 Le bistro is now an endangered species in Paris. “So I need to come up with a topic for this week’s post,” I said to Rich, as I pushed open the door to a cerveceria (beer house) on the outskirts of Seville. The usual Sunday lunch crowd was gathering: parents with adult kids and grandchildren, long-married couples, a cluster of single men in the corner by the TV, watching the game. The chef’s wife shouted a welcome over the hubbub, and we called back greetings as we threaded our way to one of the plain wooden tables at the back. The waiter hurried over with a white paper tablecloth, and Rich picked up the napkin dispenser while I lifted the menus. After putting the table in order, our waiter leaned forward confidentially, flipped open one of menus, and pointed to the words pollo al campo. “The country chicken is really good today,” he said, as he always did. “From our place in the country. Delicious. Also the wild boar.” When the waiter left to fetch our drinks, Rich and I considered our options and agreed, as we usually did, that the pollo al campo really was too delicious to pass up. I began again, “So about this week’s post…” A great shout went up from the futbol corner as someone — judging by the joy, someone on the home team — scored a goal. Behind us, a chair fell over with a crash, and a small boy hurried past, trying to look innocent. Our waiter returned with ice cold beers, a bowl of olives, and a basket of bread. I gave up any attempt at conversation and just sat back to enjoy the atmosphere that locals call Sevilla profunda (profound Seville). There is something wonderful about a solidly unpretentious eatery, with serviceable furniture, regular customers, and nothing that even pretends to be “décor.” In a place like this, you can relax knowing you’ll find the same hearty, delicious dishes that have been satisfying locals for generations. You need never worry that the chef will suddenly become inspired to force-feed his neighbors the kind of small-portioned, trendy fare that comes from studying molecular gastronomy in Paris.  This exquisite concoction, from Cour des Créateurs' site offering molecular cooking classes in Paris, is precisely what you won't find in our favorite Seville cervezeria. Don’t get me wrong; I love and respect Parisian cuisine. And it continues to set an ever-higher bar for world gastronomy, offering breathtakingly original versions of beef curry udon, deconstructed paella, and amusingly reimagined Mexican enchiladas. But visiting the City of Lights last month, I kept feeling something was missing. Finally one night, while sipping excellent sangria in a trendy boîte with a carefully cultivated dive bar theme, I figured it out. “Every meal has been great,” I said to Rich. “But where’s all the French food?” The answer is: disappearing fast. Having watched this phenomena take place in Seville, I shouldn’t have been surprised to encounter it in Paris as well. It’s called culinary displacement, and it’s what happens when trendy new eateries burst on the scene, followed by thinly disguised corporate chains with low-priced pizza and hamburgers; the glut of options leaves traditional restaurants marginalized if not outright defunct. Lucky for me, Sevillanos have a long history of stubbornly clinging to their traditions, so there will always be classic neighborhood cervezerias around, although they’re getting harder to find in the tourist-filled city center. In Paris, according to food writer Alexander Lobrano, the situation is more dire. “Today, rather than being the ballast of the Paris restaurant landscape, ‘real’ bistros are now marketed as nostalgic curiosities where you often pay a steep price for the privilege of eating ‘real’ French food.” Mon Dieu, say it ain’t so!  One culinary consolation: the croissants we had in Paris were as buttery and flakey as ever. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. (The more things change, the more they stay the same.) The disappearance of bistros is appalling news for travelers — not only because we’re losing the opportunity to enjoy coq au vin and bœuf bourguignon in their native habitat, but because we'll have fewer opportunities to connect with what it means to be French. Part of the fun of visiting foreign lands is immersing yourself in the atmosphere, enjoying the spectacle of everyday life playing out in a way that’s profoundly characteristic of that particular place. It offers us illuminating glimpses of their culture and often teaches us something about our own. That’s not going to be happening so often in Paris these days, but I can assure you that large swaths of Europe remain untouched by culinary displacement. In Dijon, for instance, restaurant hours are as inflexible as Old Testament commandments. Stay open past 1:30 for lunch? Are you mad? The fact that hungry tourists are standing at the door waving fistfuls of euros doesn’t make anyone budge by so much as a nanosecond. Is this attitude annoying? Intensely. But it’s also very, very French.  In Dijon, don't even think of trying to get served outside of the regular hours. Americans and les Français have long lived in a state of mutual incomprehension. “In Paris,” said Mark Twain, “they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.” Is Paris a better place now, when we’ve convinced it to bow to economic necessity and offer us food we recognize, menus in English, and opening hours that suit our schedule? Spain is under considerable pressure to adapt to standard hours set by the European Union, and many northern cities have dispensed with the long mid-day break that allows time for lunch at home followed by a siesta, with work lasting later in the evening to compensate. Seville is stubbornly refusing to change, at least for now. Most businesses and shops still close for three hours at lunchtime and all day on Sunday, giving families and friends time to gather at home or meet up in neighborhood places like our favorite cerveceria. When our pollo al campo emerged from the oven, the chef himself carried it to our table and carved the bird for us. It was a true country chicken, sturdy rather than artificially plump, the dark meat a deep brown color, the skin glistening and crisp. It was served in an old-fashioned black pan, atop a mound of fried potatoes, the whole thing swimming in a sauce of chicken fat, wine, and salt. No doubt it was served in precisely the same way in the chef’s grandmother’s time. Rich raised his glass. “To Sevilla profunda,” he said. “About that topic for this week’s post,” I said. “I think I have an idea.” YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY Keep in touch by signing up for my mailing list!
