A culinary tour of Israel
The Zionist Council of Victoria and KOOK Kosher Community Kitchen are delighted to announce their inaugural culinary tour of Israel to take place the 8th-16th of October 2015.
Israeli food
Foodies, amateur and professional alike, will have an opportunity to experience the breadth and depth of Israeli cuisine with experiences from master classes and workshops to tastings and meals offered by chefs and home kitchen experts from across Israel’s cultural spectrum.
In addition to interactive sessions with Israeli elite chefs such as Meir Adoni and Yonatan Rosenfeld, highlights include visits to dairies, spice markets, a pomegranate winery and a full-day desert experience in Australia’s Partnership 2Gether region, the Central Arava. The tour is recognised by the Australian Culinary Federation, Victoria and includes professional development credit for those who wish.
An information night will be held Tuesday 16 June at 8:00pm at Beth Weizmann Community Centre. Early bird discounts are on offer to those who register for the tour and pay a deposit by 30 June.
The tour is an opportunity to explore the question of “what is Israeli cuisine?” Although as a modern state, Israel is quite young, its culinary roots go as far back as biblical times. Esau sold his birth right for a lentil stew, the Israelites were sustained by manna while wandering in the desert, and the bible is full of references to Israel as a land of milk and honey (and of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey).
The cultural influences on Israel’s cuisine are diverse. As Israel is located in the Middle East, its chefs are influenced by the type of food that has been prepared in the area for thousands of years. It is also a country of immigrants who imported a melange of culinary influences from North Africa, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Russia and beyond.
Home cooks and chefs who originate from a range of cultural backgrounds and employ different skills and spices have swapped and shared cooking styles, as well as adapting their various recipes to incorporate ingredients readily found in Israel. As the cuisine has evolved, it has become a cross-fertilisation of the many cultural components of its population along with new ideas and styles brought by a whole new generation of chefs educated locally and around the world.
The tour will visit the Blue Sky Restaurant, conceived by Chef Meir Adoni whose first influence was the Moroccan cuisine of his home. “My inspiration comes from home, from my heritage, my roots and my Moroccan grandmother.” says Adoni, whose restaurants have become renowned for their innovations in Israeli cuisine in which traditional Israeli food is created with cutting edge technique. “As a chef, the first thing I bring to the table is tradition,” Adoni says. “I respect the original flavours and ingredients. Only then do I add my crazy interpretation.”
For more information, visit www.zcv.org.au or contact the Zionist Council of Victoria on 9272 5544 or zcv@zcv.org.au.
