From Monday November 11 to November 22, a group of students on the third year of the Gastronomic Sciences undergraduate degree course will travel round Israel to explore its diverse gastronomic cultures.
The packed schedule envisages a whole variety of visits and meetings in different parts of the country.
The trip will begin with a meeting with an Italian flavor at Sandro and Irit Pellegrini’s winery, La Terra Promessa. That of the Pellegrinis is a special story which began when Sandro, who is Italian, met Irit, an Indian-born Jewess, while working in Israel. After deciding to embark on a life and professional project together, the couple opened the winery, which also houses a restaurant serving Italian and Keralan food. For our students it will be a first taste of the many flavors of Israel.
The tour will then proceed southwards to Beersheba, on the edge of the Negev desert. The extreme conditions of life there will be the focus of an intense two-day stay.
Here the members of the UNISG delegation will meet Professor Nir Avieli of Ben-Gurion University, who will take them round the local market to buy the ingredients for the dishes that will be prepared for them later at the desert farmhouse of Matnat Midbar, the next stop on their journey.
At the farm, which grows saffron, the students will taste traditional Bedouin dishes such as chicken zarb and madfouna and will sleep in a typical khan lodge.
During the two days in the Negev they will also visit the Ein Avdat National Park, the Sde Boker wine cellar and the David Ben-Gurion house museum. Then they will move on to the Kornmehl Farm, a unique dairy situated at the heart of this desert region, which produces some of the finest goat cheeses in Israel.
Leaving the desert behind, the party will travel to Jerusalem with a stopover on the Dead Sea.
The stay in the Holy City will begin with a tour of the rich Mahane Yehuda market with chef Michael Katz
The evening will be given over to a special gastronomic and sensory adventure at chef Moshe Basson’s Eucalyptus Restaurant. Basson is an expert on food in the Bible and, thanks to his scholarly knowledge of the Old Testament and his familiarity with wild herbs and the fruits of the soil, he is capable of reproducing, albeit with a touch of creativity, many of the dishes cited. During the dinner he will serve Esau and Jacob’s lentil stew and hubeiza, the wild mallow Jews ate to survive during one of the many sieges of Jerusalem.
Using Jerusalem as a base, the students will visit a number of places of interest in the surrounding Judaean hills: the Kaima organic farm in Moshav Beit Zait, which organizes social rehabilitation schemes for youngsters in need, the Sataf nature reserve and the famous craft dairy of Shai Selzer, the “father” of goat’s cheeses in Israel. Situated in a valley with an ancient tradition of agriculture, the dairy ripens its cheeses, made with the milk of a giant goat, a cross between Nubian and Middle-Eastern breeds, in natural caves.
The trip’s multicultural dimension will come to the fore at a lunch at Majda, a restaurant run by Michal, a Mizrahi Jewess of North African origin, and Yakub, a Palestinian. Spurning convention, the couple have formed a family and established the restaurant, where the cooking they serve is full of Middle-Eastern suggestions.
Back in Jerusalem for the Shabbat, the UNISG students will visit the Kotel, or Wailing Wall, before sampling dishes typical of the day of rest at the homes of local families.
Some parts of the trip have been made possible by the collaboration of former UNISG students.
One such, Nadav Malin, now a cook and a representative of Chefs for Peace, will take the UNISG group first on a historical-cultural tour of the old city, complete with tastings of street foods, then out of town to visit the Kadma winery, which produces wine in earthenware jars, and the Srigim brewery.
In the evening, the students will join Nadav for a cookery workshop in the village of Abu Ghosh.
The trip will proceed to the Beit Valley, where the UNISG group will meet Prof. Uri Meir-Cheezik at the Neve Eitan kibbutz and visit the fisheries and date plantations of the Maoz Haim kibbutz.
The third part of the trip will take in the north of the country, Upper Galilee. At Qatzrin the students will meet olive oil and cosmetics producers before climbing the Golan Heights to visit Majdal Shams, a town with a mostly Druze population on the border with Syria. Here they will discover local life and dine with Druze families.
The following day the party will visit the Metula farming community to attend a lecture on agriculture in politically sensitive areas. Afterwards, they will visit the Agamon Hula Nature Park and meet the Upper Galilee Slow Food Convivium leaders Einat and Avigdor Rothem at their b&b, the Pausa Inn.
The journey will continue to Haifa, the city of coexistence, where different faiths and cultures live peacefully together, thus contributing to its socio-economic growth. Here the party will visit the famous Bahai gardens and the German Colony before heading off on a delicious “taste track” among the small workshops and eateries where traditional Arab and Jewish foods are made — further evidence of the multicultural atmosphere of the place.
The UNISG students will end their trip at Tel Aviv, where they will devote much of their time to the city’s rich gastronomy. Here too activities have been organized with the help of former UNISG students such as Leora Meidan, who will take the party round the various city neighborhoods.
The tour will set off from the large, colorful Shuk HaCarmel market in the historical Yemenite quarter and then visit Shuk Hanamal, Israel’s first Earth Market, originally set up by Michal Ansky, a former UNISG student who is now a top Israeli food broadcaster and Master Chef judge.
To round the trip off on a high note, the students will be guests at a dinner at the Italian Embassy.