Travels in the Riel World

Maybe you’ve seen the movie Julie and Julia, or have even actually tried Mastering the Art of French Cooking. But have you ever considered moving to France in order to learn how to cook French cuisine? Lynda Balslev did just that one day, in search of adventure and on an unexplainable whim. And so began what she calls her ”French Culinary Love Affair,” in a recent article for NPR’s Kitchen Window. An excerpt:

Each day, I walked across the city from my apartment in the 18th arrondissement to school in the 15th arrondissement. I traversed neighborhoods and crossed boulevards and the river Seine on my way to class. For breakfast, I stopped in cafes along the way and ordered a tartine, a crusty baguette slathered with butter and preserves, and cafe au lait. I passed open-air markets, where I purchased baguettes, fresh fruit and runny cheese for my lunch. I continued on, passing restaurants and bistros, pausing to read menus posted outside their doors, window shopping for dinner just as I would for shoes.

At school, I learned to make sauces, stocks and reductions, how to clean fish and poultry, sharpen and use my knives. I learned the basics of pastry and how to cook an egg. I was instructed on how to cut vegetables, roast salmon, prepare coq au vin. I shared my food from class with the dishwasher, who tirelessly worked in our kitchen, cleaning our pots and pans. I was eager to return home from school without leftovers; I had other plans for dinner. My love affair had started. I had a rendezvous with a French bistro for dinner.

I discovered the neighborhood bistro early on. Accessible, convivial and unfussy, the bistros beckoned to me when I returned home from school each day, tired and hungry with no interest in more cooking. Their entrances were warmly lit and festively decorated. Sounds of conversation, laughter and the wafting aroma of delicious food coaxed me into their cozy environments. I would slip into a seat at a small table in the middle of the bustle, sitting elbow to elbow with my fellow diners. I was alone yet in good company, sharing in the enjoyment of eating.

Travel and food always makes a great combination for both experiences and storytelling. Read more of the rest of the author’s French cooking experiences in the full story, which includes recipes for beef bourguignon, potato gratin, and more.

Do you enjoy food? Are you a traveler who likes to experience a culture through its cuisine? If so, then Syria should perhaps be on your list of future countries to visit. Yes, Syria. There was a great piece recently on NPR about the rise of Aleppo, Syria, as a destination for food lovers.

Aleppo, in northern Syria, is one of the oldest cities in the world. For a thousand years — maybe more — the city’s residents have had food on the mind. Now, this Middle East gourmet capital is registering on the itineraries of food tourists — and giving Paris and New York some competition.

The romance begins at the city’s outdoor food markets — radishes as big as apples; fresh white cheese bobbing in milky water; shiny green and black olives; hundreds of pickles; and thick pomegranate molasses. Then there are the spice markets, with yellow turmeric, pink rose petals and red sun-dried pepper pastes.

Surrounded by olive, nut and fruit orchards, Aleppo is famous for a love of eating. The cuisine is the product of fertile land and location — along the Silk Road, an ancient trading route…

The International Academy of Gastronomy in France awarded Aleppo its culinary prize in 2007. But Aleppo was a food capital long before Paris. Aleppo’s diverse communities — Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Circassians, a sizable Christian population — all contributed food traditions, since Aleppo was part of the Ottoman Empire.

The full story has more information about food tourism in Syria. As well as overviews of such local meals as “fava bean soup with a splash of olive oil, lemon juice and Aleppo’s red peppers,” or “kibbe, a deep-fried oval of cracked wheat with … delicately spiced, fragrant lamb in the middle.” Check it out.

In two days, families around the world will gather to celebrate the Christmas holiday. The traditions that they share will vary by country, region and culture. This includes the foods that they’ll enjoy for a holiday meal. For a glimpse into a few of these holiday dishes, check out this article about Christmas treats and traditions from five nations. An excerpt:

Chile: Pan de Pasqua (Christmas Bread) In Chile , celebrations get going on Christmas Eve. A midnight mass, called Misa de Gallo or “Mass of the Rooster,” marks the beginning of the new day and the birth of Christ. (Those who miss it must wait until late afternoon on Christmas Day for the next service, since the clergy, like everyone else, sleeps in.) After Mass, celebrants feast on a meal of roast turkey or beef and vegetables. Gifts are exchanged, and children often spill out into the streets, enjoying the warm summer air of the Southern Hemisphere and showing off their new toys to friends before finally going to bed.

