Hungry Travelers - Page 21 of 82 - Bringing the tastes of travel back home

Fassolia Piaz: Greek bean salad for summer

Posted on August 25, 2020August 24, 2020 by Pat and David

Back in March, when no one knew what the pandemic food supply chain would be like, we reflexively purchased bags of dried beans. They were cheap, shelf-stable supplies that could guarantee a source of quality protein if we were suddenly faced with food insecurity. In hindsight, we overreacted. On the bright side, we have a lot of beans on hand to make summer salads. Fassolia piaz is the Greek variant. In its simplest form, boiled beans are mixed with chopped parsley, lemon juice, and olive oil. We like it expanded a bit to include chopped tomato, chopped cucumber, and skewers of fresh tuna cooked over hardwood charcoal. That makes it the Greek cousin to Salade Niçoise. You could add Kalamata olives or even sliced hard-boiled...Read More

World on a Plate: Kelowna, B.C. cherry tomato salad

Posted on August 21, 2020August 21, 2020 by Pat and David

We took the photo above at the Terrace Restaurant at Mission Hill Family Estates Winery (missionhillwinery.com) in Kelowna, British Columbia. The property sits at the northern end of the Okanagan Valley, where Canada grows some of its best table wines and a lot of astonishing fruits and vegetables. Before it was wine country, it was peach and cherry orchard country and those stone fruits still thrive there. In more recent years, Okanagan farmers have expanded their row crops as well. Some of the best cherry tomatoes we're ever tasted were grown in the Okanagan. This tiny salad of fire-peeled cherry tomatoes, blueberries, prosciutto, Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, and paper-thin sourdough toasts was an amuse bouche at Terrace. It's seasoned with a couple of dots of balsamic...Read More

Olympian Greek laurels for swordfish kebabs

Posted on August 18, 2020August 17, 2020 by Pat and David

This is a spectacular time for fish in New England, so we've decided to take our Greek culinary research seaside. Well, not really seaside, since our backyard grill is a good mile from the ocean. On a recent market run, we were surprised to see fresh swordfish steaks, since this is mainly yellowfin tuna season in New England. But asking the fishmonger, we found that the sword was caught in Canada and landed in New England—close enough to home for us. When we discovered that the same market had fresh bay leaves—European bay laurel leaves, not the more eucalyptus-scented California bay—we knew we were in business. (They were from Goodness Gardens: goodnessgardens.com/bay-leaves.) Greeks love to thread fresh bay between pieces of swordfish for grilled kebabs....Read More

Greeks beat the heat with watermelon salad

Posted on August 11, 2020August 12, 2020 by Pat and David

Even Hippocrates, the ancient Greek father of medicine, was apparently a watermelon fan, prescribing the fruit as a diuretic. (He also suggested treating children with heat stroke by placing cool, wet rinds on their brows.) But the good doctor had nothing to say about watermelon as food. That could be because watermelons of his era were still at least as bitter as an overgrown cucumber. A half millennium would elapse before farmers were raising the sweet modern watermelon. But the Greeks made up for lost time. One of the quintessential summer delights of Greek cuisine is some variation of watermelon salad. There are really only three essential elements: pieces of watermelon, mint leaves, and crumbled feta cheese. Personally, we like to add cubed pieces of...Read More

World on a Plate: carciofi alla giudia

Posted on August 7, 2020 by Pat and David

‶Jewish-style artichokes″ is what the Romans call this most Roman of fried dishes. The vegetable—really the flower of a thistle—is transfigured by its dual bath in hot olive oil. The ‶Jewish″ part of the name is a tip-off that it's a fried dish, as Jews introduced deep-frying to Italian cuisine during their confinement in the Roman ghetto in the 16th–19th centuries. The photo above shows a classic example from Da Teo (facebook.com/Trattoria.da.TEO/), a trattoría in the Trastevere neighborhood that recently reopened with social distancing. A few years back, we rented an apartment just down the street and ate there as often as we could. We almost always started with the artichokes as an appetizer. What we didn't appreciate at the time was that the giant...Read More

