Time for a Tiger

So, we began our whistle-stop tour of Southeast Asia in Bangkok with modest ambitions: to catch a few glimpses of the major highlights on the well-worn tourist trail, including the royal temple of Wat Phra Kaeo and the adjoining Grand Palace, the enormous reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, and most importantly, to dig into some serious, genuine Thai cuisine. In the end, none of this would prove too difficult; our hotel was on the main tourist strip, the Thanon Khao San, just steps away from our intended sightseeing destinations, and lined with food carts, restaurants and bars. Plus, Khao San boasts plenty of interesting sights of its own: mini-dress-clad bar touts, wandering souvenir saleswomen, aging hippies who moved there in the sixties and never left, and backpackers from around the world dressed to kill in the tropical heat.

It’s not difficult to get excited about food in Bangkok. Every few steps, we passed another hawker stall or pushcart vendor serving a new, enticing, and often (to us) completely unfamiliar snack. We quickly learned that street food is where it’s at in Thailand and we sampled every variety we passed, including meat-on-a-stick of every ilk (namely, chicken, pork, liver and oysters), served in little plastic bags full of chili sauce (Tam’s favorite); pancakes made from unorthodox ingredients, like a particularly delicious deep-fried pancake of little whole shrimps (complete with head, shell and whiskers) and kaffir lime leaves; tiny dumplings made of creamed shellfish and rice gluten; glistening unidentified fruits of dramatic appearance (later determined to be jackfruit, dragonfruit and margotene); and, of course, noodle dishes in all their infinite variety and complexity. Laura was an especial fan of the pickled peppers that come in miniscule plastic dishes to accompany any type of noodle soup, most often – in our experience – swimming with cinnamon-laced sliced pork, bitter boiled bok choy, and dumplings (oh, the dumplings!). The tremendous variety of intestines and animal extremities on sale raw, baked or deep-fried was astonishing; the buckets of chicken feet were the least of it. Our single regret was that the pushcart of fried insects passed us at too swift a pace. Really, next time…

On the third day, we rose again from our beds in time to catch a tuk-tuk (a sort of brightly colored rickshacum motorcycle) to Chinatown for a quick stroll through the markets, then on to the train station for a 24-hour journey south to Malaysia. We arrived on the island of Penang to find that our culinary choices had broadened to incorporate Chinese and Indian influences. In the former colonial capital, Georgetown, we spent our day hopping from temple to clan house to mosque and exchanging friendly greetings with the Tamils, Thais, Chinese, Indians and Malays that populate the diverse and highly integrated city. In between, we sampled more noodle soups (less spicy and meatier than the Bangkok variety) and more meat-on-a-stick (bought from a hawker who proudly boasted of being a third-generation satay “specialist,” and demonstrated his special fanning technique for Laura – quick wrist flicks seem to do it). Our new friend pointed us to Little India, where we sampled chappatis, samosas and chicken curry, then wandered back for the local specialty laksa (a strong fish stew with noodles, enlivened by huge quantities of chopped lotus flower, bok choy and shrimp paste), and had tiny banana- and coconut-stuffed pancakes served on a banana leaf for dessert.















The next morning, we made a breakfast of a brilliantly colored Chinese dessert called ice kacang, featuring sweetened red beans over crushed ice. It attracted us with its supernaturally bright colors and the large crowd of enthusiastic consumers who encouraged us to sample it and helped us to order, but we were quite unable to discern most of its ingredients and sadly cannot help to identify those clear, bean-shaped gelatinous balls. Its taste is likewise quite indescribable.

Yesterday, we took at bus to the Cameron Highlands, a hilltop station founded by the British in the 1920s as a retreat from the heat of the lowlands and now a popular vacation destination renowned for its jungle treks and tea plantations. As soon as we dumped our luggage, we set out to sample the local delicacy known as a “steamboat,” a kind of Asian fondue. Seated at an unusually large table for two, we were presented with platefuls of raw shark, jellyfish, cuttlefish, beef, squid and shrimp, along with noodles, whole eggs, tofu and vegetables, all of which we cooked ourselves in a huge, bubbling double-cauldron of spicy broths. Laura made a huge mess at her place setting and we had to slink out of the restaurant in disgrace. It was tasty, but Tam thinks that a dinner out shouldn't be quite so much work.





















