Or, Variations on a theme of veggies and rice
One of the things I love most about the Middle East (and Morocco for that matter) is the quality of the vegetables. Ripe and vibrant and so thick they’re amost meaty. In this chilly, drizzly, frost-prone island I call home a large percentage of food is imported, and consequently picked early for processing and transport, force-ripened and often watery. So it’s a treat to travel and sample food from better climates.
One day in Jerusalem we picked up a few mangoes in the souk on our way to the Holocaust Museum. As vividly as I’ll remember the images and stories I saw there I’ll remember the ripest mangoes I ever tasted, fragrant skin so soft we peeled them with our teeth as we walked up the hill to catch a bus back to the Old City.
I’m surprised as I look back through my photos that I didn’t take many of the food — maybe my firing tastebuds were obscuring my photographic eye. Although I neglected to take photos of the array of fruit and vegetable stalls in the markets, I did whip my camera out a few times before tucking into meals:
Unbelievable roasted and salted aubergine in Caesarea, Israel
Dinner buffet at a Bedouin camp in St Katherine’s, Egypt, before climbing Mount Sinai. Delicious. And yes, I was naughty but the bread was irresistible
Clear vegetable soup in Aqaba, Jordan…
…and yes, more rice and veggies
The remnants of dinner laid out for us at a Bedouin camp in Wadi Rum, Jordan. This was perhaps my favorite dish…the seasoned rice was amazing
A rich red tomato dish in the rose red city of Petra, Jordan
(The bread wasn’t mine this time!)
The noticeable lack of pictures from Israel is mostly down to the fact that I didn’t have much of an appetite there… perhaps adjusting to the heat. Still, I’m not quite sure how I ended up with no shots of falafel and hummous… or watermelon for that matter, which I ate every day for breakfast… a lesson learned for future trips, I hope.