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 Of all the phrases you don’t want to utter, “Wait, stop, I didn’t get my passport back!” is fairly high on the list. Not quite up there with “OK, I’ll throw myself on the grenade” but well above “The next round’s on me.” The realization that this essential travel document has disappeared is especially unwelcome when you’re jammed in a sweltering bus in the no-man’s-land between the border-control stations of Albania and Montenegro, and you’re fairly sure the guy who collected the passports doesn’t speak English. Selfishly, I could rejoice in the fact that the missing passport wasn’t mine or Rich’s, but I couldn’t help worrying for the young Dutch student who’d lost it. We’d been chatting with him and his girlfriend since our departure from Shkodër, Albania, swapping travel tales, learning about their studies in Amsterdam, explaining we were currently halfway through our Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour. As on other border crossings in the Balkans, the bus attendant collected all the passports and disappeared into the guard station while we waited on the bus. He eventually reappeared, handing the stack to the nearest passenger, who was supposed extract their own and pass the others along. As the Dutch couple, Rich, and I were sitting in the very back row, I was only too aware this provided ample opportunity for anyone on the bus to thumb through our personal travel information and/or pocket one of our passports.  More than 300,000 American passports are lost or stolen every year. When the last of the passports had been claimed and our seatmate’s wasn’t anywhere to be found, he alerted the bus attendant in a voice that was surprising free from hysteria and calmly ambled forward to sort out the problem. His insouciance became all the more remarkable when I learned later, after the passport had been found in the Albanian border station, that this would have been the third time he’d lost one. He told us that according to Dutch law, three lost passports means you won’t be issued another for five years — a life-changing possibility that he just shrugged off with a grin. “Didn’t happen. Why should I worry?” “This is what I love about traveling with young people,” Rich said as we waved goodbye to the Dutch couple in Podgorica. “They’re so adaptable.” Over dinner that night he returned to the subject. “You know, when you get older, you don’t always think as fast, so it’s natural to try and make your life as predictable as possible. You want to control everything around you. And you can’t. In fact, you can’t really control much of anything. The Buddhists know that, and so do most young people. Somehow we forget that truth as we age.” The subject of age came up a lot during the five months of our Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour. Six weeks into the trip Rich turned 75, and my 68th birthday came around the day after we returned home to Seville. We’ve finally accepted the fact we’re no longer spring or even summer chickens; we’re winter chickens. It’s a sobering thought, and one that seems easier to accept gracefully when we’re on the road. Life has a beautiful simplicity when you’re traveling. The fuss and clamor of everyday activities subsides. You don’t have to worry about going to meetings or fixing that leak in the roof or getting your cholesterol checked. The concerns and projects that propel our days go into hibernation for the duration. “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me,” wrote Jack Kerouak, “as is ever so on the road.” Of course, journeys bring their own challenges, including the kind of mind-stretching problem-solving exercises that keep our synapses firing. Forget Sudoku and Lumosity. Try figuring out the controls of a Greek washing machine, that streamlined Italian shower, or the Turkish coffee maker. Wrap your brain around the Cyrillic азбука (alphabet) or grapple with the fact your bus to Montenegro is marked Mali i Zi, the Albanian name for that country. Even the relatively simple task of fitting your life into a new Airbnb apartment gives your brain a brisk workout.  Our home away from home in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina Every time your brain does these kinds of mental push-ups, it strengthens some of its synapses, those 100 trillion minuscule gaps across which chemical messengers travel, enabling the brain to function. “In the last twenty years,” wrote John B. Arden in Rewire Your Brain, “there has been an overwhelming amount of evidence that the synapses are not hardwired but are changing all the time.” This characteristic, known as neuroplasticity, means that “the brain changes its synapses when you remember something new.” That’s right, you’re boosting your brain power every time you recall how to get from your hotel to that great little bar around the corner and then root around in your memory for clues about whether the local word for beer is birrë, cerveza, or pivo. We don’t have to go out of our way to find mental challenges on the road. Even if the Albanian customs officials don’t manage to misplace our passports, there are endless small hitches, glitches, and hiccoughs to contend with and a constant stream of new information to absorb. The good news is that every time you do remember route details, historical tidbits, or where you left the car keys in the new Airbnb, you can congratulate yourself on making your brain a little stronger and more youthful. My brain will never again be as flexible as those of the twentysomethings from Amsterdam we met on that bus, but my memory … wait, what was I saying? Just kidding. My memory is at its best when I travel, when I think and write about my journeys, and as I plan future trips. I can only assume that’s because I’m doing something right by my 100 trillion synapses. I am counting on them to do right by me in return. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY Don't miss a single loony adventure, travel tip, video, or recipe. Send me your email and I'll keep you updated.  We left Seville in the chilly, pre-dawn hours of April 20, 2019, each with a suitcase and a small shoulder bag. When we arrived back on the sweltering afternoon of September 28, our luggage weighed the same. As for us ... As you can imagine, returning home to Seville after five months on the road we’ve been bombarded with questions, including “Are you nuts?” and “Are you two going to stay put for a while?” (The answers are “Yes” and “Yes.”) But the two that always come up first are these:
After five months of gorging ourselves on the best comfort food Europe has to offer, the answer is — drumroll, please — we didn’t gain an ounce. Rich actually lost two pounds. As for me, I can’t provide hard numbers, because after a lifetime of slavishly tracking each tiny gain and loss, some years ago I decided to stop weighing myself altogether. My metric is whether I can button my skinniest jeans, and the answer to that is a definite yes.  As we circled the Mediterranean rim, it wasn't difficult to find plenty of healthy seafood, including this delicious lunch at Mare restaurant in Heraklion, Greece. Why didn’t all that good eating add to our avoirdupois? For one thing, we only ate heartily when we were on the trail of local comfort food; in between, we had salads, fish, and other light fare. We did twenty to thirty minutes of yoga most days. But mainly, we walked a lot. Rich calculates it was somewhere around 735 miles — the equivalent of strolling from New York to Nashville, or (for my European readers) doing the entire Camino de Santiago pilgrimage one and a half times. How did our shoes hold up? Sadly, only one of the two pairs I brought survived the trip. Somewhere in northern Greece, I started noticing feelings of mild dizziness; by the time I got to Albania, these spells were getting more frequent, annoying, and disquieting. Finally I realized the culprit was my comfy old sneakers. The soles were worn so slick they didn’t maintain proper traction on city sidewalks, and I was slipping and sliding a tiny bit with every step. Apparently this upset the equilibrium of my inner ear just enough to create a recurring sensation of dizziness. No, I don’t have a medical professional’s diagnosis to corroborate this. But I can tell you that as soon as I bought a new pair of sneakers the problem cleared up. That’s proof enough for me.  It turned out my comfy old sneakers slipping on the pavement caused my dizzy spells. Who knew that could happen? My old sneakers weren’t the only things we jettisoned along the way. Rich had a new t-shirt that rubbed irritatingly against his neck, and as the hottest summer in Europe’s history wore on, I parted with two long-sleeved t-shirts to make room for one sundress and then another. As minimalist packers, we follow the rule that buying anything means removing an item of equal bulk and weight from the suitcase. We never throw clothes away; instead, we leave them somewhere they’ll be found — usually sitting on top of a dustbin or bagged and hanging on the back of a restroom door in a train station or dive bar. I like to think these once-beloved possessions are now leading exciting lives with their new humans.  We were happy to have minimal luggage in this hotel room on the Greek island of Ikaria. My most dramatic discard involved a wardrobe malfunction in Kosovo. As regular readers will recall, Rich and I took a luggage-free side trip to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. I threw a nightgown and a few necessities into my purse, dressed in comfortable trousers and a fast-drying gauze blouse, and off we went on the overnight journey. We had a fabulous time, sampling mouthwatering Albanian tavë kosi, baked lamb in yogurt sauce, and watching people in tiny storefronts plying such old-school trades as sewing suits, resoling shoes, and repairing vacuum cleaners. That night I hand-washed my blouse and undergarments, and when I dressed the next morning, the bright light streaming in the hotel window made the gauze blouse look nearly translucent. When I remarked on this, Rich said, with true husbandly sympathy, “Nonsense. It’s fine.” Half an hour later, as we strolled the city sidewalks in search coffee, he turned to me and said, “Karen, it’s not fine. In fact, I can see right through your blouse. And so can everyone else.” Yikes! Apparently the repeated washings had proved too much for the delicate gauze, which was disintegrating before my eyes and the eyes of interested passersby.  My gauze blouse started the trip as my favorite shirt. Here we are enjoying a Freddo coffee in Thermaikos, one of the hippest café-bars in Thessaloniki, Greece. I dashed into the nearest store, where I began a nightmare shopping effort. Having seen hundreds, possibly thousands of attractive shirts in shop windows all through Greece and North Macedonia, those now confronting me were, without exception, hideously unacceptable. I’d have settled for an “I (heart) Kosovo” t-shirt had I found one, but I drew the line at a bare-midriff tank top sporting the “Hello, Kitty” logo. After visiting three or four equally discouraging shops, I finally purchased the ugliest turquoise t-shirt ever manufactured. But as Rich pointed out, at least I no longer risked creating an international incident by getting myself arrested for indecent exposure. As soon as we got back to North Macedonia and I was reunited with my other clothes, the gauze blouse and turquoise t-shirt were given their freedom. Among the other casualties of the trip were my bedroom slippers, which gradually stretched to the point that during the final weeks I was having difficulty keeping them on my feet. Note to self: Comfortably worn footwear might serve well for a few weeks, even a month or two on the road, but it simply can’t stand up to the demands of long-term use. Newer footwear, broken in to the point of comfort but still in its prime, is what I’ll shoot for in the future.  With the exception of my gauze blouse, all my clothes stood up well to the rigors of a series of quirky washing machines, including this drum-style washer in Dijon, France.  Wearing my Sarajevo sundress in Bologna, Italy Which brings me to the question about when we’re going to burn our trip clothes. The answer is: we’re not. In the past, we had “trip clothes” and “regular clothes,” but these days nearly everything we own is travel wear. With the exception of the stretched slippers, now earmarked for a charity shop, all the robust garments we carried home in our suitcases have resumed their rightful place in our everyday collection. Just last night, I went out to dinner in the sundress I bought one sweltering afternoon in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The bright flowers on the sturdy fabric will always remind me of that city’s extraordinary beauty and the resilience that sustained its people through desperately tough times. No, I won’t be burning that dress. Nor will I destroy any of the other clothes that served me faithfully during our Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour. They are reminders of grand adventures and have earned a place in my wardrobe. Unless of course, any of them become embarrassingly translucent, and then they’re history. Do you have wardrobe malfunction stories, tips for reliable travel shoes or clothing, or other packing suggestions to share? Please pass them along in the comments below. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY Our Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour 161 Days on the Road Distance traveled: 5,234 miles / 8,423 kilometers Countries visited: 10 Great meals: countless Weight gained: none Our current location: Home in Seville, Spain  Thanks for joining us on the journey.