Of course, no honest culinary account of a trip to Bangkok or Georgetown would be complete without fessing up to a little bellying up to the bar. In Bangkok, we drank local Singha lager at a super-trendy bar called “The Station” located under the canopy of a disused gas station, with chic young tipplers sipping fruity drinks at candle-lit tables scattered among the pumps. In Penang, we spent our first night draining bottles of Tiger lager at the Hong Kong Bar, a one-room establishment with a linoleum floor and mismatched plastic furniture which – we were informed by an enthusiastic young cadet – has been the watering hole of the various Australian fleets stationed in Malaysia for more than fifty years. The crowd of Ozzies certainly looked right at home, and cheered and whistled when the owner, a tiny, middle-aged Chinese woman with heavily accented English, pumped her beer in the air while offering a loud and enthusiastic rendition of the Queen classic “We Are the Champions.” Around the corner, a transplanted English pub known as the Soho Free House was by far the most happening scene in Penang, jammed with swanky young businessmen ordering whole bottles of Johnny Walker Black and heaping plates of fish and chips while watching interviews with David Beckham on TV. Rule Britannia, we guess.

Balls to Walls

One peculiar aspect of being a visitor in Israel (and there are many) is that you have a freedom to move around in a way that Israeli citizens really don't. Israelis, unless they are settlers, are not allowed to visit the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. (There is considerable debate in the Israeli press about the logic of spending huge amounts of money, manpower and resources trying to hang on to territory most of the citizenry can never enter; and plenty of Israelis are coming down against it, far more than you would guess from reading the papers in the US.) So, in our last few days as wide-eyed observers in the Holy Land, we took advantage of our foreign passports and relative mobility to cross over to the West Bank: in this case, to the formerly popular tourist destination and famed little town of song, Bethlehem.

Israel is a tremendously fractured society with deep and hostile divisions, not only between Jews and Arabs, but between religious and secular Jews, the right and the left, immigrants and non-immigrants. These enshrined social, religious and political divisions often lend Jerusalem an atmosphere of barely controlled hostility. Neighborhoods in the Holy City tend to be homogenous, self-contained enclaves of different religious and ethnic groups, and separate public transportation systems serve Arab and Jewish areas. The state-owned Egged system runs to Jewish neighborhoods, most cities in Israel, and the settlements in the territories; less plush Arab buses serve East Jerusalem and other Arab parts of the city and will take you to the main centers in the West Bank. There is almost no mixing, even when Arab and Jewish neighborhoods are right next to each other. So to go to Bethlehem, we caught a bus from East Jerusalem to the military checkpoint a short distance outside our destination.


























The checkpoint is in the infamous new "security barrier" that divides Israel proper from the territories acquired in the 1967 war, a victory whose 40th anniversary this week has aroused so much discussion around the world. As American tourists, we passed right through with unopened passports; a few Palestinians (with rare permission to pass through to Jerusalem) were subjected to a high-tech fingerprinting scheme and careful inspection. On the other side, the Palestinians of Bethlehem have constructed an elaborate graffiti protest against the wall, their segregation and their loss of civil, political and human rights under the Israeli occupation. It's a sophisticated political statement, with large comic portraits of Palestinians alternating with protest slogans, mainly in English. (The title of this post is a quote from one of the less serious contributions.) It's clearly designed to be viewed by the international community that used to visit Bethlehem with some frequency; passersby and taxi drivers, obviously proud of the portraits, stopped to chat and encourage our interest.




















