From PIZZA to PASTA and APPETIZERS to PASTRIES: Eating in Sicily

 52 Places to Go: Week 48

All the basic ingredients of a Sicilian meal can be found at the open-air market--tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, onions, and more--all fresh from the grower

One of the joys of traveling in Italy is the seemingly endless choice of delicious foods, and our recent trip to Sicily was no exception. From breakfasts of fresh bread and coffee and more, to lunches at street cafes or buying sandwich ingredients at a local shop, to dinners at trattorias and fancier restaurants, the hardest decision was limiting ourselves to just a few items on the menu. (Servings tend to be very generous and I often had trouble finishing my meal.)

Olives, artichokes and other appetizers at a market in Catania

We enjoyed browsing at the open-air markets in Palermo and Catania, where one could buy everything from olives and octopus to cherries (which were in season) and three-foot long zucchini squashes.

At this stand in the Ballaro market in Palermo one could buy whole cooked octopus (polpo) or plates of marinated chunks of octopus ready-to-eat.

Cookies and sweets made with almonds and almond paste are a typical dessert.

  These are just a few samples of typical Sicilian foods. In both Palermo and Catania, we relied on our BandB hosts to recommend restaurants, and were not disappointed. Note: While many Italians do not eat dinner until 8 or 9 o’clock, we were often hungry earlier and tended to be the first customers when restaurants opened for dinner at 7:30. Our trip in late May was before the busiest tourist season so we almost never had trouble getting a table, even without a reservation. Here's a list of some of the restaurants where we ate:

 Ferro di Cavallo restaurant in Palermo. (Ferro di Cavallo means "horseshoe".)

Palermo restaurants:
Quattro Mani: Quiet and upscale. A good choice to celebrate our first night in Palermo.
Ciccio Passami l'Olio: Pizza restaurant. Extremely popular on weekend nights and impossible to get a reservation for a table at the last minute. We ordered takeout and ate it as a picnic in a local park.
La Cambusa: A popular tourist restaurant with typical Sicilian food and an English menu.
Ferro di Cavallo: Classic Sicilian food. We had soup for lunch there, sitting on the patio.

Busiati pasta, a curlicue pasta made from hard durum wheat, is the typical pasta in Erice and Trapani.

Erice restaurants:
Monte San Giuliano: Typical Sicilian food, including interesting appetizers (a favorite of mine was the octopus). We ate there twice.
Venus: This restaurant is advertised all over town and was the site of the conference dinner at which we were served the typical courses of an Italian dinner: appetizers, Primi Piatti (pasta), Secundi Piatti (fish or meat), and dessert. All were excellent.

Pear and prosciutto salad and caponata appetizer at La Deliciosa in Catania

Catania restaurants:
La Deliciosa: a small trattoria that was conveniently close to our BandB on Via Crociferi. The food was delicious–just like the name–and we ate there three of our five nights in Catania.
Trattoria Casalinga: this small restaurant, about a five minute walk from our BandB, featured an appetizer bar with more than a dozen items, which could easily become a whole meal. We ate there twice–once ordering from the menu and one doing just appetizers.

This article was first published 7/22/19

All text and photographs copyright Caroline Arnold

From BLINIS to PELMENI, Sampling Traditional Russian Food in Washington, DC

 52 Places to Go: Week 47

Sometimes eating out can be a little bit like a trip to a foreign country. On our recent trip to Washington, DC, we enjoyed a delicious dinner at Mari Vanna, a restaurant on Connecticut Avenue not far from Dupont Circle. Specializing in traditional foods from Russia and Eastern Europe, it was a chance to try foods we don’t normally eat. It was a Saturday night, and the bar on the main floor was humming. We were taken upstairs to the comfortable dining area, decorated with lace covered lamps, flowered menus, walls covered with historic photos, and a samovar in the corner. As we waited for our food, an accordion player serenaded the tables with lively polka tunes.

