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Pleasure hunting / Beit She'an's hot ticket
By Ronit Vered
Tags: Basil, Israel News

Every Hebrew diner should know this: Among the plethora of raw ingredients served to the guests of Le Paris and Brasserie du Lutetia in the Saint Germain district of Paris - vanilla from Madagascar, salmon from Ireland and assorted charcouterie from the Basque region - there are also herbs from Israel, especially basil. Chef Philippe Renard, who is in charge of the menu at the two restaurants, both designed by veteran fashion designer Sonia Rykiel, has in recent years fallen in love with an Israeli strain of basil, produced by the Volcani Institute for agricultural research. And he's not alone. A long and respectable series of French and Italian chefs use fresh basil picked a few days earlier in the Arava, in Neot Hakikar or in the steamy hothouses of the Beit She'an Valley. All we can say is: It's an honor! Selling basil to the Europeans is like selling ice to the Eskimos, no less.

Today it is hard to image Israeli-Mediterranean cuisine without basil, although the situation was entirely different only three decades ago. In the two great (Hebrew) best-sellers of the period - Ruth Sirkis' "From the Kitchen with Love" (1975) and "From the Kitchen with Pleasure" (1982) - the word "basil" appears only once, and not in a recipe but in a sidebar describing exotic spices, alongside the names of Marco Polo and Columbus. There is plenty of chopped parsley and dill, occasionally there is dried thyme, too, but basil, tarragon, sage and oregano - herbs sold fresh today in any grocery store - are missing.

With the exception of parsley and dill, in the Israel of those days mostly low-quality herbs destined to be dried were grown outdoors. The turning point came in the mid-1980s, when pioneering farms in Beit Yitzhak, Ein Habesor and Ein Yahav began specializing in growing herbs for export. Back then, these products were considered to be the jewel in the crown of sophisticated modern agriculture: delicate and fragile crops with a short shelf life that required a great deal of attention and a minimum of pesticides. Entry into the circle of herb growers - a closed club, whose members were very well compensated for their work at the time - was almost impossible.
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Haviva Yitzhak was born in Kurdistan in 1940. When she was 11, and after her oldest brother, who tried to reach Israel by illegal routes, was executed in Iran, her family immigrated to Israel and was sent to the Kibbutz Ginegar transit camp. After half a year they were housed in temporary metal shacks in Moshav Rehov in the Beit She'an Valley and began to grow vegetables and peanuts. At the age of 14 Yitzhak went to work in the fields of Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu, involving a backbreaking daily trek and hard work under the burning sun; at 19 she married a boy from the moshav. Within a year she was widowed (her husband, a Border Policeman, died of cancer) and also gave birth to her only son, Roni. She never remarried.

After a few months she left the baby with her mother and went to work in the kitchen of the regional school. In 1981, her job ended and, together with her son Roni, she returned to farming. When she first heard about the success of people who were growing herbs for export, the two were already growing tomatoes, onions, potatoes and melons for the local market.

Scientists and agricultural experts who came, after her repeated requests, to examine the possibility of growing herbs in the Beit She'an Valley, did not believe the locals would be able to meet the challenge.

"Do you see this palm?" she recalls a senior researcher asking, holding out his hand. "On the day hair grows here, herbs will grow in the Beit She'an Valley." She cannot forget the scornful gesture. "I returned home and told Roni: We're definitely not going to drop this idea. They told me: Why do you want to jump on someone else's wagon? I asked: Why, is it a private wagon? And I also said: You're so tired, you see a wagon passing, and you don't get on it? They said: You're a stubborn woman."

In 1989 the Yitzhaks and three other farmers in the region received their first quota of herbs to grow. They weren't even familiar with the names of the plants. "We actually thought they were trees," recalls Roni. "And what did we have to do with trees identified with high society?"

The first years were a constant struggle. Haviva, Roni and their extended family worked day and night in the hothouses built on the first two dunams (half-acre plot). Anyone who hasn't entered a plastic hothouse in the Beit She'an Valley, an area where the highest-ever temperature in the country was recorded in 1942 (54 degrees centigrade), doesn't know what hell is.

Zion Deco, the director of the center for development and research at Emek Hamaayanot - a beautiful experimental farm built in the 1930s by the British - came to their rescue, and everyone together learned the secrets of growing herbs. Today hundreds of acres of Beit She'an hothouses supply a third of the herbs marketed to Europe by Agrexco. Haviva and Roni are the proud owners of 70 dunams (about 17 acres), whose entire output, down to the last sprig, is sent for export.