Bethlehem itself is home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. It was once almost entirely Christian, but the Christian population has dwindled significantly due to major emigration since 1948, and Bethlehem now has a Muslim majority. Nevertheless, it's still an important pilgrimage site for Christians around the world, and used to be a major tourist attraction. In 2002, an Israel Defense Forces raid on the city led to a five-week standoff between the IDF and a group of Palestinians in the Church of the Nativity (below; it's one of the oldest churches in the world, built originally by Constantine's mom Helena over the supposed birthplace of Jesus). This incident, combined with increasingly draconian travel restrictions, has led to a significant dropoff in tourism, and the building of the wall has contributed further to severe economic difficulties in the city. The streets of Bethlehem were almost empty, with lots of shops offering Christian souvenirs but no tourists to buy them. One desperate store owner asked us to broadcast the news of our safe return from the West Bank to other potential visitors. If Mary and Joseph came to town today, they'd have no trouble finding a room.

This trip concentrated a lot of the impressions we've gotten in our two months here. Israel, and especially Jerusalem, is an astoundingly militarized place. For us, it's still shocking to see thousands of uniformed teenagers toting machine guns; everyone in Israel except for Arabs and ultra-orthodox Jews has to serve in the army. (Women serve for two years, and men serve for at least three and are considered reservists until they reach forty-five.) The resources devoted to the military are stupefying. So much energy, time, money and effort is focused on the military efforts and the maintenance of all sorts of social, political and economic divisions that there's little left over for the sorts of projects that make a place livable: the arts, a vibrant public sphere, universities and intellectual life, public cultural events. Instead, the worst aspects of American cultural influence are clear; strip malls, fast food and stalls selling vulgar T-shirts infest the city. The Christian sites have been largely taken away from the Christian Arab community which has run them for centuries and been turned into what one American Episcopalian priest we met called a "Holy Places Disneyland."


























Many Israelis themselves see Jerusalem as an unappealing place; in a recent poll, 78% of Israelis said they would not be willing to live there, calling it impoverished, backward, intolerant and unattractively sectarian. Other cities in Israel have a very different feel - Tel Aviv has a much less militarized appearance and boasts a vibrant civic culture, and Haifa is much less segregated and is a friendly and welcoming place. But it has been depressing and discouraging to witness these levels of hostility, segregation and disregard for the rights of other in what is often called one of the most sacred cities in the world. We hope that the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the occupation will provoke international thoughtfulness about ways to change the situation.

In the meantime, we're off to Bangkok!

More pictures of our adventure in Israel (including shots of a certain pair of scantily clad bloggers floating in the Dead Sea) are available here:

Au bon pain perdue

When Tam's mom first moved to Arizona, her apartment was just a few blocks from a Krispy Kreme donut shop. When Tam's brother Charley, whom you may remember from our last breakfast post, came to visit, he would stop on the way to pick up the schedule of when the freshly baked donuts would be ready. As soon as the next glazed batch hit the shelves, Charley bring home a dozen, still warm, dip them in a freshly beaten egg and make French toast with them. He confided his secret: a whole stick of butter.

In Jerusalem, we've been enjoying a (slightly healthier) version of French toast, in which the donuts are replaced with challah bread. Challah is a staple of traditional Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jewish cuisine; it's a sweetened, egg-rich, braided bread, eaten especially on the Shabbat. It's sprinkled with either poppy or sesame seeds, which represent the manna given to the Jews by God during their wanderings in the desert after the Exodus. Unlike most other European sweetened breads, it does not contain dairy, because it usually accompanies meat-based Shabbat meals. Originally, challah referred to a small portion of dough separated out from the main piece and given to the Jewish priesthood; now, according to strict interpretations, there are no ritually pure priests (since the destruction of the Temple), so the challah portion of ritual bread is usually burned. But challah is still an extremely prominent part of the Shabbat meals, and people buy giant piles of loaves in the Mahaneh Yehuda market every Friday in preparation.

It also makes for excellent French toast, due to its slight sweetness, its absorptive qualities, its fluffy interior and crunchy crust, and the nutty savoriness of the seeds. We make challah French toast with a simple egg dip, and top it with lemony strawberries and honey-sweetened yogurt for a delicious Shabbat breakfast.

