At noon on Saturday he's washing dishes in the kitchen still wearing a white tunic stained with evidence of all it's come in contact with since the day before. Last night, some of the girls returned from a trip abroad and we all fell asleep very late, in various corners of the house.

I looked at him, at the zaatar (wild hyssop) stain on his pocket, remnant of another batch of labaneh that he set out to drain yesterday; at the major chocolate blotches on his sleeve - from the brownies he baked at midnight in honor of the girls' return; and at a purple ellipse just above the waist, a reminder of the plum jam that was sealed in jars and pasteurized sometime before dawn.

The chef's collar is graced by a single thin yellow streak - a trace of the saffron that the girls brought him as a gift from London.

	Advertisement

"Maybe we ought to make something with tomatoes, then, as a way to conclude the summer," I said in reply to his unspoken question, thinking practically about what else could be cooked that would suit the importance of this particular night.

Maybe we'll go to the beach and eat some hard-boiled eggs, I thought to myself, trying to come up with some alternative to the pastry dough. I'll pack some peeled cucumbers and some corn on the cob and salt, and together we'll see how the first days of September go. But we end up staying at home. The music of the wind is already reminiscent of autumn and toward evening, the windows are already rattling out of control. Soon the rain and the storms will come and with them, the flooding and the cracked windowpanes. We haven't even finished complaining about the summer and now a new season is upon us, I think to myself.

He proceeds to set out the red tomatoes he bought and starts to fold sheets of dough between pieces of parchment baking paper. "When are these bourekas going to be ready?" I ask and he turns to me with an irritated look. "Don't call it bourekas. Bourekas are something you eat on the street."

But to me, bourekas isn't a derogatory term, but the name for something soft, warm and golden, filled with hot cheese and dotted with sesame seeds. "So what is it, then? Pizza?" I try to atone for my gaffe, but only dig myself a deeper hole. I know that head movement of his, that wild spin, like something from a weird folk dance. "It's not bourekas and it's not pizza. It's a tart." He declines to elaborate further, like a teacher who's stayed in the classroom with the last student, and not a particularly bright one, but the kind that insists on getting answers on the basis of minimal information about the topic of study. He's despairing, in other words.

Meanwhile I fill the oven with a pan of potatoes and pumpkin and zucchini, in the hope of feeding the little one, whose daily summer menu has gone totally haywire, and as fall approaches, still includes: three popsicles, one ice cream, rice milk, licks of butter, yellow cheese, corn and chewing gum and, sometimes, when the culinary spirit strikes, also a little pasta with cottage cheese.

When I take out the vegetables and the rice is ready, he's still folding his mysterious pastry leaves for the 954th time (but who's counting?). Then he glances at my pan and pleads: "Do me a favor. Give that to me. It looks awful."

"What can possibly be awful about grilled vegetables?" I ask, feeling like I ought to be offended on their behalf.

"What's awful is that they're grilled vegetables that haven't actually been near a grill. They're not scorched at all. It's a sad sight."

"They've been in the oven for two years already, it seems, so how do you explain that?" I complain. But instead of explaining, he takes the pan from me and a little while later hands it back with the vegetables now coated in olive oil and sea salt, and sprinkled with sage and rosemary. Each pumpkin that I sliced with typical carelessness is now graced with deep brown grill marks. At this moment it is hard to decide whether to be happy for the vegetables or to wallow in self-pity.

In the evening, guests whom we'd forgotten we invited (he invited them, not me) arrive, and we graciously serve them the crispiest tart in the world, with cheese and tomatoes - soft, golden and delicious - as if we'd been looking forward all day to serving it to them.

The next day, while I'm vacuuming up a storm of golden puff pastry crumbs, he makes one last comment: "You know where it's nice to eat this?"

"Where?" I ask.

"In Provence, on a stone table, surrounded by a garden of lavender and rosemary, and red pomegranates, with the sun filtering through the trees."

"Okay," I say. "Next year."