 This Dijon vegetable seller's expression mirrors my own sentiments on attempting to come to grips with her city. “I like my gingerbread covered with pâté de foie gras, accompanied by a nice white wine.” As Philippe sighed with pleasure at the memory, I thought: “I will never get this town.” Dijon was the 36th city we’d stayed in during the last five months. Our Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour has taken us through Greece, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Italy, and now France. It’s been tremendous fun, but there have been challenges, too. I’ve had to learn to read bus schedules in the Cyrillic and Greek alphabets. We’ve stayed in so many places with hazardous stairs that it’s a wonder all our limbs are still intact. And while generally the food has ranged from good to fabulous, we’ve eaten a few dishes that we didn’t find easy, most especially the traditional raw horse meat served during race week in Asti, Italy. None of that put me off my stride. But I have finally met my match in Dijon.  I tried everything to boost my luck in Dijon, including touching the city's unofficial talisman, the wish-granting owl on the side of Notre Dame church. Did it help? Not so's you'd notice. Everyone assured us we’d love the food here, and Rich and I were eager to find a congenial spot to sample such local specialties as boeuf bourguignon, coq au vin, and escargots de Bourgogne. On Day One, we set off at 12:30 in search of these culinary marvels, but every eatery we passed was either utterly lacking in charm or bore a hand-written sign informing us they were closed for vacation. After wandering around for more than an hour, we finally stumbled into a place that looked promising, but the staff reacted with stares of incomprehension, gallic shrugs, and shooing motions encouraging us to leave at once. This little scene was replicated in three other restaurants, leaving us as bewildered as we were famished. It turns out that on weekdays in Dijon le déjeuner (lunch) is invariably served from 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm. Period. Who knew? If it wasn’t for a large supermarket in a downtown department store and a really excellent all-hours kabob house around the corner, we would have starved to death.  Our favorite meal at the kebob place was the chicken "taco" with yogurt sauce. When we weren’t out grubbing around for food, we tried to take in the sights, but a remarkable amount of our time in Dijon was spent staring at locked doors and signs reading fermé (closed). Take Saturday, for instance. Philippe, our guide on a very entertaining food tour, told us how lucky we were to be there during European Heritage Days to enjoy free admission to all the museums, palaces, and historic monuments — plus there was a second-hand market. What fun! However, by the time the tour was over and we’d stopped back at the apartment for a short rest, we returned to the city center only discover the market dismantled and every one of the museums, palaces, and monuments closed and locked. Despite such setbacks, we’ve managed to visit quite a few of the city’s most famous landmarks and enjoyed the city itself, especially the half-timbered houses, churches, and magnificent palaces built while the Dukes of Burgundy reigned there from the 9th century until 1477. On the food tour, Philippe introduced us to the city’s iconic mustard, its famous gingerbread, and the tradition of the 11:00 am aperitif, an alcoholic version of elevenses that included gougères (cheese puffs) and kir, a popular French cocktail of crème de cassis (blackcurrant liqueur) and white wine. At the colorful 19th century Les Halles Market, he showed us mouthwatering produce, cheese, meat, and poultry, including the famous blue-legged Bresse chickens sold with their heads still attached, a sign of quality intended to make it easier for you to fork over 28€ ($30) a kilo for what's said to be the most pricey chicken in Europe. “Yes they are expensive. But if you eat this, you really taste chicken,” Philippe assured us. The market’s central café, La Buvette, was jammed, yet Philippe somehow contrived to find us seats and produce platters of Beaufort cheese, salami, ham, bread, pickles, and a glass of delicious Macon chardonnay. On the tour, we’d learned that in Dijon one sits down to dinner between 7:00 and 7:30 pm. Armed with a recommendation from Philipe, Rich and I presented ourselves at an eatery called Dr. Wine promptly at 7:00. All the tables were reserved, the headwaiter informed us, but we could eat in the garden if we promised to leave before a late booking got there at 9:00. Wait, what? You could eat at 9:00 in this town? I have to admit, Dr. Wine’s food was very good indeed, served in small plates like the heartier kind of Spanish tapas. We started with escargots de Bourgogne, the famous Burgundy snails cooked with garlic, butter, and herbs. Our appetizer included six jumbo snails, a complicated metal grasping tool, and a delicate fork. It was all going well (by which I mean we hadn’t disgraced ourselves by sending any snails flying onto nearby tables) until I tried to eat my last escargot. I could see it, huddled in the inner depths of the shell, but the combined efforts of Rich, a passing waiter, and myself weren’t sufficient to winkle out the little critter. “Maybe the hour for eating snails has expired,” Rich suggested. No doubt that was the case. I let it rest in peace. Next we ate slivers of bread topped with two kinds of heavenly cheese, fresh apricots, and a bit of apricot preserve. This was followed by the famous boeuf bourguignon, a hearty beef stew simmered in the region’s trademark red wine. I’ve had this dish before, and Dr. Wine’s was by far the smoothest, richest version I’d ever tasted.  Dr. Wine's escargot, bread topped with cheese with apricot, and boeuf bourguignon were a real treat. “OK, I'm finally beginning to warm to this town,” I told Rich. “Don’t get attached,” he said. “We’re off to Paris in a few days.” Yes, time is getting short. We’re now on the final leg of our long journey, and after a whirlwind visit to the City of Lights, we’ll head south to Spain by rail. Due to the fast pace of the days ahead, I'm posting this earlier in the week than usual. We arrive in Seville on Saturday, which happens to be the day before my birthday. Whew! It’s been quite a ride. Once we’re home, I’m planning some serious down time, so don’t expect another post next week, or possibly the week after. Rich and I want to thank all of you so very much for joining us on the journey. Knowing you’re out there enjoying the stories and the recipes has inspired us every step of the way.  YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY  Blanquette de Lotte, anglerfish with mussels and vegetables, served with a view of the French Alps. “Deliciosa,” my guests all murmured politely. “Que maravilloso.” But it was pretty obvious they didn’t really think the dinner Rich and I had prepared was delicious or marvelous. In fact, having accepted the smallest possible servings, they mostly just pushed the food around on their plates as if hoping it would somehow contrive to disappear on its own. It was November of our second year living in Seville, and in a moment of tipsy bonhomie at a prior gathering, Rich and I had volunteered to fix a full Thanksgiving dinner for my painting class. They were thrilled. The idea they could actually sit down to this iconic American meal, one they’d watched in countless movies scenes, was intoxicating. Rich’s presentation of the turkey brought gasps of admiration. My explanation of each dish brought nods of recognition; yes, they’d seen mashed potatoes in that Woodie Allen film, on Friends, in that movie about close encounters with aliens. It was all perfect — until the moment they had to pick up a fork. Like most Sevillanos at that time, they ate nothing but traditional Spanish fare, and when presented with new foods, they literally couldn’t stomach them. In vain I pointed out that turkey was commonly sold in Seville’s markets, and that it was hardly distinguishable from chicken. Nobody believed for one second that Rich’s stuffing, a simple dish of coarsely chopped, day-old bread with a little seasoning, was essentially the same as Spanish migas, a traditional dish of coarsely chopped, day-old bread with a little seasoning. The only thing on the table they actually liked was the cranberry sauce. Why? Because it was utterly new, and they had nothing to compare it to, so they could judge it solely on its merits.  