Challah French Toast with Strawberries and Honeyed Yogurt

3 eggs
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter (or more, you know...)
6 thick slices challah bread (best if slightly stale)

1 quart fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
2 tablespoons sugar (or to taste; depends on how sweet your strawberries are)
juice of 1/2 lemon

1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 1/2 tablespoons honey

Mix strawberries with sugar and lemon juice in large bowl and toss to combine. Allow to sit for about 20 minutes.

Mix honey and yogurt in small bowl.

Mix egg, milk, sugar and salt in a large bowl and add slices of bread. Let soak for a few minutes. Melt butter in skillet over medium heat and add bread. Cook until golden brown on both sides.
Serve immediately, topped with strawberries and yogurt mixture.

Serves 2.

In the kitchen in Nahala'ot

Eight months ago, when we left the United States for a year-long trip around the world, we intended to use our humble blog not just to keep our friends and families up-to-date with our whereabouts and well-being, but also to share our experiences cooking and eating around the world. The truth is, however, that with a couple of glaring / glowing exceptions (grilled shrimp with artichokes at Chakra in Jerusalem, local steaks paired with vin de la terre in the Golan heights), our gastronomic experiences in Israeli restaurants have been somewhat underwhelming. Jerusalem is crammed with perfectly respectable falafel and shwarma joints and (slightly) more upscale "Italian" restaurants, but none truly stand out; and, as we all know, man can live on pita bread alone for only so long.

In our own kitchen in the Nahala'ot neighborhood of West Jerusalem, we've revelled in the fresh bread and produce from our local market, but our domestic culinary options are regrettably limited by our resources; a single pot, a small teflon skillet, a two-burner hotplate and a microwave. (Our own inventiveness in the face of these obstacles has admittedly been less than inspiring too, possibly owing in part to the fact that we don't have a proper eating surface and most often end up taking our meals at home lolling on the bed. This is not to complain; in fact, it's very comfortable.) We've enjoyed constructing simple, produce-based meals: sandwiches of grilled chicken, chunky guacamole and tomato and red onion salsa, various preparations of creamy farm-fresh eggs and bright, crunchy salads - but none of our preparations have seemed especially blog-worthy.

This is all to explain the recent dearth of food-themed entries on Chalk and Cheese. To atone for our disgraceful negligence on the culinary reporting front, we offer here a simple but perfect dish of pasta and cherry tomatoes that has been a staple at our Jerusalem dinner / bedside table. Of course, it helps to have wonderful tomatoes, but the real secret is the sequential additions of garlic.

Pasta with cherry tomatoes (a narrative recipe)

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and add two servings of pasta. Heat some olive oil over medium heat and add 2 cloves coarsely chopped garlic and some crushed red pepper, to taste. Add 2 cups halved cherry tomatoes and cook for about 4 minutes. Remove from heat and add one clove of minced garlic and the juice of 1/2 lemon, and season with salt and pepper. When pasta is cooked to al dente, drain it and stir in 1 tablespoon of good olive oil and the tomato mixture. Season with salt and pepper and serve topped with grated Parmesan.

Mmmm.

From sea to shining sea

We set off last Monday for a jaunt around the north of Israel, starting with the Sea of Galilee (known here, less biblically, as Lake Kinneret). As the bus descended into the vacation town of Tiberias, which is supposedly steamy, chaotic and jammed in the summer but whose trinket shops and tropical-themed bars were echoing hollowly at this time of year, we could see Jesus' old stomping grounds lapping at the shore. It's surprisingly small, and we decided that biking around the coast to the Jordan River was the perfect way to see it.




















We rode a pair of clattering rental mountain bikes south, alongside roaring semis and giant tour buses with darkened windows, down to "Yardenit," the spot on the Jordan River where the Israel tourist board, with some help from an evangelical pastor in New Mexico, has decided that Jesus was baptised. (The Jordanian site of Bethany, which contains ancient ruins long associated with the settlement of John the Baptist and the prophet Elijah, is another contender and has been entered for World Heritage status.) This uncertainty, however, did not discourage the hordes of pilgrims from China, India, Nigeria and Kentucky who flocked down the steps to recreate the baptismal experience, some wearing rented oversize white gowns presumably meant to recall Jesus' cottony garb. On the way out, they were all shuffled through the gift shop where you can buy anything from a Budweiser Israel T-shirt to a plastic crown of thorns; the latter comes with a "certificate of authenticity."




















