Spanish cuisine tradition, in Israel we started from scratch

A.. VALDES branch Ben-Zvi is perhaps the most famous cook of Israel. In his restaurant in Nataf, near Jerusalem, he has created a style of Mediterranean, vegetable and avant-garde cuisine that has brought her

Alicante to give a training course through Mediterranean House.

What are the features of the famous Mediterranean diet in Israel?

Yes, I've also come to Madrid Fusión. I've come to learn, to see the difference between all types of Mediterranean cuisine. Spain, Europe are traditional societies, with some already well established values. We Jews, we are not a new society. The Jews have a strong relationship with the Mediterranean, Greece, Spain or Turkey; but we have no culinary tradition. We have to create it almost from scratch.

Is there any ingredient used in the Valencian cuisine that will incorporate?

The types of ingredients, while they are common, vary greatly. For example, the olives used in Spain are of a much softer variety that we have in my country, thicker and more hard and rough taste. Spain is one of the countries where more olive oil is used, but Israel is where more olives are consumed. All these differences influence. The truth is I don't know very well the Valencian cuisine, so I would not know what ingredients incorporated.

In kitchen when speaking of tradition, one thinks of women. When it is prestige, refers to men. What do you think of this phenomenon?

Well, it is something of which I can not comment. I can only speak for myself. I am a woman and I was okay. But I don't want to pick up the flag of feminism and go forward.

Do you think that the political situation in the Middle East prevents that they made known the gastronomy and the arts of the area?

Our day to day has nothing to do with the political atmosphere. Our routine life is completely different to that exits in the European media, facing only here to talk about bombs, deaths and explosions. We feel that that the only information that we produce for the world, regardless nothing is of what we do. Anyway I think that we are much less influenced by the media of communication to you. The crisis you are experiencing would be much less harsh to us. I would say that we are more accustomed to crises and hardships than Westerners. It was said that the first generation of people born in the State of Israel were softer than the previous ones. Called us sabra (a similar to the prickly pear cactus); hard and thorny on the outside, but soft and sweet on the inside. Why I say that we are still a very new company, yet to create.