USDA food pyramid, if you follow the folks at the Framingham Heart Study, then adding more Sephardic dishes to your recipe file seems to make good health sense.

Fortunately, there’s no lack of cookbook resources to get you started. Joan Nathan, Claudia Roden, Faye Levy, Judy Zeidler and Gil Marks are all authors to look for. Or just wait until the big Sephardic Diet fad sweeps the nation. You heard it here first.

Now that Passover is nearly over, you can launch your own Sephardic diet fad with my recipe from a Mimouna celebration I attended in Jerusalem in 1985.  This is a North African custom celebrating the end of Passover.  I was working at a youth center in a now-gentrified, then-delapidated section of the city called Musrara.  As Passover wound down neighbors through their doors open and the entire night, families went from house to house indulging in groaning buffets of pre-prepared sweets, cakes, cookies and quickly fried meat rolls, called cigarim. Okay, eat enough of the last ones and you’re not on the diet, but once in a while.

The best thing I ate that night were Maamoul, date-filled cookies that helped the fig liquor stay down.  My friend Joan Nathan has a terrific recipe for them.  Why reinvent the wheel.

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March 29, 2010 | 12:00 pm

Green Passovers

Posted by Rob Eshman

In this morning’s Sacramento Bee, reporter Carla Myer wrote about bringing local, sustainable food to the Passover seder.  She interviewed me for the story, and was kind enough to include a couple of quotes.

Eco-awareness aptly joins the other layers of meaning for the Seder meal, said Rob Eshman, editor of the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles. He writes its blog “Foodaism.” “We are liberating ourselves from being enslaved to the industrial food system,” he said, “and a diet that is killing us.”

Myer’s article reveals that this blog is the tip of the carrot: Passover, the ultimate Jewish food holiday, is providing the perfect setting for redefining our relationship to food.  As Myers reports, it’s happening in congregations and families around the country.

There’s no better sign than the fact that the only brand of matzohs that were sold out at Kosher Club last week were the organic ones. 

Have a happy happy Passover everyone….

 

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March 28, 2010 | 2:13 pm

Howard Stern v. Jamie Foxx

Posted by Rob Eshman

One thing Howard Stern understands about radio is that it is a macho medium. It’s a man’s world.  My friend Teresa Strasser, who used to co-host the Adam Carolla Show on 97.1, pointed out to me that a woman DJ doesn’t stand a chance in drive time.  It’s cultural, but it’s also aural—the timbre of a woman’s voice is difficult for people to listen to for four or five hours at a time. A quick glance of who’s who in radio bears that out—Rush, Howard, Sean Hannity.  With one exception—Laura Ingraham, the Top Fifteen radio talk show hosts are men.

Stern understands that in a man’s world, macho rules.  That’s why he has perfected the art of the radio battle—he knows how high the stakes are in the schoolyard brawl of radio. His current comer is the actor and singer Jamie Foxx.

Some crew on Foxx’s Sirius show attacked Howard for comments he made about ‘Precious’ actress, Gabourey Sidibe. Stern said Hollywood didn’t have many opportunities for grossly obese women, and that the press and others would do her a favor by pointing out to her and those who look up to her that Sidibe’s weight problem will cripple and kill her.

VJs at Jamie Foxx’s ‘Foxxhole’ station on Sirius/XM radio bashed Stern for his comments, then Foxx himself defended his VJs. Foxx attacked Stern as irrelevant. 

That set Stern off—he had to fight back—and it was on.

What’s fascinating is how quickly it gets ugly on radio.  Foxx called Robin Quivers a “house nigger”—about as low a name as one could use to describe a woman who has pioneered a path in prime time radio.  (Seriously, Robin Quivers is the Hattie McDaniels of radio, period.  It’s an achievement she gets no credit for, because in a race-obsessed society people—like Foxx—can only see her in relation to Stern).

“The crew started in with me and I’m not some pussy who’s gonna sit here and take it and listen to some bullshit.” He said. “And quite frankly, I’m mad now because, you know, I got a shitload of stuff on Jamie Foxx, which isn’t a lot of fun and if he wants to start in with me….I don’t really care about Jamie Foxx. He says we’re friends but we’re not friends. He’s been on my show a couple of times. I don’t consider him a friend anymore.”