Bread is an integral part of every Chilean meal, and at Christmas, it’s pan de pasqua, a round, eggy loaf similar to Italian panettone and German stollen. Flavored with brandy and dotted with candied fruit, pan de pasqua is served with the Christmas Eve meal and again on Christmas Day, when friends and family visit one another and enjoy leftovers, sweets, and a creamy drink similar to eggnog.

Norway: Lefse(Flatbreads) In Norwegian folklore, an interesting character exists: the nisse, or gnome. Over time, this figure has merged with the imported concept of Santa Claus, resulting in several versions of Santa in Norwegian Christmas festivities. The Fjøsnisse, or barn gnome, is a mischevious spirit for whom families traditionally leave a bowl of porridge on Christmas Eve, in hopes that he will ensure a prosperous year. The Julenisse is a friendlier fellow who brings gifts to children. Baking is a huge part of Christmas in Norway . Cooks prepare numerous types of cookies such as gingersnaps, along with a spiced cake called julekake. On Christmas Eve, families gather around an evergreen decorated with lights or candles, sing carols, dine on roast pork, and exchange presents. Another popular treat are lefse, flatbreads made from potato dough. Enjoyed year-round, but especially on holidays, lefse can be spread with butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, or wrapped around savory foods such as fish or meat.

See the entire story for information on other Christmas traditions, including dishes from Italy, Ukraine and Scotland.

I hope everyone enjoys a lovely holiday season, regardless of what you’ll be celebrating. We’ll see you next week!

Mexican food we know. But how many of us are familiar with the cuisine of the different regions of Mexico? Just as in the U.S., each region of that country has its own unique tastes and dishes. If you’re interested in knowing more about these regional differences, you might check out Patricia Jinich’s essay for NPR’s Kitchen Window, in which she extols the wonders of both the food and the sights in the Mexican state of Michoacan.

It surprises me how Michoacan’s cuisine has remained such a well-kept secret. It has a defined personality and a complex layering of delicious flavors like the more popular cuisines from Oaxaca and Puebla, but its dishes seem to be a bit more comforting and use fewer ingredients.

What’s more, some of Michoacan’s basic ingredients, such as pasilla chilies, tomatillos, cotija cheese and fruit pastes, have become readily available in stores outside of Mexico.

My love for Michoacan is inevitably tied to its food, but it goes well beyond its kitchens. The first time I went to Michoacan as a little girl, it had such an impact on me that whenever our family planned a trip, I begged my parents to return there. It wasn’t only the enchanting cobbled streets, the immense wooden doors framed in cantera stone, the aromas of freshly made breads and ground mountain coffee, or the town squares filled with dozens of home-style ice cream carts and sweets stands, all surrounded with colorful balloons and birdseed sellers. There was something more.

If you read the entire story, it includes recipes for such regional dishes as bean and tomato soup, and guava cheesecake.

Tomorrow is the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, and families from Maine to California will be sitting down for a traditional family meal of turkey, potatoes, stuffing, corn, cranberries, and other such food staples of this holiday. But this is an interesting time to take a look at other quintessentially American foods that have nothing at all to do with Thanksgiving. The inspiration here is a recent Parade article about unique regional dishes from across the country. Such as:  

CUBAN SANDWICH (TAMPA, FLA.)
A perfect storm of multiple ingredients, the Cuban sandwich is a sheaf of roast pork chunks, sliced ham, cheese, puckery pickle slices, mustard, mayo, and hot sauce all packed into a torpedo of crusty Cuban bread. It would fall to pieces as constructed, but it attains harmony in a hot plancha, the Spanish toaster that is basically a toothless waffle iron, causing all the flavors to bond together as one yummy chord: a truly heroic hero sandwich!

INDIAN PUDDING (NEW ENGLAND)
This pumpkin-colored porridge, a distant cousin of Southern grits, can be topped with cream or vanilla ice cream. While creative chefs doll it up with fruit or brandy, the rock-ribbed Yankee recipe, going back to Pilgrim days, is little more than cornmeal and molasses. A long, slow bake (up to seven hours) transforms it into a profound comfort food that smells like Grandma’s kitchen and evokes the first Thanksgiving.

