This is a transcript excerpt from a YouTube video ("The Slow Food Movement in Israel", Jan 28, 2015) featuring an interview with Refram, an artist and slow food expert. Key points in this chunk: Israel's Mediterranean climate is well-suited for vegetables; year-round availability of produce has reduced seasonality and affected local cuisine; urban markets like Levinsky Market reflect Israel's cultural and ethnic diversity (Persian, Yemenite, Russian influences) and drive demand for diverse spices; some traditional spices are fading while Mediterranean spice traditions remain strong; traditional sweeteners (called here "grape honey", carob and pomegranate syrups) are part of regional culinary heritage, with grape molasses traditionally produced by cooking grapes with a stone called "chavar".
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Refram artist and slow food expert gave us a look at the slow food scene in Israel. He is a wealth of knowledge on the history of cuisine in Israel and gave us a very eye opening and new appreciation for the complexity of not only food but also the culture of Israel. So like we have grocery stores where we go, where we're at and a lot of that stuff is like many of much of it is bought from different countries and brought in like from far away. Is that how it is here in Israel?
Many things that grow here and some people, some things that are a bit rare that are coming from outside. Mostly vegetables are coming. I mean it's a good place for vegetables. Yes. Mediterranean climate. So it's very good for vegetables. Seasonal is almost not exist in western countries. I mean you can get tomatoes all the year. Yeah, it's not exactly like Tunisia or Algier get tomatoes only in summer. But I think the disease of all the countries around, I mean also Italy, Greece, everyone you can find tomatoes all over the year which in fact it's not doing good to the local kitchen. We try to talk about it a lot, to educate people, but very hard because people are spoiled and they want right, they want their recipe every day the same way. They don't care about the locality of seasonal ingredients. And we have lots of different backgrounds and this is what very interesting in markets here. You don't see it here a lot, but you will see it a lot in Levinsky Market, in Tika market because you can find a market because market is built on the needs of people. And you have Persian and you have Yemenite and you have all these groups, like ethnic groups that are coming here, living everywhere and everyone wants their own spices, their own.
They try to bring their culture to.
They just come to the shop and say we want this kind of spice that this guy never heard of, but he needs to bring it. And then, then if you go to pie shop and it's amazing, I mean you find like 40, 50 countries inside. It's part of culture. So it's not a part of like immigration. It's part of culture. It's part of culture. So you have also lots of Russians cooking like let's say like Yemenite food or Moroccan food or North African food because they just. It's in the front of their eyes so they just cook it and then usually they enjoy it more because it's the kitchen of this area. Like Mediterranean area is amazing. One of probably the best in the world. Like Italian, French, Spanish, all this area is probably the Best kitchen in the world. So it's. So there's something like, we can say evolution also of spices here in Israel. I mean, if. I mean 56. I mean, it was depression time, so there was. Not everyone had money to buy things.
But Polish and Yemenite and Russian, all of them demanded their own spices in a spicy shop. But lately, I think spices started to fade. Some spices started to fade because some spices were more dominant in a way, like papagai and all these things that are more about this area of the Mediterranean. And this is interesting because it's very unique to the Mediterranean because we don't have this kind of things in the Mediterranean. That is a country that it's not like. Like you say, like African shop or it's really like part of the local language of cuisine. Because the cuisine here is built on immigration.
Yeah. As I say, there's so many cultures going here.
Everyone in the same level. The food is in the same level in a way. I mean, you have this Moroccan food and it's all in a way, mixed in a way that is not really in hierarchy or something. We have grape honey, we have karoob honey, we have pomegranate honey. All these things are not really honey. They are made by all kinds of interesting things. I can talk about, for example, about the grape honey, which we don't have here. The grape honey is made in usually traditionally in areas that you have lots of grapes and people don't drink wine, which is Muslim countries, because they don't drink wine. So you have it in Istanbul and you have it close to Kabul.
And you can find these recipes using this gudai pani around also here because it was brought to markets, talk about in the last 200 years. Japan is made by combining grapes, lots of grapes and stone called chavar. Chvar is also in Hebrew. Khiver is white. It's like chalk, actually. And if you put them on a pot with like a very.
On iron, in a way, it's like heated and the reaction of touching the stone and the grapes creating this molass.
Thank you, Vibe Israel and refram for the awesome tour of the open market. And again, Refram, thank you for lunch and your astounding knowledge of Israel and its cuisine.
