"To me, Israel was something unexpected. We'd only seen what they tell you on the news but when you go there and see how Western it is and how warm the people are, it breaks down all your prejudices."
She started writing articles for Lithuanian newspapers about her experiences with Israeli wine, food, culture, arts, sports, business and medical projects; and began blogging about the food.
"The fresh and colourful foods in the shuk inspired me and I started cooking like crazy."
She recorded ingredients found in the markets and dishes she tasted. "Everyone was so keen to share their recipes."
The Lithuanian immigrants were a rich source of information. "In Israel there are more than 200,000 people with Litvak roots - first, second and third generation - and they are very proud of their heritage. As soon as they learned I was from Lithuania, the conversations and the shared memories began."
Degutiene was surprised to discover that many of the dishes she assumed were Lithuanian were actually Jewish. "I gathered so much information about Jewish food. Dishes I'd eaten at kindergarten were probably brought to us by the Jews. We ate foods like blintzes, borscht, honey cake, latkes and even potato kugel all the time."
Degutiene collected recipes from the older Lithuanian women, many of whom were in their mid to late 90s, to record them for posterity. "They were getting so old that if I didn't record what they remembered, it would be lost."
She decided to publish a book of Jewish recipes - the Ashkenazi foods she had rediscovered plus some of the Sephardi dishes she'd enjoyed in Israel.
"I'd wanted to focus on Jewish/Litvak food but then decided that Israeli food is so tasty that I didn't want to miss out Sephardi/contemporary Israeli dishes."
The book, A Taste of Israel, was self-published in 2014 and was a top 10 bestseller in Lithuania for six months. It has since been published in Poland, the UK and South Africa and has been selected as a finalist in the Jewish category of the Gourmand awards - the Oscars of the cookery book world.
She feels her perspective as a non-Jew allowed her to give a new angle to the cuisine. "When you present your own cuisine, you have a set view of it, but I saw Jewish food through different eyes."
Varcoe's interest in Ashkenazi food arose when he and his Jewish wife, Marta Aron, opened a Jewish deli in Bristol, when they emigrated from Marta's native Hungary.
"Marta googled 'the driest place in the UK' and it brought up Bristol," laughs English-born Varcoe, who had lived and worked in Hungary for 20 years.
The couple were searching for business ideas when Varcoe jokingly suggested a Jewish deli. To his surprise, his wife loved the idea. "No one else was doing it, so I thought, why not," he says.
Their menu draws influence from New York's delis - "not the pile 'em high ones, but contemporary ones like Mile End, where quality is paramount" - from Claudia Roden's Book of Jewish Food, and from the Jewish restaurants of Budapest. "A lot of the food we serve draws from each of the three areas."
In his research, Varcoe also noticed that many dishes which have Jewish origins have crossed over and become assimilated into the culinary traditions of their host country.
"We had a Polish chef at Aron's, who remembers his mother making a fish dish from minced carp that is exactly the same as gefiltefish.
"Whereas Lithuanian Jews were almost wiped out, the Jews of Hungary survived the Holocaust better than anywhere else in that region and some of the food is alive and well, and still eaten in Jewish restaurants there today. One example is Sólet, the Hungarian version of cholent. In Hungary it is made with beans and pearl barley slow cooked with eggs and meat. The Hungarian version has a greater variety of meat and they add paprika and plenty of goose fat."
Varcoe will be demonstrating typical Hungarian-Jewish cake, Flódni, at Gefiltefest. "It's a sweet layered cake of pastry and fillings which include walnut, chocolate, poppy seed, apple and plum layers. It's enormously ostentatious - a show-off cake saying look how much I can afford," he says.
Flódni is a regular on the menu at Aron's alongside gribenes, chopped herring and latkes. They also bake their own challah, pletzels and rye but make regular pilgramages to Beigel Bake in east London to stock up on authentic beigels: "They're better than anything you can buy locally," smiles Varcoe.
Our Ashkenazi bube's would be kvelling at Degutiene and Varcoe's passion for our foodie traditions.
aronsdeli.co.uk; A Taste of Israel, Struik Lifestyle
See Nida Degutiene and Steve Varcoe on June 26 at Gefiltefest 2016. For information visit: gefiltefest.org
