4/14 Blog #3 Wow These Eggs Is-raeli Good

I am sure that everyone was very excited for Yemeni Shakshuka, but sadly, I was unable to make it due to preserving lemons taking over two months to do. Don't worry though because I made another Middle Eastern Egg dish, being an Israeli Herb Omelet. The cookbook Shuk describes this dish as herbs held together by eggs rather than eggs with herbs inside of them. Well, Shuk couldn't have been any righter. These eggs were wonderfully herbaceous, filled with parsley, green onions, cilantro, turmeric, and cumin, making the eggs barely taste like eggs anymore. I really don't think I have ever seen or eaten an egg dish quite like this one before. The eggs were so light, and delicate and had such depth of flavor, so they were truly a joy to eat. Cooking this dish was very fun, as eggs are one of my favorite things to cook. I also got to practice my knife skills on the herbs I used, which is always good. I'd say the most challenging part of this dish would be making sure to cook both the herbs and the eggs perfectly. I think I may have overdone the eggs a little bit, but because the herbs did not come into contact with the pan as much, they didn't char. Now, this was an Israeli dish that I wasn't aware of. I have never thought of eggs as a staple of Israeli cooking worldwide, but after eating these I understand how Israelis might want to keep their egg recipes a secret. One thing that did not come as a surprise to me though, was seeing eggs in Jewish cooking. Eggs are very common throughout the Jewish community and we even put a hard-boiled egg on our Seder Plate on every Passover. Coming up next week is a dish I am eager to both cook and share with you all. It is called Doro Wot and it is an Ethiopian chicken dish. I am not well versed in Ethiopian food, let alone Jewish-Ethiopian food. The Jewish community in Ethiopia is something that has interested me for a long time and is a group of people that really inspired me to choose Jewish cooking for this project. Ethiopia has one of the most prominent Jewish populations in Africa, rivaled only by South Africa and Morocco, and yet many people, including myself, are surprised to find out there are Jews there. One thing I am very curious about is how much overlap there will be between the food I have grown up with as a Jew and this chicken, as I see my family's cooking and this as complete opposites.