On Fridays it's nice to go to de Pigioto Street in south Tel Aviv. Having spent a few dozen shekels, we always return home with smoked bonito fish (palamida in Hebrew), a sliver of Bulgarian kashkaval, a jar of black Greek olives, a small bottle of raki (Turkish arak) and a cheerful Balkan kind of mood. Later I find out that what for me was a fun and totally adequate little shopping jaunt was, for the chef, only a prelude. We stopped at the neighborhood market to pick up some butter, challah and tobacco, and headed home, each of us following our own personal narrative for the weekend.

As soon as we got home, he started acting strange. He quickly put all the de Pigioto Street stuff in the 'fridge in two bags, kissed me and said, "I'm going to get us some bonito."

"But we just bought some," I said, wondering which one of us was showing signs of early dementia.

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"Yes, we did," he smiled tenderly. "We'll start with bonito and end with bonito."

I was reminded of the theater and thought that maybe a bonito that appears in the first act must appear as sashimi or in a skillet by the final scene of the meal. He went off and I was left alone to ponder all this.

"What are you doing?" I asked, feeling my energy wane on a Friday afternoon in the face of all this peculiar behavior. Why can't we just cut a nice slice of challah, spread butter on it, top it with a slice of smoked bonito, wash it down with a shot of raki and hope that the little one falls asleep with us for an afternoon nap until the evening?

But there's no reasoning with a cult. The dead must be buried in salt and then filleted and cubed and seasoned with soy sauce, sumac, lemon zest and I don't know what else. And before all of these actions are completed, there can be no thought of rest, obviously.

As I watch him tending to his three bonitos, I think of the hero of Ian McEwan's novel "Saturday": He, too, goes out to buy fish for a festive meal, but on the way his fancy car gets him entangled in a violent robbery in broad daylight, and the whole Saturday proceeds to go down the tubes in extraordinary fashion. Something like that, for example, could never happen to the chef, who rides his bicycle to Jaffa while toting a backpack, since it doesn't pay to attack a cyclist with a backpack, any novice thief knows that.

The more our life together continues, the clearer our differences become. I like simplicity, freedom and minimum obligations; he likes complexity, hard work and doesn't shy from whatever obligations are required on the way to perfection. This is reflected in our divergent attitudes toward housekeeping. I tend to major chaos but an uncompromising view about cleanliness, while he likes things in perfect order, though if the floor is clean or sticky, it's all the same to him.

I don't care if the following cleaning system that I'm about to describe makes someone accuse me of having a hyperactive housewife gland. I owe it to my conscience and to the local water supply. No matter how you look at it, the new method I discovered is inanely simple and beautifully efficient, and this is how it works:

I water the plants on the balconies with two watering cans. While one is filling up from the kitchen faucet, I'm going around watering with the other until I alternate. This process is repeated about 20 times. As I make my way around, water naturally spills from the watering cans on the floor of the whole house. And here's the beauty of it: This thing that could have been viewed as a drawback I've turned into an extraordinary advantage - by deliberately spilling water as I go and then spraying soap or shampoo (or fabric softener, whatever's handy) over it all, wiping away the water with a squeegee, while singing at the top of my lungs. All the kids pitch in, too, with other squeegees or brooms or whatever comes to hand.

When the process is finished, we have a clean and fragrant home with two balconies full of watered plants, two freshly scented turtles, a few tired by happy children and one mother who has become part of the furniture - the floor in our case. I think I've hit on a brilliant idea for a start-up here.

Everyone has seen it, in a smoked version sliced into thin rings wrapped in a spotted, golden skin. It often appears on buffet tables at old-fashioned-style celebrations.

White bonito, with its slightly tart flesh, is the Israeli-Turkish sister of the red bonito, which swims in the depths of the world's oceans. The bonito is part of the mackerel and tuna family, and nothing is better than it for sashimi. Its bracing flavor reminds one of chilly, salty sea winds.

Aficionados of salted fish may have heard a fishmonger whisper temptingly in their ear: "Psst, I've got a piece of real lakerda (a type of bonito, usually pickled) for you." Once upon a time, when there were still plenty of lakerda in the sea off Turkey, no one used the word "real." But since the lakerda have been fished nearly to extinction, the bonito have become the "fake" lakerda. After 21 days in very salty water, the bonito is a convincing impostor, and anyone fortunate enough to have tasted real lakerda knows that this impostor even surpasses the original.

