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:
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)