That opened up the floodgates—Stern kept pushing further and further.  He knows fights are a way to establish radio pecking order, and he has 30 years more experience with it than Foxx.  Stern knows how to go for the jugular and hang on until the floor is bloody. He started by hinting that Foxx himself is in the closet. ( In Stern’s universe the greatest crime is inauthenticity. He’s a champion of gay rights, but quick to attack those who pretend to be something they’re not, like straight.).  And that’s likely just the beginning….

Meanwhile, reading the comments on the sites covering the fight, it’s pretty shocking how many people go to the Jew thing.  Take a peek at some of the comments:

y: MrsJones on 3/31/2010 7:24AM
Highest Ranked
Foxx is getting what he deserve. How could he go along with that hook nose jew putting down a black woman and compared Sidibe to late rapper The Notorious B.I.G. Worst Stern outed him for what he is an under cover fag and no friend of his. I will never understand why every time some black men get a chance to put down a black woman they jump on it. I will never support anything he does again.

liberal elite
3/30/10, 15:34:PM
lots of black folk on this board defending Howard Stern, wtf? why nimrods? When will black folk ever learn that united we stand and divided we fall. Get out of that slave mentality of defending the white man. Stop blowing Howard Stern, what has he done for black folks or for you lately? You all need to back the brother (Jamie Foxx that is), because he does not have to stick his neck out for black folks, he’s already paid. We are a pathetic race of people. Howard Stern is Jewish and you best believe, Jews will have no problem coming to his defense whether he’s right or wrong, that’s why he gets away with so much bulshet. But that’s how the Jews get down. We need to take a page out of that book and stop believing the white man has the coldest ice.

Howard is an extremely powerful Jewish man…He hasn’t done what he has done all these years without some serious protection from the hierarchy…You will all know how powerful Howard is by how Jamie response to him…Howard basically blew Jamie’s cover about being gay…

jandrus
3-30-2010 8:54 am
But you are a Jew!!!! Wwhy you f**king Jews always playing the victim card.F**K YOU Howard Jew Stern.

AND THIS IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE RIGHT HERE!
How is it that a smelly looking dried up Jew man can degrade, disrespect and try to belittle a positive educated black woman and be allowed to get away with it with no consequences? Let a black man say “jew b*tch” and the curtains will close on his black azz! Career finished!!!!
yes jamie said Gabby looks like Notorious BIG. She sort of does.lol I love BIG! Im brooklyn born and raised…BK all day! A joke? Yes, no disrespect. But noooooo some of us black people wanna come down on Jamie, some even saying he’s no better than this Jew trash. WAKE THE FCK UP!
…and for the record, Howard said much more then this “Gaby Sidibe is the most enormous black chick he’s ever seen, how she’s not really going to get anymore roles, and how everyone’s just being nice to her because she’s the fat chick” I would tell you to google it but do you really want to?

because just about all the producers and casting agents are…And Hollywood no longer hires hetro humans that aren’t Jewish.

jandrus
3-30-2010 8:54 am
But you are a Jew!!!! Wwhy you f**king Jews always playing the victim card.F**K YOU Howard Jew Stern.

howard stern is in the illuminate and hes a jew that is why he is a cry baby

DIZ CRACKAZ HOWARDZ DA JEWZ STERNZ IZ SMELLZ LIKEZ WETZ DOGGZ

Guest
JAMIE CANT WIN HIS PAY CHECK IS SIGN BY JEWS ITS A LOSE LOSE SITUATION FOR HIM AND ROBBIN YOUR NOT A HOUSE N!GGER YOUR A SELL OUT BECAUSE YOU SIT THERE AND LET HIM TALK SH!T ABOUT BLACK WOMEN FOR A PAY CHECK ALL THAT MONEY AND THEY WAS WATCHING HER IN THE SUPERMARKET IN THE KOTEX SECTION LIKE SHE WAS GONNA STEAL SOMTHING LOL

Guest
f*** miley cyrus! you shouldnt have dissed the precious chick b**** ass snitching ass jew howard.

Guest
EVERYBODY KNOW JAMIE IS A BOULE f*g. HOWARD A JEW SO HE KNOW FIRST HAND. PROB f***ED JAMIEWITH THE REST OF THEM RICH WHITE BOYS WILL SMITH *COUGHS*

Three thoughts:  Howard seems to represent “Jew” in the popular conscience more than any other celebrity, maybe save Steven Spielberg.

Some people out there have some pretty conflicted feelings about Jews. 

Advice to Jaime:  Go into the Stern studio and make nice.  You don’t need this.  Ask Les Moonves.

 

 

 

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