The menu of Mari Vanna features several kinds of black caviar–far beyond our price range. One can also order a variety of vodka based drinks. We opted for a Moldavian Merlot red wine.
Rather than ordering a large main course, we chose several smaller plates to share.
We began with a fish plate, an assortment of smoked salmon, smoked butter fish, smoked sturgeon chunk, which was served with fresh cucumber slices and lemon. We also ordered a plate of blinis (thin egg pancakes) served  with sour cream and salmon roe (which provided a salty crunch). A bread board came with two kinds of bread--a dark and light rye--served with traditional red radishes and a scallion

Our third item was a pot of Siberian pelmeni, a kind of Russian dumpling--in many ways similar to Chinese steamed dumplings. They came with various fillings both salty and sweet. We chose to have the pelmeni stuffed with ground pork.

By the time we finished the pelmeni, we were ready for dessert. Art had Medovik, a traditional Russian honey layered cake, and I chose what was called Bird’s Milk, described on the menu as a “Traditional Royal Milk Soufflé with Dark Chocolate” and tasted a bit like meringue topped with chocolate. Delicious!

By the end of our meal we were completely satisfied. I understand one can go to Mari Vanna for a traditional afternoon tea--another chance to sample their many desserts. On another visit to Washington, I’ll have to do that!
   
Mari Vanna
1141 Connecticut ave NW
Washington, District of Columbia 20036

This article was first published on 8/19/19

All text and photographs copyright Caroline Arnold

                  

From EMPANADAS to PISCO SOURS: Enjoying Chile’s Favorite Foods

 52 Places to Go: Week 46

Individual bowls of Pastel de Choclo, a favorite Chilean dish, ready to bake in the clay oven.

On our recent trip to Chile it seemed that every meal was a feast–ranging from sumptuous hotel buffets to large family holiday parties to picnics in the country to meals in local restaurants–each time giving us tastes of delicious Chilean foods.

Blackberries, blueberries, strawberries and more fill the summertime farmer's markets.

It was December, the beginning of the southern summer, and the markets, or ferias, were full of juicy, locally grown, ripe fruits and vegetables. Many meals were eaten outdoors, often cooked on a barbecue or in a woodburning clay oven (horno.) And every meal included side dishes of tomatoes (tomates, always peeled), lettuce (lechuga), sliced cucumbers (pepinos) and avocados (palta.)

Typical side dishes. String beans, julienned and served as a cold salad, are a traditional Christmas dish.

A classic dish of Chile is pastel de choclo, a kind of casserole made of beef, chicken, onions, olives, raisins, and a wedge of hard boiled egg, which is then covered in a corn pudding topping and baked in a clay oven. We had pastel de choclo at a family party where guests formed an assembly line to prepare the ingredients. Each serving was cooked in the outdoor clay oven in its own ceramic bowl and then served steaming hot at a long picnic table.

Humitas. They can be made savory, sweet, or sweet and sour, served with added sugar, chile pepper, salt and paprika

The same corn mixture was used to make humitas, similar to tamales, but cooked in fresh rather than dried corn husks. I helped to make the humitas–my job was to secure the husks with a string made from a thin strip of a long leaf, making them look like fat bowties. The humitas were then steamed in a large pot on top of the stove.

Empanadas ready to bake.

Another classic dish of Chile, and elsewhere in South America, is the empanada, a kind of individual meat pie. They are fried or baked (empadanas del horno.)  Empanadas can be filled with meat, cheese, vegetables or other ingredients, but the typical filling in Chile is pino, a meat mixture made of beef, onions and herbs.

Clay oven with  empanadas inside.

During our trip, we spent three days in the country where our son-in-law’s father lives, enjoying fresh milk and vegetables every day from his neighbor’s farm and eating homemade empanadas.

Roadside stand for "The place where you can buy houseplants, beans, tomatoes, and lettuce."

The project of the visit was not only to make the empanadas (I helped roll the dough) but to build the clay oven!

At another family party during our trip, the main dish was cocimiento, a rich stew of vegetables, beef, chicken, fish and seafood (clams and mussels), flavored with wine and cooked slowly in a large pot over a barbecue. It is a bit like paella without the rice. Fish is delicious in Chile and we enjoyed it at several meals during our stay. With a coastline 2,653 miles long, a wide assortment of fish and seafood is always fresh and available.

"The King of Mote con Huesillo" offers drinks at his stand in the main plaza in Temuco. In the background are Chilean palm trees, whose flowers are used by bees to make honey.