At Thanksgiving dinner 2018, Rich presents his traditional turkey with the help of Spanish and expat friends. How could anybody not love that bird? As an American, I was raised to view novelty in my diet as a good thing. Being a nation of immigrants, we find it fun to dine on Japanese-Peruvian ceviche nikkei one day and Ethiopian wat the next. Growing up in what’s now Silicon Valley, I take technology in stride and find nothing strange about enhanced superfoods or probiotic breakfast cereals. On the other hand, our standards are so flexible that we accept non-nutritive pseudo-foods laced with dangerous chemicals and additives; in fact, we pack them in kids’ lunchboxes every day. “America is a new country,” Martine pointed out over dinner in her smart, colorful apartment in the French alps. “In France, in Europe, it’s an old country and we have a long story. It’s a very big story. Since le Moyen Âge [Middle Ages] cooking has been very important everywhere in Europe. In the United States, it’s a new country, so you don’t have a story. So you teach differently and cook differently, and maybe it’s less important for you.” When I asked Martine about the story behind her cooking, she said that living in the high mountains, it was all about hearty fare for sustaining yourself through severe weather. Common comfort foods were designed to stick to your ribs: cheese fondu, diot (sausages), and crozets (a small, flat, square-shaped pasta). On that warm, mid-September evening, she was preparing something a bit lighter: Blanquette de Lotte, anglerfish with mussels and vegetables.  The meal began with tapenade and other appetizers on the terrace. Martine began developing her cooking skills at the age of ten. In a family that included a grandmother with nine children and 50 grandchildren, she was expected to pitch in and help. There were plenty of aunts around to instruct her in the culinary arts while her own mother was out working. Fortunately, Martine found she quite liked preparing food and later went on to take a cooking course at a well-known restaurant in the nearby town of Chambéry. Eventually she signed up with the private dining group EatWith. “You are our first EatWith guests,” she told me. I assumed that was because she’d joined only recently, but she explained she’d been on the website for two years. I was astonished; great food, breathtaking setting, wonderful hosts … what more could people possibly be looking for? Martine explained that most visitors zipped through Chambéry en route to the ski slopes. In fact, she and Patrick raised their eyebrows when Rich mentioned we’d booked five days there. Their voices murmured something polite, but their faces exclaimed, “But what do you do all day there?” In fact, Chambéry was my kind of town: peaceful, picturesque, and with plenty of good food. Chambéry was delightful, but Martine’s dinner was the unquestionable highlight of our stay. We began the evening on the terrace, admiring the view of Mont Granier and the Belledonnes, sipping a delicate rosé and nibbling on ham with melon, a cheese and anchovy spread, and tapenade. When Martine returned to the kitchen I followed, my phone’s video camera at the ready. Padding barefoot around her kitchen, she managed to seem quite calm while moving from one task to another so quickly I could barely keep up. The Blanquette de Lotte was possibly the heartiest fish dish I’ve ever eaten: thick slabs of luscious anglerfish with succulent mussels and a sauce of broth, egg yolks, and crème fraiche. The conversation ranged over everything from travel to families to the art of table setting. Naturally we touched upon the region’s famous role as the original power base of the House of Savoy, a royal family that used diplomacy, economic skill, and shrewd marriages to maintain its influence over world events from 1003 to 1946. By the time dessert came around, the four of us were chatting like old friends. “This is amazing,” I said, spooning up the last of my baked apple stuffed with crème fraiche and topped with vanilla ice cream. “I can’t stop eating!” Martine grinned. “I never meet American people who don’t like to eat. You all like to eat. You are very curious and you like to eat.” And when you think about it, that may be America’s finest gift to world cuisine. Our culinary traditions are all over the place. We have to maintain constant vigilance to keep pernicious corporations from sneaking harmful substances into our diets. Most of us don’t know a sous vide precision cooker from a masticating juicer. But we are enthusiastic omnivores who aren’t afraid to try something new. Oh sure, that can lead us astray when it comes to dubious offerings such as Koolickles (pickles brined in Kool-Aid). But it also gives us the courage to get out there and connect with people around the world, knowing that with luck, we'll discover something to love in the dishes that their ancestors cherished and handed down for centuries. WANT TO TRY MARTINE'S MOUTHWATERING (YET SIMPLE) RECIPES?  Where are we now? Dijon, France As you may have guessed, we're in the final phase of Our Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour. Just 10 more days to go! Don't miss the ultimate loony travel tales or the post-return stories about how our clothes held up (some good news and bad news there) and what we've learned from all our varied adventures. Sign up to receive updates and more recipes.  Carlotta’s flourless hazelnut cake with Moscato zabaione sauce Want a simple, sure-fire way to break the ice with strangers? Try committing a social faux pas! Rich and I proved the effectiveness of this method yet again last Saturday night when we showed up at a dinner in Turin, Italy with a bottle of white wine as a hostess gift. I’d chilled it in our rental apartment’s refrigerator and now pulled it out of the bag to present it with our compliments. “Oh my God,” exclaimed Rich. “We brought the wrong wine.” In my haste, I’d grabbed the bottle we’d sampled two nights earlier. I was mortified. An unopened bottle of wine says, “Thanks for your hospitality.” I’m not quite sure what a partially drunk bottle says. “We’re barbarians who don’t know the first thing about social niceties” perhaps? Fortunately for us, Carlotta and Paolo were extremely relaxed and easygoing hosts; as we fell all over ourselves apologizing, they just laughed and kept reassuring us it was fine. Meanwhile, Carlotta started handing around glasses of Rocca dei Forti, a delicious, dry, sparkling white wine. “Would you like to try it with a little vermouth?” she asked. Turin is proud of having invented vermouth back in the 18th century, and locals like to incorporate it in drinks whenever possible. We agreed at once and found that adding vermouth gave the flavor a pleasant depth.  Paolo and Carlotta We’d connected with Carlotta and Paolo via EatWith, aka “the Airbnb of dining,” a website that enables you to find local chefs offering private meals in their own homes. You review the menu, check available dates, alert them about any food restrictions, and book and pay in advance online. I love this feature, because it lets you arrive at the dinner without any pesky worries about having correct change or deciding whether it’s really worth another ten bucks for a handful of cookies or figuring out how much you should tip when your math skills are dampened by vino excessivo. A few days earlier, browsing the EatWith site, I’d said to Rich, “This one sounds fabulous. Salami and cheese with truffle honey … risotto with sausage … that weird dish we tried in Cuneo, the veal with tuna we liked so much … and for dessert? Hazelnut cake with a sauce I can’t pronounce.” “You had me at risotto,” he said. “Sign us up.” I sent Carlotta a note explaining that we were on a Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour and asking if we could come early and film the cooking. She kindly agreed, and even though we knew wine was included in the meal, we thought we’d show up with a bottle as an extra courtesy to express our gratitude. Oh well, as they say, man plans, and God laughs. Fortunately, God wasn’t the only one laughing that night. The combination of Carlotta’s wine and our little icebreaker soon had us all talking and chuckling like old friends. Note to self: Perhaps make a point of doing something idiotic at the start of every EatWith dinner? Additional note to self: No need to make an effort, this is likely to happen all on its own.  