Greeks know elemental simplicity of kebabs

Posted on August 4, 2020August 2, 2020 by Pat and David

We can just imagine the invention of the kebab sometime in the Paleolithic era. Stone-age Barbecue Bob was grilling a whole haunch of ground sloth impaled on a tree branch over an open fire. As the haunch began to cook, it would eventually fall off the stick into the fire. And Bob would throw a cursing fit. A woman at the cave no doubt looked up from grinding wild grass seeds into flour. She observed that if Bob cut the haunch into smaller pieces, he could thread them on a stick and they would cook faster and remain ash-free. Ta-da! Bob's Kebabs was born. He got all the credit around the cave complex for this wondrous new invention. She got a break from his whining,...Read More

World on a Plate: elusive ketchup bun from San Sebastian

Posted on July 31, 2020July 30, 2020 by Pat and David

Trying to choose a favorite pintxo from San Sebastián makes us throw up our hands and sing the end of the first verse of a particular 1965 Beatles song: ‶...in my life, I loved them all.″ That said, we're haunted by a simple slider on the menu at A Fuego Negro (31 de Agosto; tel: 650 135 373, www.afuegonegro.com/). The current incarnation is listed as ‶MakCobe with txips,″ which is a smirking play on words in English, Spanish, and Euskara that you almost have to be there to appreciate. We do know that you do have to be there in person to appreciate the little burger. Sure, the meat is richly beefy and meltingly tender. That's to be expected. What blew us away was the...Read More

Finding a Greek solution to the zucchini problem

Posted on July 28, 2020July 27, 2020 by Pat and David

Every gardener knows the zucchini problem. When you ordered seeds in January, you were dreaming of ratatouille—maybe even of zucchini bread with sunflower seeds that turn inexplicably green. Then the reality hits about this time of summer. Zucchini sounds like a great idea. So does keeping rabbits—until you're suddenly overrun with rabbits. Or squash. Pre-pandemic, you could invite friends over, get them well lubricated, and send them home with a bag of zukes. Or bunnies. Such solutions don't work in the COVID era. The Greeks take a more pragmatic attitude toward zucchini proliferation. During the season, they throw zukes into everything. One of the tastier light dishes is a bake that falls somewhere between a frittata and an unfussy souffle. There are zillions of different...Read More

World on a plate: Gangemi gelato in Trieste

Posted on July 24, 2020July 20, 2020 by Pat and David

The first time either of us ever visited Trieste was with a group of American and Italian chefs. Coming from the ancient city of Aquileia, we drove nearly an hour out of our way to hit the seaside town at the head of the Adriatic. The leader of our group lined us all up for a photo on the main plaza overlooking the sea and then let us free for 20 minutes. The smart ones followed him to Gangemi at the juncture of Piazza della Borsa and Piazza d'Unita. ‶This is the best gelato in Italy,″ he pronounced, which was saying something coming from a Neapolitan who only grudgingly swooned over pistachio gelato in Sicily. Now that it's midsummer and we are stranded 5,000 miles...Read More

One more Greek meze spread: baba ganoush

Posted on July 21, 2020July 18, 2020 by Pat and David

Not quite as ubiquitous as tzatziki and tirokafteri (see July 14 post) on meze platters in Greece, baba ganoush is one of those spreads that you'll find all around the eastern Mediterranean. The origin of the name is Arabic, and we suspect it found its way to Greece during the Ottoman occupation. But the Greeks have embraced it wholeheartedly—and so have we. Spread on pita bread, it might be our second favorite way to eat eggplant (after ratatouille). Too often homemade baba ganoush is shy on the smoky flavor that distinguishes the dish. Most recipes we've seen call for roasting the eggplant whole in the oven, then chopping up the flesh. Since eggplant season is also grilling season, we prefer to light up the Weber...Read More