Dealer's Choice

I’m often asked what my favorite dishes are on our soul food menu. It’s actually a very easy question to answer: It’s when a guest leaves it up to our kitchen to prepare something special, carte blanche. I go to the market, see what looks particularly good, and run with it.

And what’s particularly wonderful about the market here in Tel Aviv is that foods are temporal, changing all the time, depending on season, rain, temperature, religious calendar (!), and yes, periods of shutdown owing to COVID-19 (labor shortages, issues with delivery, etc.). I often never know in advance what I will — and will not — find.

The grilled asparagus salad pictured in this post is a perfect example. I love asparagus, first blanched to bring out its flamboyant green color, then grilled quickly with olive oil and sea salt. And now is the time to buy it. What I didn’t expect to find, however, was the star fruit (Carambola) and the gaudy edible flowers. Add in slivers of radish and quartered figs (also pretty good this time of year) and the result makes me smile.

Part of that satisfaction obviously comes from stepping out of the routine of making the same dishes every day (rotating the menu every few days also helps). Part comes from tapping into the more creative side of cooking. And part comes from feeling the trust of a guest, who is willing to go with the unknown and unexpected. I sometimes wish these opportunities happened a bit more often. But then if they did, perhaps the novelty of it all would wear thin.