GREEN CORN TAMALES (TUCSON, ARIZ.)
For these, you need corn still on the cob, because when the kernels are scraped off, they yield enough juice to make a moist, full-flavored filling. Fresh, just-roasted chilies are laced into the corn dough (often with cheese) and tightly rolled inside a green corn husk, then steamed until the taste of earth and fire are exuberantly married: an inspiration for house parties.

DATE MILKSHAKE (SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA)
As intense as espresso and as special as champagne, dates were unknown to most Americans before the 1890s, when they first were planted in California. Roadside date shacks concocted this divine dessert drink by adding finely chopped date crystals or date puree to a blender along with ice cream and milk. It’s a wanton luxury that radiates the taste of sunshine and demands gulping.

What other unique regional dishes can you name? Check out the full story for other examples. In the meantime, though, if you’re in the U.S. then enjoy your traditional holiday recipes tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s a way of life in many parts of the world: sharing food and conversation around the dinner table. In a place like Greece, these meals might consist of various smaller dishes, called meze, similar to the Spanish tapas that have become popular in some U.S. restaurants. Joanna Kakissis has a great story up on NPR’s Kitchen Window, in which she reminisces about the meze gatherings of her childhood and talks of how she has tried to re-create these occasions in her own homes and with new friends. The story will surely make you want to invite some people over for dinner this week, or at the very least go out for Greek tonight.

My parents moved from their native Greece to the American Dakotas in 1974, but never got used to the big, stick-to-your-ribs Lutheran dinners in the Midwest. Back in the Mediterranean, evening meals were a collection of small, flavorful dishes called meze, spiced with tiny sips of ouzo or the homemade firewater called tsikoudia, courtesy of my mother’s Cretan family. And the food was always shared with friends or relatives who would stay to talk late into the night…

In summer, the evening meze crowd would gather on the tiny balcony in our tiny house in suburban Athens, savoring cheese and spinach phyllo triangles, minty and garlicky yogurt dips, crispy oregano-dusted fried potatoes, the spicy little meatballs called keftedes, grilled octopus, marinated anchovies and, of course, lots of fresh tomatoes, olives and pita bread. My earliest memories include those deeply comforting scents of meze and the openhearted laughter of people bonded to cuisine, culture and each other.

The meze nights got a lot quieter when we moved to the Dakotas, but they didn’t die. Sometimes it was just the four of us — my parents, sister and I sharing keftedesand a giant tomato, feta and mint salad — but sometimes my parents’ friends would join us and add their own flavors…As I grew up and moved around as a journalist, I grounded myself in each new locale by hosting meze nights for new friends.

If you check out the entire story, you’ll also be rewarded with some nice recipes for such dishes as ouzo-spiked pork and beef keftedes, or mint yogurt with carrots and garlic.

There are many ways to differentiate between cultures. I have to admit, though, that one way I hadn’t thought of was in the different ways that cultures prepare and enjoy their cups of tea. But Allen Burt recently wrote an intriguing article for Matador Travel that did just that, reviewing six tea cultures around the world. England and China are on the list, as you might expect, but here is an excerpt about some of the other interesting choices:

Tibet - After passing over 13,000ft mountain passes to the Tibetan Plateau, Chinese green gives way to its western cousin, butter tea. A mainstay of the local diet, generous portions of (often rancid) butter and salt give Tibetan tea a uniquely unpleasant flavor that is undoubtedly an acquired taste. Tibetans take advantage of the butter’s oils to protect their lips from the high-altitude sun. Consequently, the higher you go, the more butter in your tea.

Morocco - Sipping hot mint tea in the souks of Marrakech, Morocco, entails more than you might expect. You sit among boiling cauldrons of lamb heads, watching as your tea is poured from large steaming copper kettles at arm’s length into tiny palm-sized glasses. The addictive sweet mint tea is served throughout the day. Alcohol is regarded as taboo in traditional circles in this Muslim nation, so mint tea acts as the social beverage of choice.