The evening began with a traditional antipasto of olives, cheese, salami, and ham. Black and green olives accompanied our wine-and-vermouth aperitif, along with some of the slender breadsticks known as grissini wrapped in prosciutto di Parma (cured ham). Carlotta then produced a platter with local salamis and cheeses, slivers of golden pear, and two sauces — grape compote and honey with truffles — which combined divinely with the cheese. We learned that Paolo was an architect, and that Carlotta had a small tour guide business called Torino Discovery which, in addition to traditional sightseeing, offers market tours, vermouth tastings, and chocolate sampling expeditions. Carlotta asked where we’d eaten in Turin so far, and I mentioned we had our eye on one with the tongue-in-cheek name Santa Polenta. Carlotta and Paolo cracked up. “What?” I asked. “Here in Turin, that’s an expression you use when you want to swear, but need to make it a mild swear,” explained Carlotta. Ah, the local equivalent of drat or gadzooks! That should come in handy. (Incidentally we did make it to Santa Polenta a few days later; see the photos below.) The conversation naturally revolved around food, and Carlotta confided that she’d had a passion for cooking since she was a young girl. Which made it especially challenging when she learned she’d have to give up gluten altogether. “At first,” she told me, “when I was diagnosed with celiac disease, I thought it was the end. Not only of my good eating, but also of my cooking. But actually, I would say it was a blessing in disguise. Because it helped me to look at things in a different way. And to adjust recipes, even traditional recipes, and to do more research about the science that is behind baking especially, and about cooking in general. All in all it was something that made me progress in my cooking, in my passion, and in my knowledge.” Her skill and passion became abundantly evident as I watched her prepare the centerpiece of the meal: risotto with sausage. It’s so simple and delicious I’ve promised to make it for Rich as soon as we’re back in our own kitchen.  The wine for the zabaione sauce is measured using a half eggshell. [Get Carlotta’s Risotto with Sausage recipe here.] Along with the wonderful risotto, we ate vitel tonnè, thin slices of cold roast veal dressed in a creamy, slightly salty sauce flavored with tuna, a summer favorite in the region. And then, just when I was sure I couldn’t consume another mouthful, it was time for dessert. “My hazelnut cake is of course flourless,” Carlotta said. “And really quite simple. It has just three ingredients: hazlenuts, eggs, and sugar. On top I put Moscato Zabaione. Would you like to watch me make this sauce?” Leaving Paolo and Rich chatting at the table, Carlotta and I went into the kitchen, where she proceeded to put egg yolks and sugar in one of those fancy food processors that can also heat the food, a local brand similar to Thermomix. “I use one egg yoke and one tablespoon of sugar per person,” she said, “And for every egg yoke, I add one eggshell of Moscato.” And with that she picked up a half eggshell and used it to measure the sweet Moscato d'Asti dessert wine into the mix. “I make sure the machine heats it enough to destroy any bacteria but not cook the egg.” In minutes she had a thick, sweet, creamy sauce ready to serve.  Carlotta used Moscato d'Asti to flavor the zabaione sauce that she drizzled over the flourless hazelnut cake. [Get Carlotta’s Flourless Hazelnut Cake with Moscato Zabaione recipe here.] Rich and his sweet tooth were in their glory. “This is incredible,” he said, finishing his own piece and eyeing the remains of mine. I had slowed to a halt, having reached my optimal consumption capacity back at the risotto and vitel tonnè stage. I passed my plate to him and he tucked in with a happy sigh. “You see?” Carlotta grinned. “You can eat a full Italian meal that is good just as a gluten-y meal.” Santa Polenta, ain't that the gospel truth! What's your definition of Italian comfort food? Let me know in the comments below. Unlike some of my better-organized and more practical blogger friends, I never accept free goods, services, or fees in return for promoting anything on this blog. Everything I write about is included solely because I believe you might find it interesting and useful for planning your own adventures. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY  Where are we now? Turin, Italy Where are we heading next? The French Alps Our Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour Continues! Don't miss a single loony adventure or mouthwatering recipe. Sign up to receive updates.  Tagliatelle al ragù at Trattoria Tony in Bologna, Italy  Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano couldn't survive in space without a taste of home. One of the many things I loved about living in Cleveland was Little Italy, a neighborhood where you could always find outstanding pasta, veal piccata, and Chianti, often served family style with a side of accordion music. A friend took us down there and introduced us to Angelo, owner of Nido Italia (The Italian Nest) in the old Brotherhood Loan Association building across from Holy Rosary Church. Rich and I went there often to eat homemade spaghetti and slow dance to songs made famous by Frank Sinatra. The mix of romance and mouthwatering goodness has made Italian cuisine a favorite just about everywhere on the planet, from your neighborhood pizza parlor to Antarctica — proof that, as one blogger put it, “in a culinary sense at least, the Romans managed to take over the world.” And its reach is still expanding. A few years ago, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano persuaded the International Space Station to provide the crew with a dinner that reminded him of home: lasagna, risotto, parmigiana, and tiramisu re-engineered for travel into space. Luca may have found the meal comforting, but I have to confess I consider the idea of reconstituted freeze-dried tiramisu outright horrifying. Having spent the last few weeks savoring Northern Italy’s splendid cuisine, I know it’s all about fresh, local ingredients, recipes passed down for generations, and hands-on preparation in a kitchen that smells of tomato and basil. Somehow I doubt the International Space Station managed to include any of that. Rich and I got to talking about how our Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour has really upped our appreciation of good food. And that’s when it occurred to us how easy it would be for our readers to do much the same thing on a smaller scale — say ten days to two weeks in Northern Italy. It’s the ideal place to create your own Comfort Food Tour. One glance at the map reveals a cluster of cities synonymous with great eats, such as Bologna, home of Bolognese sauce; Modena, familiar to anyone who uses balsamic vinegar; and Parma, which gave the world Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and prosciutto di Parma. In addition to the famous foodie cities, the region has countless lesser-known towns making mouthwatering contributions to the pleasures of the table.  A map showing some of the food specialties in Northern Italy Google “food Northern Italy” and the culinary treasures of the region pop up. The efficient train system makes it easy to travel from city to city, often in trips lasting just 30 to 40 minutes and costing less than 10€. You may find it convenient to stay in one city and take day trips to the others. Here are a few towns you might want to put on your short list. Trieste Arriving from Croatia, we had a one-night stopover in Trieste, and Rich consulted one of his favorite apps, Triposo, to research nearby eateries. When we arrived at the cozy Trattoria alla Valle we discovered there was no menu and the proprietor only spoke two words of English: “pasta” and “fish.” Fortunately for us, both were delightful. Parma This ancient city offers an astonishing array of pastas, salumi (cured meat) such as prosciutto di Parma (ham), and cheeses including the iconic Parmigiano-Reggiano. To get a grip on places with this kind of overabundance, I like to connect with a food-savvy local via a cooking class, food tour, or EatWith (dinners in private homes). Cooking instructor Stefania gave us great food and lots of inside info; see my post The Secret Life of Parmesan Cheese for some of what she shared. Modena I’ve owned countless bottles of supermarket balsamic vinegar. Now, thanks to Stefania and to Cristina at La Consorteria 1966 in Modena, I know the difference between that and the decades-old, barrel-aged version. It’s nearly as thick and dark as molasses, and the tangy-sweet flavor enhances everything from salad to (gasp!) ice cream. Bologna We arrived to find the lovely city of Bologna overrun with tourists during the final days of everyone’s August vacation. In such situations, there’s one sure-fire remedy: we stand with our backs to the cathedral and walk for ten minutes in just about any direction, knowing we’ll wind up someplace more interesting, less crowded, and more affordable. And that’s how we discovered the unpretentious Trattoria Tony. Tony welcomed us with free mortadella (the grandfather of bologna sausage, aka boloney). To try the city’s iconic pasta sauce, we'd heard you don’t order spaghetti bolognese but rather tagliatelle al ragù: broad, flat noodles with a slow-cooked meat sauce flavored with tomato. Deliziosa! Piacenza This overlooked little city has gorgeous old architecture, a mellow vibe, and a cuisine as good