On the way back, hot and sweaty (Tam says "glowing"), we stopped in for a little splashing of our own at one of the many water parks between the highway and the sea, and rewarded ourselves for our exertions with a dinner of the local specialty, grilled "St Peter's fish" - a romantic name, it turns out, for tilapia.
















The next day, we rented a car and began a driving tour of the Golan Heights. The southeastern part is remarkably empty, with miles of dry brown hills fenced off by barbed wire and signs warning of land mines, and not another car to be seen. As we got further north, the hills got higher and greener and we could see Druze villages, vineyards and the peak of Mount Hermon. We chugged up the vertical passes to explore "Nimrod's Palace," a fortress built by the medieval Arabs but later associated with the Biblical giant (and descendant of Noah) Nimrod. The sprawling stone complex, built to protect the all-important trade route to Damascus, looks out on astonishing vistas in all directions. We picnicked on zaatar bread and fruit, and drove as far up Mount Hermon as we could before being turned back by scary signs warning of IDF training grounds and firing ranges.






































We headed back down the mountain to Safed, a tiny town on the side of the mountain, which has served as a center for Kaballah and been a magnet for Jewish mystics and messianic believers for centuries. We arrived just in time to see the sun set behind the hills, casting a rosy glow on the eighteenth-century stone buildings and narrow alleys of the old Jewish quarter. Unfortunately, the sunset also marked the beginning of a Jewish holiday and meant that, here in the most religious town in Israel, absolutely everything was closed; people lined the streets on the way to synagogue, but all the falafel and juice stands were inexorably shut. We got back in the car and backed down the mountain to find a hamburger to sustain us until the next morning, when we jetted out of town as fast as possible in search of coffee and a muffin.




















We split back east and hiked down to the famous hexagonal pool at the Yehudiyya Nature Reserve in the southern Golan, where geometric patterns of basalt rock form a dramatic little swimming hole and waterfall. After a final night by the sea of Galilee, featuring a dinner of local steak and a really very tasty bottle of sangiovese from a Golan winery, buses and trains shuttled us west to explore the crooked stone alleys and Crusader ruins of the somewhat ramshackle but charming coastal Arab town of Acre. We wandered around the eighteenth-century mosque of al-Jazzar, which incorporates elegant Roman columns into its flowery courtyard, and watched this guy fishing below the medieval city walls.

Then south to Israel's third major city, Haifa, a port town dramatically situated on the slopes of Mount Carmel overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Haifa is generally quite devoid of tourist attractions, tending more towards industrial shipping equipment and very large cement-block buildings; but it does house the World Baha'i Center and the Baha'i Shrine, where the martyred prophet known as the Bab is buried. The shrine is surrounded by magnificent terraced gardens which extend down the mountain in the very center of the city. Tam, inspired both by the beauty of the gardens and by the progressive principles of the Bahu'llah, has decided that the solution to his career crisis is to convert to Baha'ism and reinvigorate the economy of northern Michigan with an international Baha'i retreat center. Now he just has to sell the idea to the zoning board of Leelanau County.


























We ended our adventure with a beach day at Netanya, the Fort Lauderdale of Israel, where retirees from all over the world play excruciatingly slow games of bingo at all the sidewalk cafes, restaurants cater to the huge numbers of French and Russian tourists with menu offerings combining shwarma, schnitzel and foie gras, and laziness is taken to such an extreme that you can actually take a giant elevator down to the beach. Seriously.





















More pictures of our exciting adventure are available here:

We got a brand new camera; we love to take a photograph...