1. Freshness: The piece of fish must be of superb freshness, and that means one thing: that the fish has just come out of the water.

2. Coldness: Fish served as sashimi should be at the temperature of the ocean depths from which it came. Women are precluded from doing the slicing: Their hands are one degree warmer than men's hands.

3. Thickness: As a rule, the firmer the flesh of the fish, the thinner the slices that can be cut. Very firm fish may be cut into paper-thin, translucent slices.

The bonito is an inexpensive fish that costs NIS 30-40 per kilo. Now it's at the start of the season and the fish are still small, about 200 grams each. As autumn begins, their individual weight will increase to about 1 kilo, the perfect weight for sashimi.

Don't ask the fishmonger to filet the fish for you. Just have him gut it and put it in a bag with a lot of ice. Now hurry home: The bonito is a delicate fish. In contact with the warm summer air, its "bland" tasty flesh will quickly take on a fishy flavor.

You're home, the bonito is on the cutting board. You take a sharp fileting knife, and make a horizontal slice all along the skin, on the side where it meets the upper fin. Now insert the knife blade deep into the fish until it reaches the spine - half of the fillet is already separated. Move the blade along the spine until you get down toward the stomach. The knife blade moves parallel to the bones along the length of the fish. One fillet is detached. Turn the fish over and repeat the process. Now you have two fillets. Discard the skeleton that's attached to the head; it's not very good for making stock.

Look at the fillet: Its color is pinkish white, its flesh is glossy. Tiny thin bones cross the fillet at the midline. There's no point in trying to remove them, they're too small.

Take another look now: The fish fillet is divided into four elongated pieces: The two central ones are on either side of the little bones, and each one has another piece attached. Make a lengthwise slice on each side of the fillet, a millimeter to the right and a millimeter to the left of the bones, and separate the two central pices from the bones.

Makes 4 servings

6 long fillet pieces, chilled

a few hyssop (za'atar) leaves, finely crushed

10 coarsely ground black peppercorns

10 coarsely ground white peppercorns

the thinly grated peel of 1/2 a fresh lemon

10 stalks of chives (irit) or two green onions, finely minced

Coat one side of each piece of fish with just one of the seasonings. Cut each piece into 1-cm. dice. Place the cubes of fish on a chilled plate, one next to the other, in random order, so that they form a square.

Now take:

olive oil

soy sauce

wasabi paste

Sprinkle a few pinches of wasabi over the fish pieces. Drizzle on some olive oil. Drip some soy sauce into the narrow crevices between the fish pieces.

Serve immediately - with chopsticks.

Makes 2 servings

2 fillets of bonito, cut into 1-cm. cubes

sea water (yes, the real thing - only if available)

1 fresh green cucumber, peeled and cut lengthwise into very thin slices

olive oil

a small bunch of flowers from herbs

Place the cucumber slices on a flat, chilled dish so that they're overlapping. Cut off the tips of the cucumbers with a sharp knife, to form a square or rectangle. Dip the fish pieces in sea water for a moment and drain. This creates the optimum saltiness for sashimi.

Arrange the bonito cubes one next to the other until you've created a sashimi square in the center of the cucumber carpaccio square.

Use the herb flowers to create a border around the cucumber carpaccio. Drizzle with olive oil.

Bring out the chopsticks!

1 white bonito, gutted

80 gr. sea salt

20 gr. white sugar

green onion

Combine the sugar with the salt (the sugar will keep the fish from drying out).

Place the fish on a sheet of baking paper, massage its belly with the sugar-salt mixture, and coat the skin with what's left over. Roll the paper around the fish and refrigerate for 24 hours.

The next day, filet the fish and place the pieces in a small pan. Pour on a generous amount of olive oil so that the fish is submerged, add some crushed green onion and scatter on top the small leaves from whatever pots of herbs you may have around. You can add some tiny hot peppers, too. A wonderful garden is now floating in the olive oil atop the fish. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

When you take it out the next day, let it sit for 10 minutes before digging in.