Peru - The coca leaf, notorious for its roll as the principal ingredient in cocaine, has been used for centuries in Andean tea. Among the Inca-descended Quechua in particular, the ancient brew is still consumed to alleviate the effects of life at altitude. Try the tea in the mountain city of Cuzco, where tourist accommodations offer a complementary cup on arrival.

Read the entire article for his other insights about these and other countries.

Street food both entices and terrifies travelers. To sample the food that is sold by vendors on street corners is surely one of the quickest ways to delve into the tastes and yearnings of a culture. But pick the wrong vendor and it can also be the quickest way into several days worth of stomach cramps (and more). Terry Ward recently surveyed the street food of different countries for World Hum, though, and recommended eight of the planet’s best cities for enjoying this local cuisine. A few of her recommendations:

Mexico City, Mexico - Mexico City’s street food is deliciously diverse, from tubes of fried dough powdered with cinnamon called churros to roasted corn to carnitas and freshly squeezed fruit juices. But perhaps the best dish in the capital is the ubiquitous tacos al pastor, found on nearly every street corner. Hunks of marinated pork topped with pineapple are cooked gyro-style on a spit until tender. Then chunks are sliced off and served atop two-bite corn tortillas. Cilantro, chopped onion and a squeeze of lime make a perfect garnish. 

Istanbul, Turkey - Pushcarts laden with inexpensive eats are practically as prevalent as people in Istanbul, where you can find sustenance for every meal without ever entering a restaurant. For breakfast, take your Turkish coffee or tea with simit—a donut-shaped piece of bread covered with sesame seeds that’s lovely with jam or cheese. Kofte—skewers of minced meat shaped into sausage-like forms that are grilled and stuffed into bread—make a good lunch. And you can puzzle-piece together dinner by hitting vendors selling corn on the cob (grilled or boiled), lahmajun (grilled flat bread topped with a thin layer of meat, tomatoes, onions, peppers and parsley) and midye dolma (mussels stuffed with rice, pine nuts, raisins and fresh herbs).

Stone Town, Zanzibar- Come sunset in Stone Town, Forodhani Gardens on the waterfront turns into a spectacle of brazier-bound seafood, salivating tourists and feral cats foraging for leftovers. “It’s a total seafood orgy—I’ve never seen so many fish and crustaceans getting chopped and skewered,” said Christopher Vourlias, a World Hum contributor who puts Forodhani on his shortlist of all-time best street eats. Think lobster, crab claws, shrimp, barracuda, octopus and skewers of flopping fresh fish. Due to its popularity with tourists, seafood here is pricey by local standards. Expect to pay about $4 for lobster and one or two bucks for a skewer of snapper. You’ll save cash by feasting like the locals do, opting for goat meat skewers, grilled cassava, spiced naan bread and samosas.

Check out the entire story for more recommendations in Morocco, Vietnam, Korea and other countries.

Sure, you like Mexican food. And, yes, there are Mexican food restaurants in every big city and perhaps every small town across the United States. Not to mention in many other nations, as well. But have you really experienced Mexican food if you haven’t had it in Mexico? Sarah Menkedick recently wrote an article for Matador Travel that takes us on a tour of 10 Mexican foods to try - in Mexico. Here’s a sampling of her suggestions:

Tacos- You may think you know the taco. You’ve met it in Chicago or even Beijing. But you do not know the taco until you are standing on the corner of a sun-flooded street at 7 AM, elbow to elbow with hungry Mexicans on their way to work, watching the taquero carve meat off the spit, spoon it into warm corn tortillas, fold said tortillas into small moons, and repeat the process, fluently, rapidly.

You do not know the taco until you dress it with delicate thin guacamole, cilantro, and perhaps a dabbling of red chili sauce, and it fills your mouth with the flavors of corn, meat, and spice. Until you use your fingers to pick up the little biteful of filling that fell out onto the Styrofoam plate. Then you know the taco.

Tortillas fresh off the comal- The comal is a round, clay Mexican grill, upon which señoras heat fresh hand-pressed tortillas. Watch and you’ll see the tortillas puff up a little, at which point the señoras will flip them briskly. When they’ve firmed and cooked through, they’re filled or topped to make quesadillas, empanadas, or memelas.