Well, our new camera arrived this week and you know what that means ... no more grainy pictures on cheap, aging disposable cameras! To test out our new toy, we spent the day touring the sites on the Mount of Olives - like the Church of the Pater Noster and the candlelit Tomb of the Prophets - and, of course, the all-important Temple Mount. (Did you know that technically Jews are not supposed to go to the Temple Mount, because of the risk of inadvertently stepping on the Holy of Holies which is never to be approached until the end of days? There's actually a warning to this effect at the entrance, signed by the chief rabbi of Israel.)

On the way home, we did a little shopping at the Mahaneh Yehuda market where we've been buying most of our food, braving the crowds and the brutal old ladies to partake in the glossy piles of olives and nuts, the sumptuous strawberries (shoveled into bags by a grinning kid using a dustpan) and the still-hot bread.


This was Jerusalem Week, a lengthy, parade-heavy, flag-waving celebration of the "unification" of Jerusalem in 1967 - an ironic turn of phrase to describe the most rigidly segregated city either of us has ever visited. The parades featured thousands of schoolchildren singing vaguely pitched nationalist songs, and tractors ... lots and lots of tractors. A reference to the kibbutz movement, perhaps?


More (sometimes grainy) pictures of our exciting adventure in Israel (so far) are available here:

Hamesh de Mayo

Top five ways you know you're not in Jerusalem anymore:

1. There's nary a sideburn ringlet or bewigged head to be seen.
2. No old ladies are body-checking you to get to the front of the queue at the market.
3. When you go to a restaurant, nobody asks you if you have a gun.
4. No one will throw bleach on you if you walk down the street in a bikini.
5. You can eat as many cheeseburgers and as much shellfish as you want.

After another week of fighting the crowds of religious fanatics along the Via Dolorosa, we were ready for a break from the Holy City. On Friday morning, we elbowed our way onto the bus and fled like Jonah to Tel Aviv. A friend of the family who lives there generously offered to show us around; she met us at the bus station and took us on a little driving tour of the city, pointing out the Bauhaus architecture and the wide promenade which lines the beach from the southern port of Jaffa all the way to the northern marina - a distance of about 4 miles, crawling with bikini-clad beach bunnies and ancient crones alike enjoying the wide stretches of white sand and sparkling water.


















The next morning, we set out early to walk the length of the promenade from Jaffa. Jaffa, once famous for the orange and olive groves surrounding its walls, is a contender for the oldest continuously operating port in the world, and was an important stop on the old incense trading routes from the Arabian peninsula to the western Mediterranean. It was conquered at various times by the ancient Egyptians, King David, the Romans, the Arabs, the Crusaders, the Mamluks, Napoleon, the Ottomans and the British. The city's Arab inhabitants were almost all driven out during the 1948 war and it sank into a state of destitution, housing only the very poorest of Israel's immigrant communities for a decade. In the 1960s, the Old Jaffa Development Company decided to transform the city by reimagining it as an artists' colony. Its old stone houses and crooked streets were renovated and rebuilt, gardens were planted in its center, and the port was reopened. (We watched a film on the history of Jaffa in the visitors' center, which skipped startlingly and unapologetically from the nineteenth-century use of Jaffa's port straight to its 1960s renovation.) Now, it's a beautiful little city in the shadow of the uber-modern skyscrapers of Tel Aviv.

We wandered north from Jaffa along the beach, picnicking along the way on some leftovers from dinner the night before: stuffed zucchini, kibbeh (spicy minced lamb inside a crust of deep-fried bulghur), tomatoes and fruit. After some very satisfying beach time, we toasted Cinco de Mayo with some Coronas (yes, this took some searching, but we're only getting savvier) and a dish advertised as nachos that turned out to be some Cool Ranch Doritos, served with a "salsa" that owed a considerable debt to Heinz ketchup. Ah well, we tried.

We abandoned the Mexican theme for dinner and took advantage of our distance from Jerusalem to gorge on shrimp in butter and some excellent local wine, though the grilled chicken, seasoned with harissa and pickled lemon and served on a bed of lentils, was the real highlight of our dinner by the sea.