Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Recipes

Beyond the Bagel — Kibbutz Breakfast

A simply delicious morning meal consisting of (clockwise from top) a corn and eggplant pashtida thick yogurt with olive oil and za’atar and a fresh chopped salad.

The summer after I graduated college, I spent a month pruning grape vines on an organic vineyard in Tuscany. Tough life, I know.

Each morning we volunteers would wake up before dawn, blearily gulp down an espresso and some yogurt, and head out into the fields to get in several hours of work before the late-morning sun grew unbearable.

By 10 a.m., our hunger pangs were fierce. And so, off to the shade of a nearby olive tree we went for second breakfast — a mix of the previous night’s bread drizzled with fruity oil, hunks of fresh cheese and fabulously sloppy tomatoes sprinkled with coarse salt. Sometimes a few peaches or cherries made their way into the basket, too. As far as breakfasts go it was simple, elemental and perfect.

Some 2,400 miles away and several decades before my Tuscan summer, in the early years of Israel’s statehood, kibbutz dwellers shared similar breakfasts. They too were up before sunrise to work their fields. And, as Janna Gur writes in “The Book of New Israeli Food,” their morning meals, eaten in communal dining rooms, included a basic spread of “vegetables (cut up to make a salad), freshly squeezed orange juice, eggs, milk and dairy products laid out rather unceremoniously on a bare table.”

Image by Zivar Amrami

Those kibbutz breakfasts, which focused on freshness and celebrating the land’s bounty, became immortalized in the dining rooms of Israel’s luxury hotels. There, they transformed into something much more extravagant, with elegant cheese platters, bowls of thick yogurt and preserves, and multiple chopped salads sharing table space with sweet pastries, bourekas and a bevy of warm buffet dishes. Still, even in this new, more lavish setting, the soul of the original kibbutz breakfast remained.

A visit to Israel, where one now encounters kibbutz-style breakfasts in hotels, cafes and even people’s homes, is enough to inspire someone to give up the cereal and oatmeal rotation completely. The secret is, they are a riotously flavorful way to start the day, while requiring very little actual cooking.

Instead, all it takes is a bit of curating. You need a few soft cheeses, pickled fish, a chopped Middle Eastern salad with herbs, briny olives and a thick, strained yogurt drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with za’atar, a loaf of crusty bread and a pot of honey or marmalade. You can prep what little needs prepping the night before. Then in the morning, lay everything out on the table while your coffee or espresso brews.

If you have company joining you, or you are an early morning over-achiever, add a pashtida to the mix. The dish is a close cousin to the quiche (though often made without a crust) and commonly served on Shavuot in Israel, but is perfect any-day morning fare. A jumble of eggs, dairy and vegetables, it pulls the best flavors of the kibbutz breakfast into a hearty main dish. And, as I discovered while developing a summer-friendly corn and eggplant version, the vegetables can be sautéed the night before, leaving minimal mixing and baking the following morning.

And absolutely no fieldwork required.

Leah Koenig is a contributing editor at the Forward and author of “Modern Jewish Cooking: Recipes & Customs for Today’s Kitchen,” Chronicle Books (2015).

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.