Quesadillas and empanadas are tortillas filled with mushrooms, squash flowers, chile-rubbed pork, or huitlacoche. They’re delicious, but in my opinion the way to really experience the simply joy of this tortilla is to try a memela. A warm tortilla, a thin layer of black beans, and queso fresco. Nada mas.

Mole- “You first need to get the peanuts, you get the salt and the bread, you grind and you fry the chiles, you boil the chocolate…get cinnamon and bananas, get cloves and oregano, get thyme and the blackest pepper, you grind it in México!”

Look no further than Mexico’s beloved Lila Downs for a celebration of molé. An indigenous specialty, it is used to celebrate weddings, funerals, birthdays, Sunday afternoons, and the richness of life. You can’t leave Mexico without a little molé in your blood.

She has many other mouth-watering suggestions in her full story.

Here’s what you do: Move to Buenos Aires. Hop in a taxi. Ask the driver to take you to his favorite place to eat. Write about your adventures in a blog. Repeat weekly. Become semi-famous when the Washington Post publishes a feature story about you. I have to hand it to Layne Mosler. It’s a great idea and she’s parlayed it into a nice niche as a freelance food writer. Here is an excerpt from the recent Post article:

It is a method the food writer from California began using two years after she moved to Buenos Aires in 2005 and found garrulous taxistas regaling her with tales about Buenos Aires.

“I thought, well, if they know so much about the city and about the history and about politics, then surely they must know something about food,” said Mosler, 34, who also writes for Time Out Buenos Aires and South American Explorer and is filming her taxi adventures for a potential television show.

By relying on local knowledge, the onetime vegetarian has been introduced to not only infinite varieties of steak and sausage, of course, but also mollejas (the thymus gland, a.k.a. sweetbreads), locro (stew with hominy, peppers and meat parts), lechón (suckling pig), sorrentinos (pasta stuffed with ham and cheese) and chinchulín (cow intestines), which at one restaurant tasted like “rancid sawdust mixed with vegetable shortening — gummy and dry at the same time,” she said.

Her selection of taxis is mostly random, though she varies her departure location. But when she started her blog in May 2007, she considered profiling. “I initially thought maybe I want to pick older guys or guys with a potbelly or guys who look like they know how to eat, but you never really know,” she said.

Take, for instance, the skinny chopstick-chewing 20-something driver with silver-rimmed sunglasses who happened to be a sculptor. He took her to a little corner steakhouse for a transcendent flank steak sandwich that cost $2.

 Follow her ongoing adventures at taxigourmet.com.

If you recall, I recently created a Riel List about some of my favorite cafe cities around the world. Well, now World Hum has come out with the very same story. Hmmm, maybe I should have submitted my idea there first? In any case, they have an intriguing list that includes some overlap with my choices (Rome, Vienna and Buenos Aires) as well as four other worthy cities, two of which I haven’t yet experienced. Here is an excerpt from World Hum’s take on those last two cities - Melbourne, Australia and Wellington, New Zealand.

Melbourne- Australians are fiercely independent when it comes to their java, and Melbourne’s residents even more so. Perhaps the best proof of Melbournian pride in the city’s independent coffee culture came in 2008, when Starbucks was forced to close 16 Melbourne outlets (and scores more throughout Australia) after failing to make robust enough inroads into Australia’s entrenched coffee culture.

Wellington- No surprise that New Zealand’s arts and culture capital is also the most atmospheric city in the Land of the Long White Cloud for enjoying a classic Kiwi coffee drink such as a long black (New Zealand speak for a double shot of espresso over hot water). In the 1950s, there was a bonafide movement by immigrants and locals in Wellington to promote European-inspired coffee culture as an alternative to New Zealand’s rugby racing and beer leanings. Now windy Wellington boasts a roster of esteemed local roasters…And Wellington is said to have more cafés per capita than New York City, so finding a good café, as they say in New Zealand, is “easy as.”

Check out the World Hum article for their entire list. That makes 11 fine cafe cities now between my list and World Hum’s list. What other cities do you think belong here?

This is the time of year that people’s thoughts turn to steaming mugs of hot chocolate during chilly evenings at home. So I was pleased to stumble across this story about the history of hot chocolate in Latin America. This region is arguably the home of hot chocolate, which was once sipped in a more bitter form by the ancient Mayans.

