Hello. And welcome to my house, my home. We are in Tel Aviv right now, and we're here to talk about Israeli cuisine and the festivities around surrounding the holidays. My name is Assaf Shinar. And I am the owner of Zuk Farm Deli in Tel Aviv. These are strange times that we're finding ourselves in and we're trying to relearn how to re-learn how to live nowadays.

We firmly believe in the restaurant that we have in making food from the land. We have a farm in the ELah Valley. My partner Tomer Zuk has a farm there

And together we we bring all the product to Tel Aviv. My partner grows olives and grapes and vegetables, lamb and goats. And we make our own cheese, yogurt, olive oil, wine, cheese. And it all comes to Tel Aviv where we have a deli and a restaurant. All the product are sold in the in the deli, so that people can buy that and cook in their homes. And at the restaurant we cook all the food and make specials from it. We firmly believe in the fact that we are all we're all influenced by where we come from, by our roots, where our heritage is from and from people that surround us - are around us. The State of Israel is a place where people came to from many places of the world. This was not an empty place. There are people who live here who have influenced the way that we eat and we think about food, from the Arab population that has been living here and the Jewish population that has been living here for many years. People came to Israel after the Second World War from all over the globe. They found themselves coming to this new State of Israel that was very interesting and they brought all their heritage and cultures to this wonderful place where we learn how to farm and be and grown our own vegetables. And we first secluded ourselves within our cultures from depending where you came from. And then a few years later, we see the growth of influence between cultures and between the local culture of the Arab and Muslim way of eating and eating from the Mediterranean-style dietary guidelines, to where people came from Europe.

And you see interchange of food from place to place.

I think one of our strength is that during, or, for the last couple of years, we've been able to absorb each other's cultures and learn how to make food and how to have fun with all the food that we that we make here. Either we see, like my partner in the farm makes this cheese and it's so cheese that is done in a French style. But we put it in a special herb that grows in the area of the farm.

Therefore, it makes it a bit more from here. And you will see me use tahini today, which is comes from the local Arab tradition of cooking with a combination of yogurt in the sauce. So we cook the fish in yogurt and the combination of flavors other east and west and brought out. I think we're looking at something that brings things together and makes things a lot of tastier and a lot more fun. Sometimes borders and actually make things for people a lot more difficult than they should be. Politics and borders. If we would be left alone, we would be able to help one another and understand one another and learn from one another how to use and how to make great food and how to help one another. There are stories that in the past, in Jerusalem, in the 1960s or in 194,  where the Jordanian border was placed that Jewish families and Muslim families used to work and used to live one next to the other and help one another, used to throw pita bread across the street when they realized one day that a border was put in the street between Jordan and Israel, or the new state. Therefore, I think that and I believe, that we are here to learn from one another. We are here to create interesting things and make our lives so much better. If we can only just have the freedom and in peace to do things the right way, the nice way. You see at the table that there are things that come originally from Northern Europe or and then you see Arabs and that come are that are locally grown here.

We're going to start with a Medjool dates  that's the stuffed Medjool dates. That's where basically we're going to start by cooking the lentils. We're going to put them over high heat with water just to cover them and cook them for about twenty, twenty-five minutes until they're semi-soft. While this is happening, I'm going to stuff the Medjool dates. After I stuff the Medjool dates, we're going to cook... to bake the dates in the oven until the meat is just ready. We're going to make the Masabacha of the lentils and serve it and I'll show you how we serve it on a plate.

Ok, cumin, cured lemon, black lentils, lamb kababs, Medjool dates, tahini lemons.

The dishes that I've prepared food for today are actually influence from different parts of the globe, still using local ingredients, organic ingredients, most of them that we grow in our gardens. And some of them come from small farmers that we work with. And I will explain about this. We're going to make some sort of combination dish of Medjool dates that come from the Elah, from a family that we work with, that grow dates for us, with kebabs that we make in our own deli. And we're going to serve that over Masabacha of black lentils with tahini and with a little bit of cured lemon. This is a dish that is combining different kinds of styles, mostly Mediterranean influence. It's like a starter, nice and light, that combination of sweetness and spiciness. We've taken the liberty of playing a little bit with the Masabacha which is usually a chickpea paste hummus that is very, very sour and tart. We're going to play with that, with the sweetness of the dates and the lamb flavor that we're going bake in the oven.