"That's my 'Amazing Race,'" says Roni, referring to the popular TV show and showing off the incomparable new and sophisticated basil hothouse that cost a cool NIS 1 million.

Tuesdays and Fridays are the traditional kubbeh (a meat-filled dumpling) days among natives of Kurdistan - a custom that dates back hundreds of years, which they brought from the old country. Not a soul is seen in the street of Moshav Rehov at noon, when families gather to obey the commandment of eating kubbeh. Blessed be the name of the Creator of the fields of basil, but the royal herb does not enter the pots of Haviva, a very talented cook. What does basil have to do with red kubbeh soup or fried kubbeh, or wonderful pot of onions, grape leaves and little eggplants stuffed with rice and meat? In the hothouses the Thai workers pick sprigs of thyme for Marks & Spencer in Scotland, and there are also pungent arugula leaves, aromatic spearmint and rosemary, but you don't play around with Great Grandma's traditional recipes.


Against the grain

Tzachi Aviv sat relaxed on a plastic chair in the heart of the forest, blowing smoke rings from his narghile into the air. One tremendous arm sported a huge tattoo of Spot, his beloved white boxer, and his look was completed by a shiny blue basketball shirt, a bandana wrapped around his carefully shaven skull and huge shoes. He sort of resembled the human alter ego of the huge caterpillar from "Alice in Wonderland," who sat with arms folded on the edge of a mushroom calmly smoking a long hookah.Within a few moments it turns out that this kindhearted giant is a gastronomic celebrity. In the virtual world, where he is known as Big Jack, Aviv's blog, "Food and animals from a good home" (in Hebrew) has won much honor and prestige. In the real world shy admirers ask him for a joint photo as a souvenir.Dozens of men, women and children recently gathered in the Kadima Forest to participate in the meat picnic of the carnivores' forum, one of the Tapuz online communities. This was the third official meeting of the forum, whose existence has long since exceeded the borders of cyberspace. The common love of meat, like the love of children, stamps or "Star Wars," is apparently just another excuse for a social encounter, on the Net and elsewhere. Over 500 people are registered in the carnivores' community, headed by 50 of the group's hard-core activists, who are probably responsible for the forum's motto: "The reason people demonstrate against fur coats and not against leather coats is that it's much easier to harass old women than motorcyclists."This core group immediately paved its way to the forefront of the picnic and seized the key positions opposite two grills. The coals are burning. Big Jack reported to the front lines, although three days earlier he had undergone treatment to shrink his intestines and could not eat a thing. Next to him stood Stav Adam and Adva Pesah-Yariv, the forum's directors; Ran Pesah, Adva's father ("Anyone who has not tasted starling meat has never tasted good meat"); Uri Lerner, a master's degree student in microbiology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; and Yoram Cohan, a strategic adviser for security affairs and a meat coach (a coach! For meat! I swear).First, 12 kilos of hotdogs were offered on the altar, along with about the same amount of hamburger patties and an entire herd of chicken wings that were reddish from a very sweet marinade. There is no more typical picture of the Israeli landscape than that of a forest with bald eucalyptus trees and dusty paths, smoking coals, hands eagerly stretched out for plates of meat coming off the barbecue, and a long table that threatens to collapse under the weight of dozens of salads.As the minutes passed the role of the bandana wrapped around the forehead of our favorite, Aviv, became clear: It's not simply a matter of fashion, but an essential accessory for those standing next to the inferno of the large grill. It was so hot that waterfalls of sweat beads descending from skulls threatened to block the field of vision and impair eye-hand coordination. The bandana was the last line of defense in the war effort.In the arsenal there was also another weapon, whose use elicited ecstatic cries of pleasure from those doing the work: One of the members of the brotherhood marched alongside the row of fanners and refreshed their faces and bellies by spraying water from a "fire extinguisher" improvised from a plastic bottle. The drops of water blended with the heavy screen of smoke, the haze and the dust of the dirt roads, and hearts were filled with joy and happiness."Man, I have metal wires in my bra," said one of the dedicated women of the grill as she fell on a colleague. "Who of the two of us do you think is hotter?"The hard core doesn't even taste the hotdogs and the hamburgers; they are foreplay for vegetarians and children, donated by a large meat company. The soldiers of meat came to life when Aviv's huge hands began to lovingly massage the insides of six whole chickens in yellowish mustard-lemon sauce, halved and flattened on the grate of the grill."Does anyone want attention or a hug?" said Aviv and Adam, turning to the chickens. While administering an erotic massage, they gave each chicken a nickname. Also placed over the fire were 300 skewers of chicken hearts and 33 kilos of entrecote sliced into 110 steaks, which had been carefully selected by one of the choice butchers who have joined the forum. The real piece de resistance - liver, kidneys, hearts and calf testicles - came only long afterward, when most of the sated participants were sprawled helplessly in the shade of the trees.r"Meat is murder, milk is an indecent act"- Slogan on the shirts of members of the carnivores' forumMost of the discussions on the carnivores' forum are devoted to exchanging recipes. As in any community that loves good food, the participants generally describe in detail each and every dish that was put on their table, and also greedily gobble up details of the other person's menu. Occasionally, they also brag about an offspring who emerged from his mother's belly and immediately began to placing plastic cows on an imaginary grill. With their many humorous slogans, they mention the slaughter of sacred cows, but most are not interested in going out to demonstrate, bearing the banner of the skewer."Let everyone live according to his own beliefs," they say when asked about their attitude toward vegetarians. "Even at this picnic there will be two or three vegetarians," said one carnivore at the start of the day, proudly pointing at a broccoli quiche that had been specially prepared. They have a name for the particularly fanatic members of the animal rights movements, who try to violate the the forum with invective: They call them "tzimholanim" (a play on the words for "sick" and "vegetarian").Proud carnivores are a dying species in a world in which most meat lovers are forced into the closet. Inhabitants of our planet are still omnivores, who eat everything, and the number of carnivores far exceeds the number of vegetarians, but the social climate is turning the love of meat into an ethical problem, forcing those who enjoy eating it into the margins, constantly on the defensive. Members of animal rights groups, on the other hand, are gradually approaching the mainstream.Michael Pollan, a journalist and author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals," recently published in Hebrew by Modan, opens the chapter on the ethics of eating animals by citing one of the formative texts of the animal rights movement over a plate of medium-rare entrecote steak. It's not hard to discern where Pollan's heart lies, but out of loyalty to the principles that guided the wonderful gastronomic and sociological journey he takes in his book - which is a thorough and experiential investigation of the way in which we select our food today - he peruses the writings of philosophers and decides to be a vegetarian. But, on the other hand, he embarks on a hunting trip and cooks the boar meat he has hunted by himself.Making a decision between animals' suffering, on the one hand, and gastronomic preferences and human tradition, on the other, is only one issue in the complex relationship between man and his food in the 21st century and of a series of dilemmas that Pollan's book raises."The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan (Penguin Group; 2006).