 Today, each region or country has its own twist on the sweet beverage:

In many parts of the world hot chocolate is blended with boiling water, but in Latin American warm milk is used, making it just that much more creamy and smooth (if also fattening) in consistency. While still retaining its power as a special drink, Latin Americans typically sip hot chocolate after dinner or as a treat…

It is also common for different countries to give the drink a special twist. In Colombia and Ecuador for example, it is common to have chocolate caliente con queso, essentially hot chocolate with a slab of fresh cheese, on the top and left to melt. It might sound bizarre but the salty flavor of the cheese mixes perfectly with the sweet chocolate flavor. Possibly an acquired taste, but most who try it are pleasantly surprised. Peruvians tend to put in a little extra chocolate syrup to their warm chocolate milk, the enhanced sweetness making it a dessert, but a very good one at that.

In Argentina, hot chocolate is served up in many fashions, the most popular being the submarino, consisting of steamed milk in a mug with a chocolate bar on the side. The bar should be submerged into the milk and will quickly disappear, melting into the liquid. A quick stir and a dash of sugar make it extra creamy, but the best part is that it tastes, and is, freshly made.  

I remember when I first went to Europe in the 1980s and became enchanted by the cafe culture there, then came home and bemoaned the fact that there were precious few places where I could relax with a coffee and do a bit of work or reading. Now, of course, the U.S. is overflowing with coffee shops, and even though many of them are chain-owned and similar in appearance, the situation has vastly improved during the past two decades.

Still, there is something to be said for the cafe culture that has developed over decades or centuries in some other countries, so here is a compilation of my favorite international cafe cities. Perhaps some other time I’ll follow with my favorite North American locales. Remember, these are only places that I’ve personally experienced, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on other cities that I’ve missed.

1. Paris, France - People either love or despise this city. I love Paris. I love the history, the art, the gardens, the romance, and the food. And the cafes. How can you not enjoy sitting at a sidewalk table at a Parisian cafe with a coffee and a chocolate croissant? Or a coffee and a good book? The Austrians may have invented Europe’s cafe culture (see below), but nowhere is it as satisfying as it is in Paris.

2. Rome, Italy - I went to Italy expecting to love Florence and to tolerate Rome, but my experience was just the opposite. Yes, the art in Florence is difficult to top and the view of the historic city from Piazzale Michelangelo is memorable, but the city often felt like to me like Epcot Center on steroids. Rome seemed more authentic and enjoyable. And the art and history are pretty breathtaking there, as well! As are the cafes.

3. Buenos Aires, Argentina - The Argentines learned a thing or two about cafe culture from their Italian and Spanish ancestors and nowhere is this more evident than in Buenos Aires, a vibrant city of wide boulevards, romantic people, and an eclectic collection of cafes. If you want a heavenly experience, find a seat outside on a sunny day in Plaza Dorrego in the San Telmo area of the city and order a submarino (a mug of steamed milk and melted chocolate), then sit back and watch the tango dancers heat up the cobblestoned square.

4. Hanoi, Vietnam- Not many Asian cities are regarded as great cafe venues. But the French colonial influence left a mark on Southeast Asia, most notably in Hanoi. The Old Quarter of the city is an ancient and charming maze, filled with people, produce peddlers and motorbikes. Relax with a coffee and watch the buzz of Vietnamese life. If it’s too hot for a coffee, try a fresh fruit shake, which are delicious and available throughout Vietnam.

5. Dahab, Egypt- The more conventional Egyptian choice here would be Cairo, where coffeehouses abound. But I had a more enjoyable experience in the small town of Dahab, on the east coast of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, where we could relax in a cafe for hours just feet away from the lapping waters of the Red Sea. It’s a Bedouin town that has been overtaken by tourism, but is still small enough and slow-paced enough to be truly relaxing.

6. Vienna, Austria - The legend is that the first European cafes were opened in Vienna in the late 17th century with beans that were left behind by defeated Turkish soldiers (as the Ottoman Turks already had a coffeehouse tradition). No one knows the real truth, but there is certainly a long and glorious cafe tradition in Austria and Vienna is a great city in which to experience it, perhaps while pondering why so many great composers came from there. Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and others all once called Vienna home.

7. Prague, Czech Republic - The Czechs share a history with the Austrians, as they were once part of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire, and they also share a love of coffee and cafes. Old Town Square survived World War II with much of its historic core still intact, and is today one of the most beautiful and best preserved squares on the continent. It’s a wonderful place to have a coffee and soak in the atmosphere of old Europe.

That’s my list. What is yours?

Chicken noodle soup. It’s a staple, it seems, of childhood, winter, and flu season. The soup is warm and cozy, but hardly ever memorable or delicious. Well, if you want a heartier, zingier, more delectable version of chicken noodle soup then perhaps you should try a bowl from Southeast Asia. Julia Moskin of the NY Times writes about these soups:

Enter, steaming: the rich, spicy chicken noodle soups of Southeast Asia, the love children of Indian curries and Chinese noodle soups. These are chicken noodle soups you want to bathe in: sweet, spicy and fragrant, a happy contrast of hot broth, springy noodles and a madness of garnishes — from just a few rings of scallion to a spiky crown of caramelized shallots, steamed sweet shrimp and whole chilies stuffed with minced pork.

Popular throughout the region — native ground for the ginger, lemon grass, cinnamon, black pepper and turmeric that flavor them — the soups go by many names, including curry laksa, curry mee, la sa ga and khao poon, in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and other countries.

The most famous family member is curry laksa, a coconut-creamy one-bowl dish sold at hawker stalls in Malaysia and Singapore. “Curry laksa is like my entire country in one dish,” said Leemei Tan, a London-based telecommunications billing analyst who writes about the food of her native Malaysia at mycookinghut.com. “It’s not Indian. It’s not Chinese. But it has so many things in it, and the mix is so tasty.”

The first hit from any curry noodle soup is visual: steam rising from a gilded broth, dotted with burnt-orange oil, flecked with red from dried chilies and brown from warm spices like cinnamon, cumin, black pepper and coriander seed. The next is olfactory, as the perfumes of ginger, lemon grass, fresh curry leaves, lime leaves and turmeric kick in. And the rest involve inordinately elevated levels of flavor (recipes often call for huge handfuls of curry powder and paste), a riot of textural contrasts and the primal satisfaction of the slurp.

Check out the whole story, which includes two soup recipes.

No, it’s not a trick question. Actually, many scientists will tell you the answer is yes. Check out this thought-provoking article in the International Herald Tribune for the whole story.

In releasing its latest figure on emissions last month, United Nations climate officials cited agriculture and transportation as the two sectors that remained most “problematic.”

“It’s an area that’s been largely overlooked,” said Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He says people should eat less meat to control their carbon footprints. “We haven’t come to grips with agricultural emissions.” …

Every step of producing meat creates emissions. Flatus and manure from animals contain not only methane, but also nitrous oxide, an even more potent warming agent. And meat requires energy for refrigeration as it moves from farm to market to home.

Producing meat in this ever-more crowded world requires creating new pastures and planting more land for imported feeds, particularly soy, instead of relying on local grazing. That has contributed to the clearing of rain forests, particularly in South America, robbing the world of crucial “carbon sinks,” the vast tracts of trees and vegetation that absorb carbon dioxide.

“I’m not sure that the system we have for livestock can be sustainable,” said Pachauri of the United Nations. A sober scientist, he suggests that “the most attractive” near-term solution is for everyone simply to “reduce meat consumption,” a change he says would have more effect than switching to a hybrid car…

Producing a pound of beef creates 11 times as much greenhouse gas emission as a pound of chicken and 100 times more than a pound of carrots, according to Lantmannen, the Swedish group.

The much talked about Mediterranean diet appears to be in retreat - in the Mediterranean. Yes, strangely enough, the diet full of olive oil, fish and fresh vegetables that is considered one of the healthiest in the world is struggling to maintain a foothold in its home region. The culprit? Fast food. Check out this story in the International Herald Tribune for more.

Dr. Michalis Stagourakis has seen a transformation of his pediatric practice here over the past three years. The usual sniffles and stomachaches of childhood are now interspersed with far more serious conditions: diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. A changing diet, he says, has produced an epidemic of obesity and related maladies.

