History
Foods popular in Israel, such as hummus, falafel, and Israeli salad, are common to much of the Mediterranean and Arab world. The origins of the Israeli salad are traced by Gil Hovav, Israeli food editor and chef, to a Palestinian and Arab salad. He states that, "this salad that we call an Israeli Salad, actually it’s an Arab salad, Palestinian salad….” The idea that what is known in New York delis as "Israeli salad" is actually "Palestinian rural salad" is also agreed on by Joseph Massad, a Palestinian professor of Arab Politics at Columbia University, as one example of the adoption of Palestinian and pan-Syrian foods by Israel.
Popularized in Israel by the kibbutzim, variations on the basic recipe have been made by the different Jewish communities to immigrate to the country. For example, Jews from India prepare it with the addition of finely chopped ginger and green chili peppers, North African Jews may add preserved lemon peel and cayenne pepper, and Bukharan Jews chop the vegetables extremely finely and use vinegar, without oil, in the dressing.
Other similar chopped salads found in the Middle East, include the Persian salad shirazi سالاد شيرازي (which includes mint, diced onions, and peeled cucumbers), and the Turkish choban salad; among others found throughout the eastern Mediterranean area in Turkey, Lebanon, and Egypt.
Read more about this topic: Israeli Salad
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You that would judge me do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)