as its neighbors’ (which is saying something!). Their signature dish is pisarei e fasö, little dumplings and borletto beans seasoned with tomato sauce and bacon. What a treat! To sample the city’s famous prosciutto, we visited the meat store Macelleria Callegari, where for some reason the proprietor was inspired to fake driving a giant meat cleaver into my head. Butcher humor! Asti Most famous in the US for Asti Spumanti sparkling wine, Asti is also host to the wild bareback horserace called the Palio di Asti, in which local parishes have competed since the 13th century. Caterina, a member of the Ribero family who run the Hotel Lis where we stayed, managed to finagle us invitations to the pre-race banquet staged by the Cattedrale (Cathedral) parish. We were deep in conversation with Cattedrale supporters when the appetizer arrived at the table: horse tartare, a popular local delicacy. “These guys really know how to work a theme,” I whispered to Rich. He and I agreed, with tremendous reluctance, that the demands of hospitality required us to eat at least some of it. How was it? Much like steak tartar. I'll never know for sure, but perhaps this sacrifice on our part contributed some positive karma and was part of the reason for Cattedrale’s victory the next day — their first in 42 years. After the race, Rich and I celebrated at the Campanaro Restaurant with a horse-free meal, concluding with a local specialty, Pesche Ripieno all’ Amaretto (Peaches Stuffed with Amaretto Cookies and Chocolate). In a city famous for sweet, sparkling wines, you can’t discuss dessert without discussing dessert wines, and at our host’s suggestion, we tried a rich Moscato d’Asti. [See the recipe for Pesche Ripieno all’ Amaretto (Peaches Stuffed with Amaretto Cookies and Chocolate).] For readers who want an excuse to try some good dessert wines (not that any excuse is needed), I’m providing recipes for two of Asti’s most renowned dishes: Campanaro’s Pesche Ripieno all’ Amaretto and from Caterina at the Hotel Lis, her version of Nocciole Cake. Both recipes naturally include wine suggestions. [See the recipe for Caterina's Cake.] Every Comfort Food Tour is different, and you certainly don’t have to eat horse or rabbit or ham to discover the joy of sharing a meal at an Italian table — whether that meal is in Italy itself, your home town, or wherever your travels take you. As the Italians say, “A tavola non si invecchia,” at the table you never grow old. In fact, being at the table, surrounded by good food, family, old friends, new friends, and the memories of other wonderful meals — that’s when we truly come alive. Have you been to any towns in Italy that you'd include in a Comfort Food Tour? What impressed you most about the cuisine there? Let me know in the comments below. Unlike some of my better-organized and more practical blogger friends, I never accept free goods or services in return for promoting anything on this blog. Everything I write about is included solely because I believe you might find it interesting and useful for planning your own adventures. WHERE ARE WE NOW? CUNEO, ITALY  Our Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour Continues!
Don't miss a single loony adventure or mouthwatering recipe. Sign up to receive updates.  Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese is the pride of Parma, the neighboring city of Reggio Emilia, and the surrounding region of northern Italy. Hosting dinner parties in a foreign country provides abundant opportunities for pitfalls, pratfalls, and faux pas. I often recall with a shudder one particular night, shortly after we moved to Seville, when I passed around a cheese platter only to have my Spanish guests throw back their heads and howl with laughter. I stared at the platter, which contained an apparently innocent collection of Manchego and cheddar, crackers, and one of the cheese knives that came with the cutting board I’d bought the day before. The farmer next to me was among the first to recover his equanimity, and as he sat wiping his eyes with a cocktail napkin, I asked what the fuss was all about. “This,” he said, holding up my new cheese knife, “is what we use for castrating the pigs.” And off he went into even greater paroxysms of merriment. I offered to fetch another knife, but my guests wouldn’t hear of it, chortling softly and exchanging amused glances every time they passed the platter. Needless to say, that knife was retired to the back of the drawer, never to be seen again. Until last Wednesday evening, when its twin showed up in the hand of my hostess at a dinner in Parma, Italy. This, I soon learned, was a tagliagrana, whose drop-shaped blade is perfectly designed to break hard cheeses into shards — ideal for serving the region’s most famous product, Parmigiano-Reggiano. Having grown up shaking pre-grated parmesan out of a green tube, I had never seen anyone use a tagliagrana. As an adult I’ve had plenty of genuine Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese in stuff and on stuff, but I’d never thought of it as a stand-alone appetizer. So it wasn’t until Wednesday’s dinner — when my hostess, Stefania, cut off small chunks and drizzled them with her homemade balsamic vinegar — that I realized what I’d been missing.  In the EU, the familiar green Kraft canisters are labelled “Parmasello.” Parmigiano-Reggiano, “the king of cheeses,” is the pride of Parma, the neighboring city of Reggio Emilia, and the surrounding region of northern Italy. European law protects the name and strictly defines the region where it can legitimately be produced. Other areas of the world (yes, USA, I’m thinking of you) aren’t bound by these laws, and they can — and do —call just about anything “parmesan.” Production and quality vary wildly, and cheap cheddar, Swiss, or mozzarella are often added for bulk. A scandal erupted a few years ago when authorities finally noticed that Castle Cheese and others major producers were adding hefty amounts of cellulose — that’s powdered wood pulp, in plain English — to their so-called parmesan. That’s not the way to add fiber to your diet!  According to Italian law, to be called Parmigiano-Reggiano, the cheese must be produced in the Italian provinces of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Bologna (only the area to the west of the river Reno), Modena, and Mantua (in Lombardy, but only the area to the south of the river Po). Over dinner, Stefania described how true Parmigiano-Reggiano is produced, a process that has remained essentially unchanged for more than 800 years. There are only three ingredients: milk from cows raised in the designated region on local fodder, salt, and calf rennet (a natural bovine enzyme that helps curds form). The milk must be used fresh, within hours of milking. Cheese is produced in 37-kilo (81.5-pound) wheels that are soaked in a salt bath to aid preservation, then stacked in aging rooms for one to three years. “But you and Rich should see this for yourselves,” Stefania said. As it happened she was taking house guests to a local cheese producer called Consorzio Produttori Latte the very next morning. It didn’t take much persuasion to get us to join the party. After the tour, we stopped in a small village to see Stefania’s country home and sample more of her homemade balsamic vinegar, which is aging gracefully in the airy attic in the customary manner. Italian law protects the most famous labels such as Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena (Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena), enforcing such restrictions as age (at least 12 years) and additives (none). You probably won’t be surprised to learn that American brands labeled “balsamic vinegar,” even those specifying “barrel aged in Modena, Italy,” are often juvenile liquids containing corn syrup, guar gum, and/or worse. Stefania’s nine-year-old vinegar-in-training was an explosion of brash flavor in the mouth, where the 21-year-old vintage was nearly as thick, dark, and tangy-sweet as molasses. The real highlight of our time with Stefania was dinner in her Parma home. After the Parmigiano-Reggiano, we enjoyed the famous Prosciutto di Parma, cured ham sliced so thin you could see through it, with flavor slightly sweeter and less salty than prosciutto from other regions. Dinner included local tomatoes, eggplant, and borettana onions, a squat, sweet variety that’s been grown in the nearby town of Boretto since the 15th century. There was creamy veal scallopini in lemon sauce. But the absolute star of the show was the succulent Coniglio alla Cacciatora (Hunter-style Rabbit). [See recipe for Coniglio alla Cacciatora (Hunter-style Rabbit).] Rabbit is popular on dinner tables in Seville, too. When I first moved there, I was horrified to see the furry bodies of lifeless bunnies hanging by their paws in the local butcher shops. When I asked a friend why they didn’t prepare them for sale in the ordinary way, skinned and trimmed, she explained the custom dated back to the Hunger, the lean years after the Spanish Civil War when nobody had enough to eat. “It’s so you know it’s not cat,” she told me. Enough said. I’ve vowed to learn to cook rabbit someday, and now that I have Stefania’s recipe, I’m ready to give it a try. Those of you who can’t warm to the idea of rabbit for supper will be happy to hear the recipe works just as well with chicken. (Or you can make it with rabbit and tell the kids it’s chicken.) Whatever you bring to the table, be sure to preface the meal with a few chunks of genuine Parmigiano-Reggiano, chopped with a tagliagrana — which with any luck at all, your friends and family won’t associate with anything but the pleasures of perfectly delicious cheese at a homemade Italian dinner. Unlike some of my better-organized and more practical blogger friends, I never accept free goods or services in return for promoting anything on this blog. Everything I write about is included solely because I believe you might find it interesting and useful for planning your own adventures. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY Our Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour Continues! Don't miss a single loony adventure or mouthwatering recipe. Sign up to receive updates.   Rich whirls me around the dance floor in front of the bandstand in Zagreb Croatia's Zrinjevac Park. Photo: Lidija Šulevski Remember the chicken dance? The one where you flap your wings and shake your tail feathers? When was the last time you did it walking down the street in a foreign city? Yeah, I can’t remember either; maybe never — until last Monday night in Zagreb, Croatia. That’s when Rich and I heard the chicken dance song coming from the bandstand in Zrinjevac Park and found it too infectious to resist. Fortunately for what remains of my dignity, we weren’t the only ones flapping wings and shaking tail feathers down the sidewalk, under the amused gazes of passing drivers and fellow pedestrians. We hurried toward the bandstand, coming to roost just as the tune ended. No matter. There’s music every night this week and next, mostly foot-taping golden oldies like the Drifters’ “Under the Boardwalk” and I-love-this-one heartwarmers like Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World. The first time we went, Rich and I settled at one of the tiny wooden tables placed around the bandstand and looked around at the small crowd. On a nearby lawn, kids were chasing each other through the twilight, jugglers were practicing under the trees, and women on park benches were languidly cooling their faces with paper fans. Beneath the lights strung in the branches overhead, people were dancing. And pretty soon, we were too.  Hazy on the steps? The thoughtful planners laid out patterns so people could practice. All day long you see people trying out the moves. “It feels like Hometown, USA,” I said to Rich. “It’s like the best part of every summer I can remember.” That nostalgia was precisely what city officials were trying to spark when they started the Zagreb Time Machine project, which for many years has sponsored summer dances, street theater, and other public entertainments designed to “bring the romantic spirit of past times to life.” I’d somehow missed all the other activities but fell instantly in love with the Dance Evenings. Zagreb’s Time Machine is set to the mid-20th century, but local history dates back a great deal farther than that. The city was founded in Roman times, expanded during the medieval and industrial eras, survived Nazi occupation, became an economic powerhouse in the former Yugoslavia, and today serves as the capital of independent Croatia — to mention but a few highlights. Through all the changes, one thing has proved constant: this is a city that loves its comfort food.  Mladen and Lidija bring in fresh skuša riba (mackerel) at the 2016 EatWith dinner where we first met. When Rich and I reconnected with Lidija and Mladen, Croatian friends we’d met during an EatWith dinner during our 2016 visit to the city, we told them about our Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour. They instantly responded with a flood of suggestions about what we should be eating while we’re in town. "Strukli, of course," Lidija mused aloud. "And mlinci. Have you tried deer goulash? The best place to find such dishes is Zagorje." Setting off in Mladen's car, we soon found ourselves on the winding roads of Zagorje, a rural area north of Zagreb that needed no government-funded entertainments to give the impression we'd traveled backward in time. Around each curve we discovered families raising cows, grapes, and corn on small farms in sleepy valleys presided over by Medieval castles. “This was the center of the Peasant Revolution of 1573. It all started right here,” Lidija told me. “The nobility demanded that each family contribute food to them. People were living on the edge of hunger, but the lord had an army, and they had to pay. Like today we are forced to pay taxes. So the peasants staged a revolt. It lasted only 12 days. And they took the leader of the rebellion, Matija Gubec, and said to him, ‘You wanted to be king. Here is your crown.’ And they put upon his head an iron crown that was heated red-hot in the fire.” Yikes! “And then they tore him into four pieces.” Quadruple yikes! Gubec became a folk hero, inspiring various political movements, the first Croatian rock opera, and Josip Broz Tito, who was born in a humble Zagorje farmhouse and went on to become president of Yugoslavia. As you can imagine, Zagorje’s cuisine is designed to fortify hard-working agricultural families attempting to subsist on what’s left after the powerful have taken the lion’s share of everything produced on the land. Traditional fare is hearty, made from fresh, inexpensive local ingredients, and bristling with the fats and carbs you’d need for long hours of physical labor. Not exactly health food, but it is a glorious indulgence you’ll never regret. “Here we will eat štrukli,” said Lidija, pulling up at a 1938 country inn called Villa Zelenjak Ventek. When the staff learned this was to be our first tasting of štrukli, Dora, a young, English-speaking manager, arrived to tell us about the treat in store. It seems you make a basic dough, roll it so thin that it completely covers the tabletop, stuff it with a mix of cottage cheese, eggs, sour cream, and salt, and bake it into a sort of cheese strudel. Dora kindly shared photos and the recipe, so that I could pass the legendary dish on to my readers. [See štrukli recipe and photos here.] After lunch, we worked off a few calories strolling around Kumrovec, a charming village of restored nineteenth-century homes centered around Tito’s birthplace and a museum honoring his legacy. While many regarded him as a ruthless dictator, others look back with what’s now known as “Yugonostalgia,” fond memories of simpler times when everyone had a job, a place to live, and enough to eat. “Were you better off then?” I asked Lidija. “In many ways, yes,” she said, with a philosophical shrug. “Things are much harder for us now.” Our final stop of the day was Gresna Gorica, a rustic restaurant nestled in vineyards below the fairytale towers of Veliki Tabor castle. Sitting outside among the vines, we sampled lard laced with bacon, cottage cheese topped with crème fraiche, deer goulash, beans drizzled with pumpkin seed oil, and duck served over something called mlinci, a mysterious dish that appeared to be pasta but inexplicably wasn’t. I may have been a bit muddled by the staggering heat and the natural exhaustion following a day’s vigorous sightseeing, but I simply couldn’t seem to grasp Lidija’s explanation of how mlinci is prepared. It’s a kind of bread and you boil it? Really? “Come to my house and I will make it for you,” Lidija said. “Then you will see how it works.” How good was it? It was so yummy Rich and I started doing the chicken dance right there at the dinner table. Luckily our Croatian friends were familiar with this silly tradition, so they didn’t think we were completely insane. (Or if they did, they were too polite to say so.) We all stuffed ourselves and then sat for a long time, blissfully picking over the remains of the mlinci. [Get mlinci recipe here.] “One thing is clear,” I said to Rich said on the way home. “If we’re going to keep eating like this, we’re going to have to do the chicken dance a lot more often.” Rich just made happy clucking sounds and kept on walking.  See all posts about the Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour. See all recipes and videos. Don't miss a single loony adventure or the next mouthwatering recipe. Sign up below for updates. Thanks for joining us on the journey.