Mote con Huesillo. The barley and peach sink to the bottom.

A typical summer drink in Chile is called mote con huesillo, made from dried peaches soaked in water to make a kind of tea, to which sugar and cooked barley is added. On a warm day it is very refreshing!

Enjoying a cafe helado.

On one of our restaurant visits my grandchildren ordered café helados another favorite Chilean treat. It sounds like it should be iced coffee, but café helado is actually an ice cream soda made with coffee, ice cream, and topped with whipped cream and wafer cookies–more like a dessert than a drink!
And, of course, on New Year’s Eve we drank the classic pisco sours, a lemon flavored drink similar to a whiskey sour, but flavored instead with pisco, a distilled alcohol made from grapes that is unique to Peru and Chile. (My only photos are of empty glasses so you'll have to imagine what our pisco sours looked like!)
And these are just a sample of Chile's delicious foods!  

This article first appeared 2/4/19

All text and photos copyright by Caroline Arnold.

CROATIA: MY FAVORITE MEAL, Guest Post by Caroline Hatton

 52 Places to Go: Week 45

Dubrovnik, Croatia

My friend and fellow children’s writer Caroline Hatton visited Croatia in May of 2012 and has graciously written this article about her trip. You can find out more about Caroline and her books and at her website, www.carolinehattonauthor.com . She took all the photos in this post.

BREAKFAST

At the first hotel where my husband and I stayed, the room price included a hearty breakfast. We had omelets cooked to order, skipped the ham and salami, and admired the mystery packets of what looked like vanilla or chocolate pudding, liverwurst, cream cheese, jam, and butter. While exploring Croatia with a couple of American friends for two weeks, room prices included similar breakfasts, except for rooms rented out by private citizens.

For lunch, we shared a sampler of typical Croatian food, i.e., meat:

MEATLOVERS LUNCH

The finger-sized sausages were the famous, delicious, vigorously seasoned ćevapčići. The spiral sausage was the chef’s specialty. The meat chunks were chicken, pork, and beef, the standard components of the ubiquitous “mixed grill” menu item. The beans, we never saw anywhere else, a noteworthy fact for vegetarians. The red delicacy was ajvar (a red bell pepper and garlic relish that most Croatians are crazy about).

Fortunately for our waistlines, we walked for hours through the old Zagreb, up and down medieval stone stairs and streets. By dinner time, we could fathom trying another meat dish:

CHEESE STUFFED GROUND MEAT

This was punjena pljeskavica (cheese stuffed ground meat, enthusiastically seasoned). The grilled vegetables were available as a separate item on most menus, and often included carrot, eggplant, bell pepper, onion... whatever looked good at the market.

SIBENIK WALLET

Stuffed pork came in different varieties. The above “Šibenik wallets” were stuffed with prosciutto and cheese, and named after their hometown. There, the medieval pedestrian center was a captivating place to walk off calories.

Fish and seafood were widely available, often with a side of mangold (Swiss chard) and potatoes, as seen in this sea bass entrée:

SWISS CHARD POTATO SIDE

Below: a mussel; the closed and open pair was kunjka (Noah’s Ark shellfish) found only in the Adriatic and Mediterranean; and the clam was brbavica or šarga (warty venus).

SHELLFISH

For picnics on long mountain hikes, we loved to buy bùrek (filo pastry stuffed with cheese, spinach, or ground meat) from bakery shops. Lightly sweetened varieties contained a smear of fruit mush:

BUREK SWEET

We saw many garden-shed-size roasters outside of food shops, for whole pigs, but we never saw any roast pork, perhaps more common in the high summer season.

For vegetarians, commonly available proteins were eggs for breakfast and cheese any time. Beans, we saw only once on our first lunch plate, in Zagreb.

My second-most favorite meal in Croatia was in the medieval walled city of Dubrovnik on the Adriatic. Stone-paved pedestrian streets were lined with restaurant tables, leaving only a narrow lane for waiters and passers-by.

Octopus salad was on my must-try list. We saw it on the menu for the first time on our trip. We ordered it.

Before letting our waiter, a man perhaps 18 years old, walk away, I asked him to take a photo of my husband and me. As I handed him my point-and-shoot digital camera, I said, “Press this button to turn it on.” He said, authoritatively, “I know. I am young.”

