Ptilia

• Women as young as 65 wax nostalgic over cooking and baking on a p'tilia. Sure they switched to gas as soon as they could afford four burners on the countertop -- some time in the 1960s, -- but the way they remember it, food tasted better then, and cakes, baked in a seer peleh (wonder pot), were more tender.
• A wonder pot was like an angel-food cake pan with a lid and space between the tube and the top. Around the lid were ventilation holes. The cook put the wonder pot over a flame so the air in the tube got hot, rose, passed over the food, and out the holes. A set of four gas burners (run on balloons of naturnal gas) came with one burner exactly right for a seer peleh. Even people who could afford gas burners generally could not afford an oven.
• A p'tilia is like a largish camping stove, except that it runs on kerosene instead of gas. Today on Agrippas Street and in the shouk itself (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/shesek.html ) the tastiest food awaits you in pots set on p'tiliot.
• Coming into Mahaneh Yehuda from Agrippas, you'll see the pots of an Iraqi restaurant. Ask what's in each. On the next to last coss-street on your right you'll find the tempting kettles of a tiny Persian restaurant. Both have signs in Hebrew only, but you cannot miss them. Don't.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox