Re-Creating Dishes From a Trip!

We all already know that my trip to Europe changed my life; I don't need to repeat that ad nauseum. I'm a bit of a foodie, I don't deny it. And certain things throughout my trip to Italy - some new discoveries and some old favorites - really hit me, hit me so hard that I felt the need to come back here and recreate them. Obviously, nothing can change the way these things tasted while there, made by the people who know what they're doing. But here are some of the things I've tried to recreate and how I've tried to do it.

I've tried to recreate that perfect Roman pizza (see picture, click for full-size). I even bought a pizza stone to even out the crust. I buy pizza dough at Trader Joe's and also their basic canned tomato sauce - which even got my mom's stamp of approval (she makes her own from scratch). But it came out better with their imported Italian Tomato Sauce in a box. Really yummy authentic taste. Whenever we made pizza growing up, we'd put on sharp cheddar and plenty of parmesan or romano. But no. The Italians make their margherita pizza more simply. Great crust, great sauce, and great - whole milk I've discovered - mozzarella cheese, all in the perfect balance. Of course, part of what makes it so amazing is that it's cooked so quickly and so hot in a wood-burning oven. But I turn my oven up to 500 and get pretty darn close. And when I pull it from the oven, take a bite and close my eyes, I almost feel like I am sitting in Rome on that last glorious night, sitting in the teeny Piazza del Fico at a red and white checked tablecloth, the way we all picture Italy to be. Not perfect, but not bad either.

Fettunta - the most classic pure wonderful thing possible - is down right easy, if you have the right (and by right, I mean quality) ingredients. I take lovely Ciabatta or other Italian bread, toast it up, scrape a garlic clove across the hot toasted edges of the bread, drizzle some of my precious unfiltered Italian extra virgin olive oil, and savor each delicious morsel. This time when I close my eyes, I'm sitting in the little Tuscan Osteria, with its brick arches, wooden beams, candlelit tables...

I was perusing the frozen aisle at Trader Joe's a couple months ago and saw frozen artichoke hearts, and the light bulb went off. I bought them, defrosted and patted dry, and deep fried them. They bloomed and crisped.... just like those little shavings of artichoke hearts we had in the tapas bars in Barcelona. One bite and I am transported back to that bustling bar with its white walls and chalkboard wine list.

These are just a few of the things i've tried to recreate. others include that Barcelona hot chocolate (melt top quality dark chocolate with some milk and a teeny bit of rice flour, whisk til it boils, take off heat and whisk til it thickens), Belgian Frites (thick-cut fries made from russet potatoes - fried once at a low temp to cook the inside, taken out to cool, then fried again at a high temp to crisp the outside), and bucatini all'amatriciana (a Roman dish using bucatini pasta, tomato sauce with a little bit of spice and onion, mixed with bacon and topped with pecorino romano)..... I haven't been quite as successful making these dishes as with the ones I described above. but still, not bad. And I'll keep trying.

It may not be the same setting or the same fresh quality ingredients or as beautiful, but they're almost as tasty and they are great "living" reminders of my memorable trip. So, give it a shot. Try to recreate that wonderful dish you had. Scour the net for recipes, experiment, have fun with it!

Are "Tourist Traps" really that bad?

I was inspired to write this after reading a discussion on a messageboard about the semantics about what makes a tourist trap. The debate was whether something not built specifically for tourists could be a tourist trap. I think in the end it doesn't really matter. They're both tourist traps. But I think the way we travelers view them does make a difference.

So ultimately, I think there are two kinds of tourist traps. Those things built or in existence solely to attract tourist dollars and those things that have become, over time, tourist traps for one reason or another. Fitting into the first group would be places like The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas or the imported crappy mask stands in Venice's Piazza San Marco. Fitting into the second group are places like Florence's Ponte Vecchio, which is lined with pricey gold shops, or the subject of the debate that inspired this post, the Tower of Pisa.

I think the difference, while it might be esoteric, is an important one for us travelers. For those of us who are travelers who put great importance on experiencing the real culture of a place we travel to, I think part of that includes supporting the local economy and those people and places that work so hard to remain great. It is important to me to know where my money goes, and by and large the first kind of traps are run by people whose sole existence in life is to make money off of me.

Of course, the line can be blurred and it is a difficult one. Perhaps my most frustrating "tourist trap" experience came when I was in high school on a summer family vacation with my family. We went to New Mexico and visited the Taos Pueblo, which is a very famous image from the Southwestern US. A historical and fascinating structure, the Pueblo itself was built centuries ago to house the tribe, not to attract tourists. So in a sense it should fall under the second category. But yet, when we walked around, all we could see were the many (many many) shops that the residents had set up to sell stuff to tourists. It was handmade, sure, but it was overpriced and you felt more like these people were only there because they knew we would be there. So I think this may be the paradigmatic combination of the two. But I think these types of places are few and far between.

Anyway the point really is, I try to avoid the first type of tourist trap but not the second. There's a long history of gold shops on the Ponte Vecchio - and the things in them are still of the highest quality 18k Italian gold, made in Florence or Italy, etc. OK, maybe there are cheaper places to get them. But it's still the PONTE VECCHIO! It's still the Tower of Pisa - built to be a church's bell tower, not an attraction.

For the real tourist traps, those things that would never even exist but for tourists supporting them, I have a plea to my fellow travelers and tourists. STOP SUPPORTING THEM. If tourists refused to buy fake imported masks in Venice, they wouldn't exist. If tourists refused to give in to the cheese and crappy souvenirs and stayed away from the places and people who want to take advantage of us, those places would go out of business. Some things can't help being attractive to tourists. We are fascinated by a tower that's angled or by Times Square's hustle and bustle. And I personally have no problem giving my money to these "tourist traps" - at least these things have values and existence and my money is not going to support some money-making enterprise but to restore and maintain and improve the sights that we all love. In the end, whether you see the difference between these types of tourist traps or whether you care, that's up to you and me and everyone else individually. I suppose the ultimate question is: when you support a particular shop or business or restaurant or whatever, is it helping the place you love or hurting it? For me, that's the only thing I really need to consider.

Happy traveling!

Tips for Researching and Planning Itineraries

So sorry I haven't posted in so long. The good news is that I got a temp legal job allowing me to make some money and hopefully put some away for future travel! The bad news is that I have much less time to blog! But anyway, here's one I've been thinking about for some time now so hopefully it helps those planning a trip somehow.

Although it's rewarding, planning and researching your own trip can also be tiring and daunting. Once you've decided where to go, a difficult decision in itself, more difficult decisions await. What time of year is best? How many days to stay in each city? Accommodations? Sights? Ways to save money? It can be a serious time investment to do it well, and I personally believe it can really affect how successful a trip is.

I think one of the biggest mistakes I made was in planning how long to stay in each city on my trip. After several combinations and changes of where I wanted to go, I settled on my list of 10 cities. But then all I sort of did was say "ok, this city is a little smaller, I'll only spend 4 nights here" and "ok, this city is a little bigger, I'll spend 5 nights here" - BEFORE I actually really got down to the specifics of what I'd do in each place. Of course, now hindsight is 20/20; I had no idea how much I'd love Copenhagen and Lisbon and all of Italy and that I'd want an extra day or so in each place. I thought I would totally fall in love with Vienna, but I didn't. I liked Brussels, but four nights was probably one too many, etc. All the planning in the world couldn't have made me foresee how much I would like a particular place or how long I would really feel I needed there.

So my advice to anyone reading - and to myself for future trips - is to figure out what you actually want to do in a city before you plan your amount of time. So, how? The first is obviously through guidebooks. Every guidebook is different. Some just give basic information and don't really update it much (like Lonely Planet). Some update all the time but pick an choose what places to highlight (Rick Steves's Books). And the list goes on. My best advice would be: go to the library and take out various books and read them. Make lists of sights that sound good to you and based on guidebook suggestions, try to figure out how many days you would need. Tailor the suggestions to yourself and the kind of traveler you are: for example if you're not an art person, you probably won't spend as many hours in a museum as someone who is an art person. Another biggie is day trips. Figure out if you want to take any from a particular destination (by destination here, I mean a place where you will actually stay in a hotel). If you want to take day trips from a particular city, you'll need more time there of course.

I already wrote about hotels in a previous post. But in planning your itinerary, the location of your hotel can make a big difference. Do you want easy access to transportation and the train station? Do you want to be in walking distance of all of the sights? If you're renting a car, does your hotel have parking and is it easy to get to? Is it in a safe neighborhood? These are things you need to research and determine the answers to even before you start trying to find your hotels. Learn the neighborhoods, decide approximately where in the city you want to be, what amenities you need, and then research hotels.

I'm one of those Type A planner types and I realize not everyone is. But for me, when you only have 4 of 5 days in a world-class city that has tons to do, I think winging it is doing yourself a disservice; in my opinion, at least minor planning is important or you might end up wasting your precious valuable time. What I did was to plan each day but leave free time for wandering and spontaneity. For one thing, this helps efficiency. With a little research and planning, you can be sure you are hitting sights on days they're open and you can sight-see more efficiently because you hit sights that are all in the same geographical area. Day trips are a nice way to break up hectic sightseeing - I planned my daytrips in the middle of my stay in a particular city when I could. Just to break it up a bit. I think overdoing museums in one day is also not a great idea. If the things are fresh in your mind, I think you appreciate it more and if you try to do too much in one day - something I was guilty of especially one day in Vienna when I went to three palaces in one day or in Rome when I went to about 6 churches all in a row - you'll forget it all and it will just mush together.

I think the ultimate point in all my rambling is that to have the trip of YOUR dreams, YOU have to be the one making the decisions. Blindly listening to guidebooks or people on a messageboard or, as I discussed in another post, blindly following a group tour, means you will have a trip someone else has decided would be great. But if it's not what you want, what's the point? So just do a little bit of researching, plan the trip YOU'D love, and I think you're a lot more likely to have an amazing time!