The Best Baklawa in Israel

As has become the nature of many of my sojourns throughout Israel, my travels yesterday centered around discovering the best cuisine that the country has to offer —this time in the form of baklawa and shawarma! Tanmay and I arose early in the morning (at the obscene hour of 7:00am!) and met Lior by his car, ready to head north to Mt. Carmel and Haifa. While the car crawled slowly through the polluted streets of Tel Aviv, past the city's enormous landfill, and up towards the natural reserve, Lior entertained Tanmay and me with all sorts of useful facts. "This palm tree here is over a hundred years old," he'd say as he pointed out the window at yet another clump of vegetation. "Those shrubs over there are NOT indigenous." At some point along the way, Lior must have noticed our tired eyes and apparent disinterest in herbology and Israeli history…suddenly he decided to provide us with information of, let's say, a more bizarre sort: "If I were to turn left here," Lior casually explained, "I'd come to a street filled with…hmmm…how do you call them? Hookers? Whores? Prostitutes? Yes, but if I go back the way I came I'd find even more and for half the price! But," he sighed,"with the cheaper ones you have to use a condom?" "Whoah! Lior," Tanmay and I both exclaimed as we sat up conservatively in our seats, "Just a little too much information."

After driving for an hour, Lior turned onto a narrow road which wound snake-like up and through a series of mountain peaks, reaching a height of 1700ft. As the car climbed upwards, clinging to the side of the mountain, we all gasped at the rich green valleys below and the oak and pine trees surrounding us. I momentarily felt like I was on a camping trip in Colorado. I even spotted an eagle flying above, which made for a perfect 4th of July! Tanmay was so thrilled with the views that after I told him about Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, and the Black Canyon, he's even more eager to come visit in the States—ready to take a long road trip, camping throughout the Southwest. As soon as he finds an excuse to go abroad, like any sort of conference that is remotely related to his research, he'll be on a plane to Arizona in five minutes!

Once we reached the top of Mt. Carmel, we parked the car and walked into a small Druze village to locate the best baklawa in all of Israel. The Druze are a religious sect which branched from Islam. They live in harmony with Christians and Jews and strongly denounce the terrorist actions of the Arabs. Their practices are very secretive and their beliefs are only revealed to a few distinct leaders. The very devout Druze men wear billowing white pants with a large pouch in between their legs. No, my dirty friends, the large pouch is not because they're well-endowed. Though no-one can be for certain (since the Druze beliefs are so secretive), it is said that the pouch has an altogether stranger purpose than providing a refreshing breeze ….The Druze are still waiting for the Messiah to come and believe that at any given moment, one of their leaders (who are all male by the way) will miraculously give birth to the Messiah and that the pouch of fabric between their legs is there to catch Him. Interesting….

In the village, we stumbled upon a little pastry shop and decided to check it out. Because we arrived around 10:00am, the owners were still bustling about baking delicious confections. Lior ordered a plate of various baklawa and we all sat down around a table, hardly able to wait another minute to dig into the scrumptious delicacies. My mouth was already watering when the waitress finally set down the plate of treats in front of us. As soon as I put a small triangular slice in mouth, I pressed it against my palate with my tongue. The rich honey-and-sugar syrup oozed from between the many layers of perfectly gooey phyllo dough. It was delicious! I licked the sticky leftovers from the plate like a little kid! In addition to the traditional layered baklawa, we tried baklawa made with kataifi which is basically just shredded phyllo dough. The strips of dough are clumped together and molded to resemble little birds nests! After we were all done with the baklawa, the waitress brought us a serving of knafeh. Filled with a sweet goat cheese and wrapped in shredded phyllo dough, the dish was served warm and was possibly even more delicious than the baklawa. Unfortunately, I only got two photos before my camera batteries died, so I have none of Tanmay and Lior enjoying the sweets or of the rest of our adventures throughout the day!! Tanmay had his camera, so I'll have to get copies from him later.

"Bird's nest" baklawa (left) and traditional baklawa (right)

Knafeh: sweet goat cheese and phyllo dough

With bloated bellies, sticky fingers, and giddy smiles, the three of us left the Druze village and drove atop the mountain range to Haifa University. Here, Lior took us to the summit of a very tall building so we could see Haifa in all its glory. The views were magnificent. In addition to the rolling mountains directly below us, we could see the Mediterranean Sea at eye-level and the roofs of many impressive business towers. Although Lior was keen on showing us the Haifa Museum of antiquities, both Tanmay and I were eager to go exploring outside and see modern-day Haifa. Why bother with old stuff behind glass cases when we could be at the heart of it all living history!

Reluctantly leaving the museum behind for another day, Lior drove Tanmay and me to the Bahai gardens, where we momentarily stepped outside to view the impressive Shrine of Bab and surrounding landscape. Though we couldn't pass through the gates and walk through the garden, it was nonetheless a beautiful spectacle from a distance. The shrubs and cypress trees were meticulously pruned and the grass was neatly clipped and surrounded with tropical red flowers. Despite its impressive exactness and angularity, I must say it wasn't quite the garden for me (maybe that's why it's said to be a garden for God and not for man). Personally, I'd prefer to walk barefoot through wet overgrown grass beneath the shade of massive oak trees with irregularly trimmed branches.

Bahai gardens and temple (pic I got off Internet!)

Nearing 12:30, Lior decided it was time for lunch. After all, it'd already been two hours since our feast of baklawa and knafeh. Time for another meal! Unfortunately the shawarma "shrine" that Lior had in mind turned out to be closed, so we decided to get lunch at another one across the street. As you might remember, shawarma is lamb meat which is roasted on a spit above an open flame. Tanmay and I both ordered our shawarma wrapped in lafa, a large piece of bread that's like a cross between a tortilla and a pita. The meat was delicious: salty, sweet, and very moist. Along with the meat, I filled my lafa with fresh juicy tomatoes, peppered onions, parsley, and diced cucumber. Tanmay made sure to add splashes of hot sauce to his lafa, something which his Indian taste-buds could handle but which my "white boy" nature certainly could not. While both Lior and Tanmay sipped on non-alcoholic beer-flavored drinks, I washed my meal down with an ice-cold Coca-Cola, a salute to America and Independence Day!

Following our hearty meal, we got in the car with full stomachs…unable to walk anymore from our day of gluttony. Since Tanmay had to work in the afternoon, we headed back to Rehovot, a two-hour drive. As we drove past vineyards, orchards, and banana plantations, Lior blared all sorts of his strange music over the car speakers: Zimbabwean beats, the soundtrack to the Frida Kahlo movie, and Brazilian guitar strummin'. I think both Tanmay and I were slightly relieved when we finally escaped the wailing cries and screams that were pouring out of car's audio system. When Tanmay went off to the lab, I stayed back at the dorm for the rest of the day and worked on data analysis from my laptop computer. All in all, it was a very successful day for discovering a variety of new flavors from the Middle East. I think Christopher Columbus would have been quite proud at my abilities to navigate the world and find all sorts of delicate spices used in a range of foreign dishes. Yum!