 At Balkan dinners, Bey's Soup is often the star attraction. “Bey’s Soup is the ultimate comfort food of the Balkans,” Dalida told me, as she began chopping onions. “We eat it in every season, at the holidays, for special occasions — all the time really.” “Who is Bey?” I asked. “Ah, that would be Gazi Hüsrev Bey,” she said, smiling the way you do when someone mentions your absolutely most favorite uncle. “Bey was his title; it means governor. Gazi Hüsrev Bey was the great benefactor of Sarajevo.” You can’t spend more than a few hours in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, without hearing about this man. His name is still, respectfully, on the tip of every tongue — which is not bad considering he lived 500 years ago, in the dark ages before social media. Hüsrev came from money and power, grandson to one sultan, and after a string of successes on the battlefield, chosen by another — Suleiman the Magnificent — to govern Bosnia for the Ottoman Empire. As fans of Game of Thrones know only too well, wealthy titled grandsons and war heroes don’t always make the best rulers. But to this day, Gazi Hüsrev Bey is generally viewed as a mix of Santa Claus, Jack Bauer, and the prime minister played by Hugh Grant in Love Actually. In other words, exactly the right person for the job. On Hüsrev’s watch, Sarajevo became known as “a flower among cities.”  Art on the wall of the school commissioned by Gazi Hüsrev Bey in Sarajevo Walking around the city this past week, I have been astonished at the scope of the Bey’s projects. He not only built a gorgeous mosque but helped finance the Old Orthodox Church and a Franciscan monastery. Rich and I visited the school he founded (originally for boys, although later open to all) with plenty of scholarships and an emphasis on “the rational and traditional sciences.” Nearby we saw the Bey’s library, housing the most important collection of manuscripts in the country, many from Hüsrev’s personal collection. He built public bath houses, drinking fountains, parks, and a caravansary where visitors to the city could stay for several days for free; sadly this last is no longer in operation and Rich and I had to pay for an Airbnb. I was staggered to discover that the public toilet he’d had installed in 1530 is still in operation, and I felt I owed it to my readers to pop in for a look around so I could report on its condition. You’ll be glad to know that the plumbing has been upgraded since the Bey’s day. There are stalls, clean ceramic squat toilets, modern sinks, and an optional donation tin.  The sign explains the WC was built in 1530, destroyed in 1992 [first year of the Siege of Sarajevo], and rebuilt in 2001. The Bey also fed his people. “He opened a soup kitchen, a free place to eat,” Dalida told me, as she finished chopping the vegetables and brought out a large soup pot. “It was meant for the poor, but the food was so good everyone went. They say even Gazi Hüsrev Bey himself ate there.” Dalida and I were in the kitchen of her friend and employer, Uliana, co-founder of Balkantina, a small company organizing food tours and cooking classes out of a gourmet shop behind the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Sarajevo. Rich and I had dropped by the shop one day, and when Uliana heard about our Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour, she invited us to her home to see Begova Čorba (Bey’s Soup) prepared as part of a traditional Bosnian dinner. When we arrived at her apartment, Uliana welcomed us with a platter of cheese, tomatoes, paper-thin ham, olive oil, and honey. “We always begin with a meze plate,” she explained. “And of course, rakija.” The traditional tiny servings of high-octane, homemade fruit brandy were poured and we toasted the occasion. After we’d nibbled our honey-dipped cheese, sipped our rakija, and been introduced to Uliana’s enormous Maine coon cat, Max, Dalida showed me the first, most characteristic ingredient in Bey’s Soup: a long string of dried okra. Now, I’ve had okra dishes that I loved, but I’ve run across a few that, as one writer so delicately expressed it, had the consistency of snot. Not to worry, it turns out that dried okra, commonly sold hereabouts on a string, eliminates sliminess, leaving a delicious vegetable bursting with vitamins and minerals. (If you’re pregnant or have asthma, high cholesterol, diabetes, or a compromised immune system, check out the medical benefits of okra.) No dried okra in your supermarket? Here’s how to dry it in your home oven.  In the Balkans, okra is usually dried and sold on a string about a meter long . Bey’s Soup likes to simmer as long as possible, an hour and a half at least. While Dalida’s pot bubbled away on the stove, filing the air with the scent of onion, chicken, okra, and lemon, she whipped up a batch of dolmas (grape leaves and small yellow peppers stuffed with ground beef and rice). Then she tossed together a salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, and sour cream. By this time the soup had simmered sufficiently, and she removed the chicken from the bone and thickened the broth with a roux. Dinner was ready. The results were marvelous, a thick, delicious chicken soup for the body and soul. Just the sort of food to nourish a weary traveler newly arrived in the city, yet fit for any special occasion, such as getting to know new friends. Did Gazi Hüsrev Bey ever actually eat this soup? Who knows? But like the city of Sarajevo itself, Bey’s Soup will forever stand as a testimony to his generosity. And I like to think he would have enjoyed knowing that. One year into his reign, he set up a vakuf (endowment) to make sure the city would have the policies and funds it needed to keep his legacy going. Part of that document says: "Good deeds cause evil to flee, and the loftiest of all good deeds is charity. The loftiest of all charities is the one that lasts forever, while the most beautiful of all good deeds is the one that keeps on giving.... The efficacy of the vakuf will persist for as long as this world exists, and its work will continue until Judgment Day.” Not all the Bey’s good works are intact; the bath house and free lodgings closed long ago, and the school and library have relocated to larger quarters. But it’s pretty clear that if anything can survive until Judgement Day, it’s the pleasure of sitting down to a nice warm bowl of Bey’s Soup. Want to try this at home? Get Bey's Soup Recipe here. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY SOME OF MY OTHER FAVORITE COMFORT FOODS AND THESE STORIES ABOUT REMARKABLE PEOPLE Trying to recall exactly where Sarajevo is?  See all posts about the Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour. See all recipes and videos. Don't miss a single loony adventure or the next mouthwatering recipe. Sign up below for updates. Thanks for joining us on the journey. |
I'm an American writer living in Seville, Spain and traveling the world with my husband, Rich. We've recently completed a five-month Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour, exploring the world's favorite cuisine to discover more about European culture — and our own. Send me your email and I'll send you more on the journey and what we learned about packing, comfort, and food. Try the comfort food recipes I've collected in 10 countries. OUR CURRENT LOCATION: SEVILLE, SPAIN 
Karen McCann
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