Sunday, November 28, 2010

As blog is my witness, I'll never be hungry again

Yesterday morning I joined a wonderful group of bloggers for a trip up north, to the Sea of Galilee, to enjoy a preview of the טעם כנרת festival (Sea of Galilee Flavors, if you will) which will be held on Hanukkah (2/12/10-11/12/10). The festival offers some exciting culinary attractions, some of which we visited on this long day. And let me tell you - I consider my self a savvy glutton but visiting 4 restaurants in a raw proved to be too much even for me.

Sea of Galilee

First stop was Marinado - A Golan meat house, with a restaurant and a chain of stores that sell meat and local Golan produce. We had the most amazing breakfast, with their very own young and splendid wine (Marinado 2009, a blend of sirah, merlot and cabernet, so yummy with very little astringency), which was followed by a poyka tutorial that resulted in a tasting of one of the best lamb dishes I have ever had.

Lamb
Teaching us about the parts of the lamb

Simmering poyka
Poyka pot filled with all the goods of the country

Myself enjoying breakfast

Then, we went to קצה הנחל - a restaurant specializing in Lebanese home cooking, where they set us a table fit for kings.

Lebanese lunch
These are just the starters

Lebanese lunch
Salads and fried pastry filled with meats

Lebanese lunch at קצה הנחל
Pullet stuffed with meat and rice
and neck of veal stuffed with smoked green wheat

Lebanese lunch
My favorite dish of the day - dumplings filled with chicken breast in yogurt sauce

My mouth is watering just from posting these photos.. Everything was so good!

Galilee

We continued to our third stop - a Mexican tortilla workshop with chef Itamar Davidof at  מרכז המבקרים תמר בכפר. The chef, who is the owner of the Tres Pesos factory and shop for Mexican foods, showed us all sorts of food I personally didn't know and made tortillas for us, which I was far too stuffed to taste. The homemade Limoncello was wonderful though.

These are not tomatoes but a type of gooseberry
These tomatillos are actually a kind of gooseberry and not real tomatoes. They are used to make Salsa Verde.

Plantains
I had my very first plantain (לֶחֶך in Hebrew, BTW)! We ate it fried with salt, and I didn't enjoy it like I thought I would.

Ola!
I did enjoy the limoncello though

Tortilla filled with rice, black beans spread, chillies, chicken breast and guacamole.

At this point, I was truly about to explode. But no, we had one more stop before going back home - גליתא, an ice cream and chocolate house. Galit, the owner, dreamed of such a house for many years before finally opening one on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. She gave us a chocolate workshop, in which we made truffles and pralines. It was so much fun, molding the chocolate and decorating it. We felt like four year olds, up to our elbows in chocolate and nugget.

Chocolate workshop at גליתא
Welcome to Galita's house

Chocolate workshop at גליתא
Injecting the truffles with chocolate filling

Chocolate workshop at גליתא
First stage of my coconut filled praline is done

Second stage of the pralines

Et voila!

After some coffee and some more chocolate (I also bought myself a bar of dark chocolate with dried cranberry, which is divine. I had some just before sitting down to write this) we headed home. The long drive was so pleasant. The minibus was dark and quiet (some fell asleep) and I had good conversation with old and new good friends. The only problem was the occasional speed bump on the road, which I feared would lead to everyone losing the 4 huge meals we had since we left Tel Aviv 10 hours earlier (not to mention the occasional snack).


It was a wonderful day, with wonderful people and loads of wonderful foods and fun. I highly recommend my local readers to pack their families and friends and go up north during the holiday - you will not be disappointed!

5 comments:

candleguy821 said...

Sharona, the photos are fantastic and the food, well....it looks so good. What an ideal place to spend enjoying fine cooking and good food. Thanks, now I need to look in the refrigerator for something to eat, "hey!! Ludwig, Leona, no sleeping on the job. What do we have to eat"!

Odeliaa said...

Looks gr8 :-)

Sharona R - שרונה ראובני said...

I have been staring at the fridge all day too, Donald. It was staring right back at me.

Junie said...

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh WOW what an amazing day out !!!!! my my everything looked amazing and all that food !! Loved the photo of the sea STUNNING !!! I wish I could have shared some of those starters with you LOL did you take Pinky????

Sharona R - שרונה ראובני said...

Oh no, Penesh, Barbie, Erez and Motti went down south for the weekend.

Oh Jujie!!!!!!!! Where is the email you were supposed to send me?