Real puff pastry dough, the kind that contains 1,458 layers of flour and butter, cannot be found in the supermarket, or anywhere in Israel for that matter. This dough is formed when 500 grams of flour come together with 500 grams of butter. At the end of a multiple-stage folding process, first into two and then into three, 1,458 layers are created: 486 layers of butter and 972 layers of dough. Even if the dough is rolled out to a thickness of just 2 millimeters, all the layers are preserved and can be seen opening up one atop the other in the baking pan.

1/4 liter water

50 ml. red or white wine vinegar

2 egg yolks

100 gr. cold butter

1/2 kilo white flour

2 tsp. salt

Lightly beat the egg yolks, add the vinegar and continue beating until the mixture is smooth and uniform. Add the water and beat until the mixture is smooth.

In a food processor, with a steel blade, process the butter into a smooth cream. Add, while processing, 1/3 of the flour and the salt. Process for a few seconds and then add 1/3 of the egg yolk-and-vinegar mixture. Do a few seconds of processing, then add another 1/3 of the flour, wait a few more seconds, and another 1/3 of the liquids. Continue until all the ingredients are in the food processor. About 45 seconds into the process, a ball of dough will form around the blade. Its texture is soft and it almost sticks to the hands - but not quite.

400 gr. butter (4 pkgs.), at refrigerator temperature

2 sheets baking paper

Place one piece of baking paper on a work surface. Unwrap the cold butter and place it on the paper in pairs. Place the other sheet of paper on top. Using a rolling pin, flatten the butter. Don't wait for it to get warm: It must be cold to achieve the right malleability.

Take out the dough that has been refrigerated for at least 3 hours. Lightly flour the work surface, and place the dough on it. Roll out to 28 X 28 cm., with a thickness of about 1.5 cm, just like that of the butter.

Place the chilled butter square in the center of the dough square. Fold the four corners toward the center, as you would fold wrapping paper.

Roll out the dough to 20 X 20 cm. The thickness will now be about 2.5 cm. Wrap in baking paper and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Stage III - folding the dough:

Take the dough out, roll it and fold again as before two more times, and then again wrap it up and chill for a half-hour. Then take it out and repeat the process again, for a last two times.

The dough is ready for baking. The oven should be at 190 degrees Centigrade, heating from top and bottom, with the rack in the center.

Whatever you choose to make with this puff pastry dough, it should always go into the oven still cold from the refrigerator. Always trim away the edges with a sharp knife at the last minute, otherwise it won't puff out the way you want it to. If you want the top part to have a sheen, take an egg yolk and beat it with an equal amount of water and then brush the top of the dough with it, being careful not to let the egg drip onto the sides, which could keep the dough from puffing up.

1 rolled-out, cold rectangle of puff pastry dough, edges trimmed

red tomatoes

a little Bulgarian cheese

a few green or black olives, pitted and coarsely chopped

olive oil

sea salt

sage, thyme, rosemary

Peel the tomatoes by hand, cut them in half, then seed, salt and coat them with olive oil. Roast them in the oven for about 20 minutes at 180 degrees Centigrade until the liquid oozes out.

Instead of artichokes in this recipe, you can put the shrimps into puff pastry tartlets. Serves four.

1 kilo fresh peeled Crystal shrimps

1 tbsp. lemon juice

1 yellow lemon, seeded, thinly sliced

250 gr. butter

1/2 tsp. turmeric

1 tsp. fresh thyme

salt

8 artichokes, boiled in salt water with lemon, trimmed down to the hearts and still connected to the stalks

chopped mint for serving

Lightly saute the sliced lemon in the butter, with the lemon juice and spices. Add the shrimps, then remove them and set aside.

Place the artichokes in the butter, lemon juice and spice mixture that's left in the frying pan to heat them and let them absorb the flavors.

Remove the artichokes and fill them with the shrimp mixture. Sprinkle fresh mint on top and serve immediately.