In Jaffa, the picturesque old city next to Tel Aviv, Margaret Tayar has a famous seafood restaurant specializing in Moroccan cuisine prepared in her distinctive way. Her food –highly spiced and fragrant– is delicious. She is known for her fish couscous and for her simple and delicious spicy grilled fish. The recipe is my adaptation of Margaret’s fresh and zesty salsa that so well dresses the charcoal-grilled bream. Serve with steamed potatoes, zucchini, and carrots.
Serves 2 (more…)
Whenever we get good fresh calamari of any size, Costas, my husband, likes to stuff and grill it over charcoal, or on the portable electric grill. He doesn’t like the feta stuffing served with calamari at most Greek taverns, so he came up with this mixture of olives, almonds and chilies. Calamari is quite filling, so serve with just a green salad.
Serves 6-8
8-10 medium-small calamari (1 ½ -2 pounds), cleaned, bone discarded, heads separated
Marinade
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
Good pinch Aleppo or Maras pepper, or Pepper Flakes to taste
We love to make this delicious, yet very simple dish with the greens and stems from the local beets that we get on Kea almost all through the winter, until early in the spring. Manuela, my neighbor often gives me beets from her garden that are especially delicious. Later in April, as the actual beets get tough, we only cook the greens, as we would spinach, chard, or any other local leaves.
The sweet beet greens are especially delicious flavored with the tart, avgolemono sauce.
Serves 6 (more…)
A fast, plant-based pasta dish that we cannot stop eating these days. I cooked the spaghetti first, al dente, the traditional way, then added it to the briefly braised fava pods flavored with onion, garlic, lemon juice, and plenty of wonderful parsley that we happen to have in the garden.
Lemon zest and plenty of coarsely ground pepper give the dish a lovely kick, while crumbled feta adds a very welcomed tanginess.
This is the more conventional and elegant way to make the dish, besides the One-pot version with Fava, Asparagus, and Spinach that I posted last year.
Serves 3-4 (more…)
In this recipe both cooked spinach and fresh parsley and cilantro are mixed together. It is my adaptation of an Armenian dish.
In Israel you will most often find the vivid pink ‘borani’, made with beets and beet greens instead of spinach (see variation).
As an alternative to the traditional pita bread, I prefer to spread it on toasted whole wheat or multi-grain bread, rubbed with a clove of garlic.
It can also be a side dish, accompanying poached or grilled fish or chicken.
Makes about 3 cups. (more…)