Skewers of coexistence.

Tira has in recent years become an empire of meat and butcher shops. Among the latter enterprises, to which we will devote another column, is that of Gitai Zamir, a resident of neighboring Moshav Herut and one of the carnivores' forum's most popular butchers. The residents of the Tel Mond bloc and the Sharon area are already accustomed to the connection between the impressive figure of Zamir, with a ZZ Top-style beard and confidence-inspiring dimensions, and love of meat. While he admits that Tira locals seldom visit the shop, local butchers are actually tolerant and even help one another when they run out of a certain cut.The Zamir farm's meat business began to grow in the mid-1980s, when the crisis in agriculture made it impossible for the proprietor to subsist on raising his herd of sheep and goats for milk. First came a meat-catering business, and then, four years ago, a plant was established in Tira that cuts meat and sells its produce directly to consumers. At the end of last year an outlet store was opened as well.On Saturday, when the Tira market is bustling and dozens of cars compete for parking spaces next to the restaurants, the butcher shops and the vegetable shops, Zamir places a large asado grill at the entrance to the store and pampers visitors with hot pastrami or juicy lamb chops. Anyone who really loves meat immediately loves anyone who knows how to enjoy it, and will also make sure to provide him with good meat, too. We bought good sinta (sirloin), kebab made from beef and lamb, and spicy hotdogs, at deliberately anti-Tel Aviv prices.The outlet store of the Zamir farm, Tira eastern industrial zone (Tareq Abdul Hai Road), 09-7937588, www.gitai.co.il
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