Tag: Mara L.

In my latest entries to Jens’ blog I tried to give some last minute advice for summer traveling (fatty Spanish food, rip-offs in Venice, and so on). By now, it is nearly June and I guess that those of you who are off to Europe are already on your way. I certainly have arrived at what is inevitably the first stop on every traveler’s sojourn at her homeland: my mother’s kitchen.

I shall spare you the petty little disputes, the nasty remarks from your mother about the fat-reduced joghourt you’ve come to prefer, and the comments about you looking like a stick rather than a young woman. This is the effect of the New York Diet. Happily, you can sit through the marathon of eating at home (breakfast, lunch, cake, dinner, dessert), relying on your newly acquired ‘thin habits’. They make sure that it will be easy to skip breakfast altogether, avoid part of lunch, and decide to have your cake for dessert at night—and to still feel like you are enjoying lots of amazing food!

Eating my way through all the things that, in the eyes of my relatives, are unavailable in Manhattan, I found myself thinking that they are right with respect to two real spring classics: aspargus and dessert made from rhubarb. There’s lots of aspargus in Manhattan, but oddly, it tastes not at all like aspargus. There certainly is some external similarity. But once you return to Europe, you recall that it is a total fraud. Especially white aspargus is a high art, one that is seemingly not acquired in just a few decades (or even centuries) of cultivation.

However, I decided to share a recipe with you which you can actually put to use in Manhattan. In May, Italians and Austrians make all kinds of delicacies from rhubarb, and I have seen some fine quality rhubarb in Manhattan. The rhubarb is there, you only have to put it to good use! Here are three super-simple and wonderfully delicious things to do with it. The easiest: Cut it up, and cook it briefly, with lots of lemon and some sugar. You won’t believe how tasty the result is, a perfect addition to crêpe and potato pancakes of every kind, and equally nice on it’s own. Second, rhubarb cake can be made with any cake batter that you like, by simply mixing the batter with the same rhubarb-lemon-sugar mix (in this case, the mix shouldn’t be boiled for more than a minute before it’s added to the batter, and then baked in the oven). Third, the same thing is absolutely terrific as a lighter summer version of cheese-cake.

I admit that rhubarb looks a little rustic in the store, not precisely like the most elegant ingredient. But wait until you see the mix of green and pink when you cook it, it’s a design must!

Coming up: Wiener Schnitzel

Are you just cleaning out your fridge to leave for several weeks? Off to board a plane to Italy? Of course! As you should. In my last contribution to Jens’ blog, I was somewhat cautious regarding the culinary virtues of some parts of the Mediterranean. And here’s more – more words of caution (and a recommendation for those who love ravioli). Now it is still time to rethink your route, in the eternal search for places that have not been entirely ruined by tourism. (You, of course, are not a tourist. You *live* in the various places you go to!)

But in case you are a little bit of a tourist anyway (perhaps some of my much valued and highly appreciated readers actually are Americans!), then here are my overdue warnings: Do not go to Venice, Florence, or Rome. This may sound shocking and entirely unwelcome. Are not these the places with all the great museums and the amazing atmosphere? Yes and no. If you find a week in the year that is neither high-season nor mid-season nor completely dead (with literally every café closed, like Venice in January, more on that in a minute), then you’re a genius and should be awarded a prize for mastering the high art of traveling. If not, then these are the places where you can be sure to be hated, deeply and efficiently. If you put yourself into the shoes of the actual inhabitants of these cities for just one minute, it will be obvious why hatred and masterful exploitation is the only possible response open to them.

The sad thing about this is that these cities, in theory, are amazingly beautiful. In fact, however, they are entirely spoilt. Let me record my latest attempt at outwitting this dilemma, a failure of the most miserable kind. I decided that, no matter how many tourists, Venice was still one of the loveliest places on earth. So I rented an apartment for all of January, thinking naively that it might be romantic to be there in the middle of winter. The apartment was actually quite beautiful. And I did like the little stores nearby. But the experience as a whole was a nightmare. It turned out that, by now, the city lives so much by tourism, that, in January (that is, after the brief spike of tourism for New Year’s Eve and prior to the Carnevale in February), basically everything was dead. With tourism subtracted, hardly anything was left! Countless stores geared up for Carnevale—with all the ridiculously stupid masks that tourists seem to buy no end. Cafés were closed for redecoration, so as to survive the next onslaught of the masses. You got an undisguised view of the industry which tourism is, and the ruins it leaves behind.

The one thing I loved, however, was a tiny store that sells fresh pasta in Via Garibaldi. It belongs to the Via Garibaldi market, but it’s in an actual house, to the right hand when you begin your stroll through the market (which has great fish, fruit, and vegetables – you don’t want to pay the prices at the Rialto markets!). I bought fresh ravioli there every other day, so much did I like it. However, you’ll have to give up on the New York idea that ravioli could be bought one day and eaten the next. Having gotten used to this American way of dealing with fresh pasta I made the grave mistake to ask them, on a Saturday, whether they had any kind that could be eaten on Sunday. No! (Was I a tourist after all, even though I spoke Italian and had happily bought intricate varieties of pasta in the last couple of weeks?) On Sundays you’ll have to eat gnocchi.

Coming up: Back In Mother’s Kitchen

It just occurs to me that, now that summer is nearly here, I should add a word of caution to my culinary musings about the virtues of Mediterranean cooking. I am just reminded that some of my friends here came back in shock from trips to Spain, and they came rather close to putting the blame on me: Why hadn’t I told them that any normal health-conscious Manhattanite is entirely lost there?

The story goes that fried food and red-meat-overeating are American preoccupations, but in fact, Spain is all frittata and jamon (that’s tortilla and, as people here would say, prosciutto from Serrano). Not to forget tons of mayonnaise. One of my classmates actually was Spanish and she used to eat whole jars of Mayonnaise, but let’s not even think about that. Paella all too often swims in heavy yellow olive oil. And so on. (It’s somewhat better at the key touristy seaside places, during high-season, but who wants to be there?)

So, it is best to travel to Spain via Italy, get a suitcase full of Grancereale (see my previous entry), and consider yourself on a diet of fruit and nut. That’s by the way also my strong recommendation for anyone from Manhattan traveling to more remote places in Greece.

However, I have a somewhat more appealing suggestion for those who don’t want to travel quite that far, and want to give Spanish food a try. There’s one thing that needs to be said in favor of it: If consumed with style, and that means, with fino—that’s how you refer to the dry sherry you drink in bars—bar food is a whole way of life. And such a charming one! And even better, if the tapas (that’s how the Spanish call the tiny dishes) are somewhat modernized. For that, I recommend venturing to Brooklyn’s tapas bar Zipi Zape. It’s an entirely fun, colorful place, where you can have a delicious bite of quail or a nicely lemonized shrimp in the middle of the afternoon, enjoy café con leche or a sip of fino, and feel like, this year, you almost don’t need this trip to Europe.

Coming up: Where Not To Go In Italy (Or: Who Hates Their Tourists Most…)