June, 2006<\/p>\n
Hello from Jerusalem!<\/p>\n
Buying good meat here has been a challenge and I\u2019m not just talking pork which is very tricky to obtain though I\u2019ve found ways.\u00a0 We\u2019re not huge meat eaters but when we do partake we like it tasty and not too expensive.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been through several meat purchasing phases and finally, after nearly two years here I think I\u2019ve figured it out.\u00a0 So maybe this last year and a few months we might be able to enjoy decent, affordable meat.<\/p>\n
The first year here we lived in the suburbs five minutes from a big, chain store supermarket where the meat section was filled with large, unidentifiable-to-me hunks of beef, very dark red with little marbling and no uniform shape or cut I recognized.\u00a0 I now realize I could have asked for specific cuts like fresh steak or ground beef, except that I didn\u2019t and still don\u2019t speak Hebrew, and the butchers spoke scant English.\u00a0 I tried frozen, prepackaged, uniformly rounded \u201csteaks\u201d but they were hardly good enough even for stewing.\u00a0 We wonder if kosher meat slaughtering makes it taste different to us.\u00a0 Whatever the reason, we weren\u2019t thrilled with much meat we ate, except for fresh chicken which is hard to mess up.\u00a0 And of course they sold no pork, which we were starting to crave after a few months here.\u00a0 And then I discovered Iwo\u2019s.<\/p>\n
When I found Iwo\u2019s Butcher in downtown Jerusalem I felt like I had stepped into a smoked meat scented paradise.\u00a0 The store is chock-full of fresh meat, including pork, ham, bacon, good European salami, aged English cheddar cheese (lots of cheeses are available in Jerusalem except for decent cheddar), plus U.S. condiments and sauces.\u00a0 The butchers are friendly and speak good English.\u00a0 The big problem with Iwo\u2019s is that a single little pork loin or a quarter pound of cheddar costs $10.\u00a0 Pork chops, pork steak, fresh ground beef: all was of the highest quality, freshness and price.\u00a0 At first I didn\u2019t care, I was that hungry for good meat, but after the flush of carnivorous euphoria wore off, I cringed at the prices.\u00a0 I would cough when he told me the price hoping to drown in out, then fling my debit card on the counter to avoid having to actually count out the cash, and become absorbed reading labels of imported bottles of barbecue sauce, exercises in denial that changed the price not one shekel.<\/p>\n
Then I discovered an excellent Arab butcher.\u00a0 I sometimes shop in East Jerusalem first at a nice little grocery with lots of American products, then at a fruit and vegetable stand with amazingly low prices and good quality produce.\u00a0 One day I visited the butcher shop next door, a delightfully meaty, culturally rich atmosphere I enjoyed.\u00a0 They served me thick, cardamom-laced Arab coffee while I watched them hack hunks of beef from huge cow portions hanging from large, stainless steel hooks, then push the hunks through a grinder producing very fresh ground beef.\u00a0 I also discovered lamb which I love for its wonderful flavor and low cost.\u00a0 Alas neither my wife nor daughter like lamb, though one of my sons and I have almost perfected the art of grilling a whole leg of lamb.\u00a0 We cook one whenever he visits.\u00a0 Once when both sons were visiting we purchased testicles (goat? sheep?) that we cut up, skewered, and grilled.\u00a0 Testicle isn\u2019t my favorite meat.<\/p>\n
After our move near the center of town, I switched to an Israeli grocery close to home where Ahmed, the nice, helpful, English speaking butcher sells me good ground beef, custom cuts of beef and even fresh turkey for the holidays.\u00a0 Between this and my east-side butcher I was almost in hog heaven meat-wise, minus, of course, any hogs.\u00a0 Then, a few weeks ago a friend introduced us to a butcher in the Old City on a narrow alley filled with meat shops.\u00a0 The smell of this alley is rich with the aroma of raw meat.\u00a0 Large, blood-dripping beef quarters hang in front of the shops.\u00a0 Legs of lamb and stacks of chickens fill cases and counters along the way.\u00a0 Some stores specializing in organs are filled with trays of brains, kidneys, lungs, hearts, doubtless testicles, and who knows what else.\u00a0 On our second visit to the Old City not three weeks in Jerusalem, my daughter and I turned onto this lane by accident.\u00a0 She felt queasy and sick to her stomach for hours afterwards.<\/p>\n
At first glance I didn\u2019t think I would ever want to buy meat from one of these shops until my friend introduced me to Ayman, the butcher.\u00a0 His shop at the end of Meat Alley is clean, and all of the meat, except one cow quarter hanging and dripping out front, he keeps in coolers.\u00a0 To shop at Ayman\u2019s is an experience that can\u2019t be rushed.\u00a0 He is a master butcher who takes pride in his work, plus he’s a good host.\u00a0 Before we even discuss meat, we exchange the usual Arab greetings (but in English for my sake): Hello my friend\/ peace be with you\/ how are you?\/ thanks be to God.\u00a0 Then: which would you like, tea or coffee?\u00a0 Then, he finishes cutting meat for the customer before us and washes his hands.\u00a0 Then the tea and coffee are brought and we sip for awhile.\u00a0 (I dropped by at 5:30 on my way home from work this past week and he apologized that the coffee shop was closed).\u00a0 Finally he asks what I would like.<\/p>\n
At this shop I feel comfortably out-of-place, different but accepted.\u00a0 Each time, Ayman has tried to teach me something about meat, such as the relationship between fat and good flavor.\u00a0 I love watching him at his craft.\u00a0 He uses three or four different knives: a long butcher knife to trim hunks of fat, a cleaver to cut lamb chops apart, a smaller, thin knife to perfect each piece.\u00a0 He keeps a sharpening steel at hand and uses it every few minutes.\u00a0 This past week I purchased steaks every bit as good as from Iwos but at half the price.<\/p>\n
Affordable pork is still hard to get though I have found ways.\u00a0 I can order 7 pound pieces of pork loin for near U.S. prices from a duty free sales store I patronize.\u00a0 I can get Israeli ham (raised on a kibbutz in the north, they raise them on pallets above the ground, so that this unclean meat is not \u201con\u201d the Land so it\u2019s o.k., or so I\u2019ve heard) in Tel Aviv.\u00a0 And friends send us, from time to time, U.S. made, already cooked and dried bacon in a box, an amazing product that I think is the cultural and spiritual opposite of the fresh meat I buy from Ayman\u2019s shop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
June, 2006 Hello from Jerusalem! Buying good meat here has been a challenge and I\u2019m not just talking pork which is very tricky to obtain though I\u2019ve found ways.\u00a0 We\u2019re not huge meat eaters but when we do partake we … Continue reading