Then he brought the octopus salad:

OCTOPUS SALAD

 

A minute later, the restaurant owner, a man perhaps 50 years old, brought a serving spoon and said, “Excuse my son. He is young.”

The octopus was tender, delicate, and distinctive. The balance of tomato, lettuce, and onion, and the small amount of vinaigrette and herbs, was perfect. This gourmet dish was offered at Konoba Nava in Dubrovnik Old Town.

MLJET ISLAND

My favorite meal in Croatia was on the Adriatic island of Mljet http://www.mljettravel.com/, in the hamlet of Soline, a row of about six contiguous stone houses. Between the one-lane road and the shore of the salt water lake, Veliko Jezero, the locals had set up tables and chairs on shaded patios. We were told that the lady “in that house” (I forget if it was number 3 or 4) served dinner.

We poked our heads in her open door, into a kitchen with a jolly group at a table. The lady greeted us. We asked about dinner.  She bent down to pick up a plastic bucket, from which she lifted freshly dead fish, one at a time—the day’s catch. There was only one of each kind, each one a different mottled grey.  The eel wasn’t our friends’ idea of food. So we pointed at two other big fishes, which the lady identified as škaram (barracuda) and cipal (mullet).

She brought local wine to the patio table. While we enjoyed the balmy evening, she got busy chopping a little wood for her outdoor brick barbecue, getting a fire going, preparing the fish, and grilling it to perfection. She also served a tomato salad, boiled potatoes, bread, and homemade goat cheese, and put the customary bottle of local olive oil on the table.

This was my best meal in Croatia because the fish, friendship, and serene setting were exquisite, and also because I love how the cook presented the menu choices!

Caroline is working on a horse story set in Croatia at a location similar to Linden Tree Retreat and Ranch http://www.lindenretreat.com/ where she went on an unforgettable horse ride with owner and guide, Bozidar Bruce Yerkovich.

 

This article was originally published at The Intrepid Tourist  1/12/15.

 

 

ISTANBUL FOOD TOUR: From Pide to Locum, Guest Post by Kathryn Mohrman

 52 Places to Go: Week 44

Pide, a pizza-like bread made in Istanbul

My friend, Kathryn Mohrman, an avid and excellent photographer, visited Turkey in 2014 when she was on her way to Ethiopia.  She has graciously agreed to share some of her photos and impressions of her visit to Turkey. Kathryn, now retired, was a professor at Arizona State University and traveled widely for her job as director of several projects with partner universities in China and Vietnam. You can see photos from her trip to Lalibela, Ethiopia, at her 2/17/14 post on this blog.  I have known Kathryn since we were students together at Grinnell College in Iowa. Here is her report of part of her trip to Istanbul.

Around Christmas and New Year's, 2013, I traveled to Istanbul to see the only city in the world that straddles two continents. What a fascinating place!

Breakfast with Turkish breads and other Turkish foods

One day I took a food tour with a company called Istanbul Eats.  We first had breakfast with breads, cheese and other goodies purchased at local shops by our guide (a Belgian married to a Turkish woman who had lived in Istanbul for decades--the man in the center of the photo).

Hot tea

The traditional way to serve tea and coffee is in glasses.

Baklava

We tried baklava at one of the oldest and best specialty shops in town
And we ate pide, a cross between pizza and calzone.

Pide makers--the oven is much like a pizza oven.
The results--delicious pide!

Then on to a candy shop where we sampled Turkish delight (locum).  It is really yummy when it's fresh.

Turkish Delight--in many flavors!

We also sampled a nearly extinct traditional winter drink, boza.

Boza shop

Boza

Boza is made from fermented grain, and is served with roasted hazelnuts.

Plate full of selections from dishes served at our final feast.

Late in the afternoon we ended the foodie tour with a feast at an outdoor restaurant. Fat and happy, I staggered back to my hotel.  I never would have found all of these traditional foods on my own, many in out-of-the-way places.

Note from The Intrepid Tourist:  For more about eating in Istanbul, check out my post on August 6, 2012, Istanbul: A Food Lover's Delight.

This article was first published 6/23/14