Small towns like this one in western Crete, considered the birthplace of the famously healthful Mediterranean diet - emphasizing olive oil, fresh produce and fish - are now overflowing with chocolate shops, pizza places, ice cream parlors, soda machines and fast-food joints.

The fact is that the Mediterranean diet, which has been associated with longer life spans and lower rates of heart disease and cancer, is in retreat in its home region. Today it is more likely to be found in the upscale restaurants of London and New York than among the young generation in places like Greece, where two-thirds of children are now overweight and the health effects are mounting, health officials say.

“This is a place where you’d see people who lived to 100, where people were all fit and trim,” Stagourakis said. “Now you see kids whose longevity is less than their parents’. That’s really scaring people.”

That concern has been echoed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, which said in a report this summer that the region’s diet had “decayed into a moribund state.”

“It is almost a perfect diet, but when we looked at what people were eating we noticed that much of the highly praised diet didn’t exist any more,” said the report’s author, Josef Schmidhuber, a senior economist at the food organization. “It has become just a notion.”

Greece, Italy, Spain and Morocco have even asked Unesco to designate the diet as an “intangible piece of cultural heritage,” a testament to its essential value as well as its potential extinction.

I came across a great article about a movement that has sprung up in Italy to preserve the country’s culture of cooking and serving good food. Ah, but Italian food is always good, you might say. Perhaps, but the members of the Home Food movement contend that something of the country’s heritage is being lost - the sense that food is about more than nourishment or even taste. Rather, the culture of Italian food, they believe, is about bringing people together and about satisfying the soul.

“I am deeply convinced that one of the best things we have in Italy is our cooking,” says Marcante, 48, married, with four children. “Italy is one of the few places in the world that you move 10, 20 miles and you eat something completely different.” She goes on: “We have such an enormous tradition about the food and we have to absolutely preserve it.”

The Italian Parliament seems to agree. It is trying to protect the Mediterranean diet, citing it as an “intangible heritage,” by reaching out to UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization, to recognize it as such.

But there’s a preservation movement burgeoning even closer to the kitchen. Called Home Food, this four-year-old cultural organization collaborates with the University of Bologna in the belief that “good typical food” and civility go hand in hand.

It also believes “good typical food” is disappearing in Italy. Hence, its mission to preserve and promote authentic Italian fare: the traditional recipes, the painstaking methods of preparation, the hug-and-kiss-on-each-cheek delivery…

“Eating traditional, local foods is an experience that brings satisfaction to the palate but, above all, is enrichment for the soul,” says Italian sociologist Egeria Di Nallo in an e-mail. A sociology professor at the University of Bologna, Di Nallo founded Home Food four years ago after being struck by how expedient and global Italian food had become both in restaurants and on the home front. And that, she found civility-shaking.

“Those foods are symbol and metaphor for a traditional way of staying together according to a cultural heritage that we are risking to lose,” says Di Nallo. She goes on: “Home cooks hold the key to our Italian heritage. So our goal is to access that wisdom, keep it alive and share it.”

The best description of the community-building culture of Italian food may come from this quote by Ornella Marcante: 

“Around the table, everything changes,” Marcante explains. “People feel better, more friendly, more open. And even in the family, if there are problems, when we sit down at the table and we try to solve them in front of the dish of pasta, it’s different. It’s easier.”

Check out the whole story, which includes some traditional Italian recipes.

Did you know that 100 million people in China are minorities? There are 55 tribal groups in the country who are not ethnic Chinese. That means there are 100 million in China who probably don’t eat all that much Chinese food. NPR’s Kitchen Window has an interesting feature about these ethnic groups and their foods, based on the book Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.

Deep-fried cheese, crepes and carrot salad don’t sound like Chinese food. But they are.

Fried cheese momos are a standard snack in Tibet, two-layer crepes are eaten by the Hui people in Qinghai province, and dai carrot salad is from the southern Yunnan city of Jinghong.

These are some of the foods of the 55 tribal groups called “minority peoples” by the Beijing government. These tribes make up 8 percent of China’s population, which amounts to more than 100 million people.

Although these communities are not ethnically Chinese, they have lived on land that is now part of China for centuries. This includes Inner Mongolia, the western Silk Road region of Xinjiang and other lands outside central China’s westernized cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

The story includes recipes for dai carrot salad and cheese momos.