"It's not surprising that we're witnessing a cheesemaking resurgence of sorts in that part of the world." Photograph from dearanxiety on Flickr Last week, there was an interesting story from the McClatchy newspapers about a group of Italian agronomists helping some Palestinian farmers set up an Italian sheep cheese operation in the West Bank. The dairy goes by the name of Golden Sheep, and produces a small variety of Italian cheeses like pecorino (a generic term for an aged sheep cheese), smoked ricotta, and scamorza (a close relative of mozzarella). The economy in the West Bank is, for obvious reasons, relatively stagnant, and the agronomists at Italy's Ucodep have launched this development project to help get some money flowing. The...
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This tour of the Aviv matzo factory in Bnei-Brak, Israel, has everything you could want in a video about making matzo: an enthusiastic host who converses with his own narration and makes silly jokes, plenty of cartoonlike sound effects, and random pop-up notes with facts about the factory. This is officially my favorite video about matzo. Watch the matzo go from dough to box after the jump....
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"The UN has no more food to distribute in the Gaza Strip," reports the BBC. Israel has been denying the transfer of all goods into Gaza for about a week....
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Photograph by roboppy In a move that may or may not threaten the Middle Eastern peace process, Lebanon is planning to sue Israel in Trade Court over Israel's proprietary Arab food claims: According to a report by the Deutsche Presse Agentur, Germany's news agency, a Lebanese trade union is planning to sue Israel for claiming that the Jewish state has propriety over traditional Arab cuisine such as falafel, tabbouleh and hummus, which Lebanese consider their own. All right, if Lebanon is going to sue Israel for falafel copyright infringement, my imagination runs wild at the thought of other countries getting into the food copyright business. After the jump, my list of domestic and international food lawsuits waiting to happen....
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Though Israelis and Palestinians have trouble seeing eye to eye, they do stuff similar street foods in their mouths. Olives, falafel, flatbreads, nuts, and hummus crowd the streets of Jerusalem, but what do these foods say about the war-torn metropolis? In this engaging (and twelve-minute long) special from Al Jazeera, we visit places like the hummus joint "From Gaza to Berlin," where the name comes from the physical location (Berlin Street) and the built-in regional metaphor. Like Israel, the food here is somewhere between East and West. "There is no Israeli food. All our food is from neighbors and Jewish immigration that came to Israel," says one local....
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Whichever you fancy, this Elite-brand Israeli candy bar morphs the wonderful worlds of chocolate and Pop Rocks. Just your average milk chocolate squares at first, but, wait for it—wait for it—an atomic fireworks show in your mouth! The delicious drumfire lingers for a while, too. Even the candy bar's wrapper depicts a half-smirking cow surrounded by explosive ka-boom designs. (He knows what's up). Though it's not technically Pop Rocks, but chocolate with Pop Rock tendencies, would the exploding tummy urban legend apply here? For all we know, Mikey from the Life cereal commercials actually "died" in Israel after swilling a cola with one these. Let's just assume the cocoa has magical properties, mitigating any stomach swelling. And if not, sorry...
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