The next thing is that we're going to do today or that we will have recipes for is the green beans, long beans, tight Thai beans that we grow at the garden with our very own, very fresh cherry tomatoes served with our cheese that I've roasted in the oven. It's called Circassian cheese, very light with just a bit of flavor of...just a very small hint of goaty flavor to it. And we're going to serve that with Circassian vinaigrette. So it's a Spanish-style influenced dish where we bring all the gardens from the farm to the table. We're going to serve them with roasted almonds. The next to be a very refreshing salad due to the season. Now we're at the end of Summer and the beginning of Fall here in Israel, it's still warm. We're getting really, really nice figs. We have an orchard of figs that are organic figs that we grow now. My partner's brother has an orchard of pomegranates and we're going to do salad from greens, from the restaurant cheese that we make from our own goat cheese with that special herb from the area of the farm, some roasted toasted cashews with the fig vinaigrette, which we're going to serve.

It's very light salad, very nice in a way, a bit more French influence. And for the main course, what we're going to do today is we're going to serve sea bream, sinea style.

 Sinea is basically a plate that usually goes into the oven with minced lamb meat covered with tahini or with tomato sauce and cooked in the oven.

What we're going to do is, we're going to make tahini a yellow tahini from kurkuma and goat yogurt and a little bit of tahini just to give it that, a little bit of nuttiness. We're going to serve that and bake that in the oven. You'll see that it's a very, very yellow dish. It comes out really, really nice. We're going to sprinkle it with sumac.

Sumac is an herb, a local herb that grows now in the in the area of Jerusalem and you pick it and you grind it and becomes really purple. And next we'll talk about all the ingredients a bit later and all the dishes a bit later.

As you can see, I've already precooked my lentils. It's been about twenty, twenty five minutes. I'm going to warm them up so I can grind them with the tahini and the cumin and flavor of the Masabacha lentils. So we're going to place this on the flame, and low flame and now I will stuff the dates. 

You cut the dates only half open and open them, so they're still connected in the back.

We can serve this with either two per person or one per person, depending on your liking - I think two. Now only take the Kabab mixture, lamb meat and parsley and I stuff the stuff the dates with. It doesn't have to be very full.

I remind you, this is a starter. It's just a small thing to start. It's very intense in flavor. It's very sweet and tart. It's very sweet. And therefore it's not a lot. You don't need to put so much in it. And it's a nice dish to work with. We've done it with either cheese or nuts. You can supplement the meat inside it and be also very tasty and very nice. I will place the Medjool dates in the pan.

And both of them in the oven for about 8 to 10 minutes, I'm going to take the lentils and strain them. I'm going to reserve the liquid so I can use it when I start to grind them, to give it to give the paste a bit more liquid.

I put the lentils into this food grinder.

I'm adding a tablespoon, a teaspoon of cumin. Juice from a whole lemon. It's the beginning of the season, so the lemons are a bit green and very tart. So we're going to make this, taste it and then decide if we're going to add some more,  depending on the flavor. We get our tahini from Nabliss, which we're more than fortunate to buy.

It has a very nutty flavor and it's excellent. And so we're going to start. We're going to make some noise now.

Add in the cumin, add in the lemon, and now I'm about to decide if I want to add a little bit more to make it more liquid, I have to look inside so come nad join me.

Now I'm adding... because it's a bit thick, as you can see, it's a bit thick and viscous and very thick, and I might want to make it a bit more .. a bit lighter. It has the flavor that I'm looking for.

But I just wanted a bit more liquid. Therefore, I'm using the cooking liquid.

And there you have it, it's a nice, light, fluffy paste. I'm putting kebabs into the oven. The temperature is two hundred.

I'm going to let it roast.

This is a really, really nice place. You can eat it with a pita bread and had all the nice qualities of cooked lentils.

It's very, very tasty. It's a bit tart with salty, cuminy - very nice addition to any dinner.

Do you remember we talked earlier about the Spanish influence and this dish is Spanish influenced. Its called Jolios con cheso. This is our cheese, which I roasted in the oven with the oregano, olive oil, salt and pepper and some very light cheese. We can exchange this cheese with halloumi cheese and the Greek halloumi cheese. Bake that in the oven and serve it while it's hot. This is a Spanish style dish that comes from actually from my visits to Madrid, where I've eaten green beans, served with Jamon, and it's called Jolios, which is with juice with Jamon. Come on. And what we've decided is to make it our style. We serve things without the pork in our restaurant. So we took our cheese and roasted it in the oven.

It's a very like cheese with a little bit of olive oil and Latar leaves, the holy hyssop leaves, salt and pepper. This could be exchanged with a different kind of cheese like halloumi or other kind of cheese that will react nicely in the oven. And that comes out nice and brown. Cherry tomatoes from our garden. Blanched long Thai beans or a long Loubiya. Loubiya is black-eyed pea beans and a very long and very buttery in flavour. I'm serving. I'm adding my sherry vinaigrette, which you can find in your recipe booklet. I'm adding it on top, so it's nice and firm. The sherry vinaigrette has sherry vinegar and oil, salt, pepper and a little bit of honey. This, honey is from the south, from down south near where the medjool dates were grown.

