Encountering Strange Fruit--Medlars!

Time, high time for a post. I've had the delight of encountering weird and wonderful fruit in various far flung places of the world, and in one of my lifetimes was nicknamed "the fruit fairy". Who knew that I'd find an unfamiliar fruit right here in London? Show and tell must ensue, but after I put up this post I also need to talk about food in a more serious way, as the time has come to face up to some issues I've been trying to ignore.

The apples are russet apples, which I mentioned before, crisp, sour-sweet, special texture, never had them outside of England. The little fruits that look like tan-colored rosehips?

These are called MEDLARS. I said they look like rosehips, and the juxtaposition with the russet apple insinuates the relatedness to apples and yes, they are in the rosaceae family, as apples and roses are too. They are mespilus germanica. I had read about them in classical texts--the Greeks and Romans ate them. But what to do with them? In the above picture, they look pretty green. and they were firm. I bit into one, knowing I would probably get woody and astringent, and that's what I got (probably not an example of manifesting your reality).
I let them get really dark brown, soft, mushy, which they have been doing serially, not all at once (as you can see in the picture below). I peeled off the husks and removed this brown, mushy pulp with five sizable seeds in a loose star shape at the center (just like an original, ungrafted apple).

 Mushy, mealy--a texture not appealing to everybody but obviously very rich in pectin, which is good for many people's gut. Mild in flavor, not strong or outstandingly delicious. It's usually boiled up with a bunch of sugar for jam.
I mixed it up with another product I haven't been able to find back home. The Turkish and other ethnic shops here are a treasure trove for my Israeli palate--whole shelves of houmous and tahini and halva and pickles and unusual herbal teas... And in the jar below is carob syrup! 

The only ingredient is carob pods, but obviously they've been boiled down into a sort of molasses. Full of carob's natural sweetness, with its complex dark and bright notes prominent also.

I then stirred in some tahini (carob syrup and tahini is a very normal dip, as are tahini/honey and tahini/date syrup). And thus, I created a dip slightly less dense than straight up carob syrup and tahini, with the gentle, soothing texture of the medlars.
Fun fun! I love getting to know new fruits, especially when they're actually old, heritage fruits, and I love getting to be in the abundance of carob and tahini and all things Middle East palate oriented.

I don't want to make this post too long, so I'll post another very shortly addressing the too-long-ignored food situation.
Love from London!

Being a Slow Reader, Natural Food Store, Fruit Find

I was talking about all the differences I'm experiencing from being here, and of course, I forgot to mention one of the most significant differences in which I'm currently immersed. I'm speaking Hebrew all day, just exchanging the odd sentence in English with my mom. Picking up a few more words of Arabic here and there too, as I always do when I spend any time around my grandmother. I hadn't spoken Hebrew with any regularity for the past six years--hardly at all, actually. It took a few days for it to fit my mouth again. It's weird to come on the computer and read emails, write my blog, do editing work, in English, with such a different language all around me in the air. When I do speak English, it comes out with odd intonation.

My Hebrew is far from perfect, and a particularly humbling aspect of this is that when it comes to Hebrew, I'm a slow reader! In English, I don't know anyone who reads faster than I do--it's immediate, unreflective; I've been reading English since before I was two years old. Engaging with Hebrew, I'm reminded of the earliest Ancient Greek inscriptions, when "graphein" meant "to scratch" (laboriously on a stone) before it meant "to write." Of the original Ancient Greek word for to read--"anagignoskein," which literally means "to puzzle out"--reading wasn't always an immediate, fluent thing.

And, between my "satiable curtiosity" and having food allergies, I tend to read every word I come across, on food labels, on scraps of paper, on t-shirts, on walls.

So, when I went to the Natural Food Store in town (always a fun browse for me), and faced two whole shelves of various kinds of carob spread, chocolate spread, every conceivable kind of nut butter and some you might not have thought of, my usual label-reading had to be a slow, deliberate process of puzzling things out.

I was actually happy that almost none of the jars had any English writing on them: I make an effort to avoid reading English on labels when I'm here, as it's "cheating:" it steals the fun thunder, the slow success, of reading the Hebrew. If there's English on the label, once I see it, I've read it, so game over, too late! I learn so much from reading in Hebrew. It's true, just occasionally there's an unfamiliar word. I can usually puzzle it out from finding it on enough different labels that I get a context for it, or occasionally I find a package with English on it and can cross-reference.

Next to farmers' markets, natural food stores feel like my natural environment, touchstones in places "away from home" where I can find myself. I'm so happy that there is one in Herzlia. It's small compared to a Whole Foods but by local standards, it's plenty big. It's called "Netzach haDubduvan," which I might translate as "The Epitome of the Cherry." There are lemon trees all around the little mall.

Inside, it has that 'natural food store' smell of whole grains and fresh herbs. There are bulk foods of various kinds, but the produce section is still surprisingly small. There's a bunch of special gluten free pastas, but very little in the way of dairy alternatives, which is kind of surprising, as non-dairy ice creams have existed for years in Israel because of the kosher thing, so that "ice cream" can be served after meat.
Various "superfoods" are in evidence--there's a whole shelf of bee pollen, for example, and there's spirulina, chlorella and raw cacao. However, I didn't see any kombucha or the other probiotic drinks--but yogurt and labneh are pretty ubiquitous here.

The bulk goods are in such pretty baskets You can see goji berries on the middle shelf, and on the bottom shelf are carob pods.

Speaking of carob, I did eventually pick up a jar of nut butter/carob spread. It's really pushing my "omega-6-phobic envelope"--not only is it a combination of carob and almonds, but it also has added vegetable oil. And added sugar. Oy-va-voy! It presents itself as a chocolate spread substitute with no chocolate or caffeine, and so I suppose it is, but I prefer to let carob speak for itself rather than invite odious comparisons.

 It is _wayyy_ sweet, but very tasty with the intense almond flavor and the sweet earthiness of carob.

I have to store it out of the way so that bread-crumby knives won't find their way in--everyone liked it!

One other gorgeous find from the produce sellers--

Here, they call it "anona," which is the genus name for cherimoya, atemoya, soursop, rollinia, and all those wonderful trees that were everywhere in Hawaii. This is an atemoya. Last time I was here was anona season also, and I was surprised that none of my family members knew the fruit--I was in my usual position of being the weird-fruit-pusher.

Last time I was here, my grandmother didn't even try anona. This time, she had some.

She marveled at all the seeds. She ate, hesitantly at first. She pronounced it "better than a melon," partly simply because the skin is thin so you don't end up throwing away so much. Sounds like success to me.

I'm off to do some more slow reading, whether of my grandmother or of print. I'm taking my reading impediment here as a good reminder, with all the bombardments of text, to take time and puzzle things out slowly, let the light-bulb gradually brighten.