Home cooking

Ayelet Tsioni serves choice Israeli cuisine at Baronita.

By MIRIAM KRESH
Ayelet Tsioni: ‘I simply cook what I myself like to eat.’ (photo credit: ARIEL VAN STERTEN)
Ayelet Tsioni: ‘I simply cook what I myself like to eat.’
(photo credit: ARIEL VAN STERTEN)
Zichron Ya’acov’s narrow, leafy streets reveal treasures of art galleries, quirky shops – and good places to eat.
Saunter down Hanadiv Street, enjoying the bohemian artists’ colony atmosphere, and stop at No. 27.
It’s a large courtyard open to the sun; inside is the cozy Baronita restaurant.
There, Ayelet Tsioni offers the kind of fresh, appetizing dishes that Israelis love, every day of the week.
Thin, dark, and intense, Tsioni, 51, began her work life with hi-tech programming and systems repair. Later, she moved on to marketing and entered the field of Israeli music; she managed the popular band Gaya for 20 years. With her then-husband, band member Gili Liber, she opened a small restaurant called Ayelet VeGili in Zichron Ya’acov.
The couple recently divorced, and Tsioni branched out in her own new restaurant.
“This place lets me center my cooking and organizational talents in one place,” says Tsioni. “I’ve always cooked, always had this romance with food, although I’ve never studied cooking. So I don’t cook like a chef. My style is home cooking, and I serve the foods I personally love. I have customers who eat lunch here every day.
There’s also a couple who comes every week, and the odd thing is, they order the same dishes and the same wine each time.
“I enjoy hosting people, so I’m restoring part of this property as a B&B which will open in the near future. In the meantime, I host musical events here every Thursday with a full dinner menu. I want to open this space to lectures and art exhibits as well.
“I’m Yemenite and my home background influences my cooking, but I accept all kinds of influences,” she explains.
“I simply cook what I myself like to eat, the food I serve to the people I love – my friends, my three children. And I love to see people enjoying my cooking.”
Metro enjoyed lunch at Baronita and can attest to the full flavors and attractive presentation of beef cooked in wine with root vegetables, handmade tehina and dishes based on brown rice, lentils and bulgur. It’s healthy, fresh food with little fat and only natural ingredients.
“Before opening my restaurants, cooking was therapy for me. When I’ve gone through life crises, cooking consoled me. It’s still a form of meditation; when I’m cooking, I’m entirely focused,” Tsioni recounts. “I was nervous about opening my own restaurant, but over time I’ve seen that I’m perfectly capable of managing it. I create most of the dishes on the menu myself.
Tsioni’s concern for her customers extends past mealtime. “Naturally, I want my customers to enjoy the food, but what’s really important to me is how they feel half an hour after the meal.
Sometimes I’ll eat at a restaurant, and the food is tasty and I get excited and eat with good appetite – and half an hour later, the food’s so heavy in my stomach that I want to die, or at least go to sleep.
Here, people enjoy my food and feel great afterward.”
Tsioni takes a lot of trouble to find the best suppliers. For example, the spices and grains cooked in the restaurant come exclusively from an elderly Yemenite couple in Pardess Hanna. “I trust the freshness and quality of their products,” she says. “My butcher doesn’t supply restaurants in general, either; he’s simply the best one I’ve found. I pay more for my ingredients than perhaps I should. I use only boutique olive oil; I also insist that my wines come from local wineries. My restaurant is kosher, so my wine menu is limited, but the wine has to be very fine and from wineries in the area.”
What was it like to go from home cooking to cooking commercially? Tsioni answers that when she first began managing a restaurant, her background in programming and logical thinking came to her aid. “Cooking on a larger scale requires logic, clear-headedness, planning. You have to use your brain as well as your senses. I’d left all that logistical thinking behind when I worked with music, but it all came back to me when I began to manage a commercial kitchen. Every detail is important.
And once my menu is ready, I sit down with my manager who’s a qualified sommelier, and together we work out which wines best suit each dish.”
What advice does Tsioni have for beginner cooks? “I’m going to give you an unusual answer,” Tsioni says with a laugh. “It’s this: keep a clean, tidy kitchen. Start with your surfaces clean and orderly and all your pots clean. It’s the A to Z of cooking: You can’t produce good food in a messy environment. You have to enjoy hard work, too.
“Finally, cook what you love to eat.”
Baronita
27 Hanadiv Street Zichron Ya’acov
Open 11 a.m.- 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday.
Fridays and holiday eves open from 11 a.m. to 1 hour before Shabbat/holiday
Meat menu with a variety of vegan options. Kosher.
Disabled-friendly entrance and restroom.
(04) 611-3047 or 052-663-1881
urvot-habaron.co.il/
Beef in red wine with root vegetables
Serves 8
Recipe may be halved
Ingredients:
2 kg. beef shoulder (tzli katef)
½ Tbsp. coarsely ground allspice
5 bay leaves
¼ cup canola oil
5 Tbsp. olive oil
3 large onions, sliced
3 medium beets
2 medium turnips
5 carrots
2 medium sweet potatoes
20 cloves garlic, peeled
¼ Tbsp. coarsely ground black pepper
½ Tbsp. coarse salt
1 Tbsp. paprika in oil
1 cup dry red wine
Stock from cooking beef
Place beef in a large pan and cover with water. Bring to a boil.
Add allspice and bay leaves. Lower heat, cover pot and simmer two hours, turning the meat over occasionally. There should be about half the original quantity of water left (add more by quarter cups during cooking, if needed), and the meat should be tender.
Leave the beef to cool in its stock, then refrigerate, still in its stock, for at least 10 hours.
After the marinating period, remove the beef from the stock but reserve the liquid. Cut the beef into 2-cm. cubes.
In a pot, heat the canola and olive oils. Brown the onion in it over medium heat.
Cut the beets and turnips into quarters and chop the carrots and sweet potatoes into thick slices. Add to the browned onions in the pot. Add the garlic cloves; mix.
Add pepper, salt and paprika; gently mix. Add the wine and wait one minute. Add the beef stock and beef cubes.
Cover and cook until the liquids reduce and form a sauce, no more than 30 minutes.
Serve and enjoy.