So the finishing garnish, I'm adding roasted slivered almonds on top, and that's delicious. A bit tart, sweet, sweet, really nice and refreshing.

So the dates are nice and caramel, the meat is ready to be eaten and now we're going to serve it and I will show you how its served on the plate.

Really nice and tender. I'm taking my Masabacha,, mounting it on the left side, and then I'm pushing it over, just like so I'm going to add a little bit of cured  lemon in the middle just to give it that extra tartness, and a bit of spiciness to the dish.

Place the Medjools one by one on the platter, so everybody can enjoy.

This dish is really, really nice. It's combining sweetness and tartness.

Everybody can find what to eat here. The idea is to eat the whole thing together. All the flavors are combined and it's really nice. And finish this dish with a little bit of parsley on top.

And just a little bit of olive oil.

For the main course, we're going to serve now...going to make the sea-bream dish, Well, actually it's a dish that is inspired by the local Arab cuisine.

They have a whole section of dishes that is ...where it's the meat.

Lamb meat is baked in the oven under tahini sauce or tomato sauce.

And when it comes out of the oven. It's a warm and sweet kind of a dish. We took it to the tartar side of the flavor of it. And we're going to make a yogurt tahini, with turmeric, cover the the fish with this, bake it in the oven and sprinkle some sumac when it comes out.

The the whole secret about goat yogurt, it doesn't break as usually happens with cow yogurt and it will keep this whole very nice and velvety on top of the fish. And so let's start. I'm going to take the fish and sprinkle some salt on top of it, make sure it's nice and salty, not too salty. Of course, I'm going to add some a little bit of black pepper.

And just let this sit for a little bit until I'm ready with my tahini. So for my tahini, I'm going to put the yogurt inside.

I'm going to tell you a little bit secret about the tahini. The fact that you put the liquids in first and then add the tahini is actually makes it easier to make tahini. If you make it the other way around. The he usually becomes very solid and very hard to work with.

So if you put the ingredients before it all becomes really nice, it's really easy to make. Basically, what will happen, I'm going to add the salt and the turmeric, turmeric also will open up as you go along. So at first, if it doesn't seem yellow enough, don't worry, it will turn more yellow after you had the hiney. And now I'm going to make it a bit more into the Hainey while mixing and stirring.

As you can see, my tahini is becoming a lot more yellow as I wait. The more I wait, the more yellow it will become. I don't want it to have too much of a turmeric flavor to it because it's very intense. But I want it to be nice, a little bit nutty from the sesame and a little bit bitter from the turmeric. I'm going to add a little bit just to the bottom of my pan.

It was good to put my fish inside.

Now I'm going to pour my tahini on top of it.

I want it to be all covered nicely.

And now I'm going to put it in the oven, around 200 degrees, for about 10 minutes and it will be ready. So now that my this is out of the oven, it smells wonderful, the whole house is filled with these wonderful flavors. I'm going to sprinkle over the sumac and a little bit of scallions on top.

Look at this beautiful dish.

Very nice. Very tasty. Really nice dish. Very festive and very tasty.

Of course. This is a wonderful ... are dishes that are actually influenced by the by the way we live and whoever we interact with. We have the Spanish-style tapas dish, which we made into a big salad with our local organic green beans, tomatoes and our goat cheese from the farm, our farm. Also here we have this wonderful salad that we made from greens that we're growing our vegetable garden, pomegranates from my my partner's brother's orchard of pomegranates and figs with their aged cheese, with this special hyssop that grows in the area of the farm very all of all the flavors combined together.

This is served with a fig vinaigrette that we made from lemon and figs.

We're also having this wonderful starter of nice, just munch-able dates filled with stuffed with lamb, over a lentil hummus, a lentil Masabacha with some cured lemon on top and parsley. And of course, we're finishing off with this baked fish dish, which is actually covered in tahini yogurt sauce.

Once again, all the ingredients from here, some of them are from the Arab culture, which is combined with every aspect of our lives here because of the fact that it's the Mediterranean and we are part of this whole beautiful culture and together with the past and the future, and we can create new dishes. And therefore, for me, it's always a sign of hope where you can combine different cultures and meet together to bring such happiness and joy and festivity to a wonderful...for our table. So thank you very much for having me. I wish you a chag sukot sameach. Enjoy your festival. See you when we can.