Sarasota Soundings

As a travel consultant specializing in the Mediterranean and the Middle East (I’ve lived and travelled extensively throughout those regions), I always urge my clients to read about a place before they make any reservations. I regularly compile both general and special-interest reading lists, making suggestions for travellers who may have a month to backpack through the Pontic Mountains of the Black Sea coast or merely an afternoon to escape their cruise-ship’s shore-excursion to Ephesus.

I have clients who ask for no more than clean youth hostels and overnight buses and many others for whom a 150-foot private yacht and a Lear-jet are barely adequate. Even after three decades of travel experience, I still have to do my homework to keep up with what my clients want—or think they want—based on what they’ve seen, read, or heard before they come to me.

In some ways, it’s more work than ever. Now, in addition to doing my own research in situ, I have to know what Rick Steeves, Conde Nast, Fodor, Frommer, The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, and assorted Websites are saying. So, I read a lot of prosaic, and sometimes silly, articles that were cut and pasted from PR materials supplied to travel-writers on fam trips. And knowing my clients won’t be able to read a Google map of the ancient city of Pergamum on an iPhone when it’s high-noon, without a shade-tree in sight, I review guidebooks.

Archeological site of Pergamum

That’s right, I still value those relics of alternative information technology: hand-held, dead-tree devices containing static data on analog pages. Many of my favorites are not in English; others are long out-of-print, and that may be just as well, because their irreplaceability makes them too valuable for me to be tempted to pack them in this age of luggage minimalism.

For years, I’ve been a fan of the INSIGHT GUIDES series—using their stunningly illustrated (and consequently hefty) volumes to help plan my own travel. Whether using them in my long-time stomping grounds in Turkey, Greece, Syria, and Jordan or for lands beyond (South America and East Africa), I have always found that their cogent text and photos compelled me to want to learn more, as both a reader and a traveller. And in this Internet era, I think that’s what guidebooks SHOULD do.

Recommendations of hotels and restaurants, closing times, train schedules, and fare prices, change too rapidly to be well-documented in books. These days, that information is best found online and confirmed, as needed, by email, a phone call, or fax. With Internet cafes and Wi-Fi access so widespread, much of what guidebooks once contained need not be committed to printed pages. If you want extensive lists, with stars and prices to rate hotels and restaurants, Fodor and Frommer will oblige you. But if you’d prefer pithy commentary on the Kurdish-Turkish dispute, the politics of urban building, ancient mythology, Byzantine gossip, and opinionated travel recommendations (“The road south leads to Hakkari, a town best avoided…“), Insight Guides: Turkey will not disappoint.

The hundreds of color photos, larger type, and attractive lay-out on coated stock mean that Turkey weighs about two pounds. Both to pack and also to lug Turkey along as one negotiates the cobbled alleys of Istanbul, requires a real commitment from its owner. However, those winning photos are worth many times the weight, for they do speak volumes. So rather than criticize the series for being too fat, I would say that I unflinchingly recommend the books for planning your travels. But for most people, who want to travel light, the guides are best left home or at least back in your lodgings. Pocket guides they are NOT!

Insight Guides were first developed to serve adventurous European and British travellers, so they cover some terrain that may surprise Americans. The guides range from individual countries (Cuba, Malta, Namibia, Burma…) and a few states (Colorado, Florida, Texas…), to regions (Tuscany, Oman & the UAE, the American Southwest, the Turkish Coast…), and cities (Istanbul, Oxford, Kuala Lumpur, Perth…). There are also a handful of idiosyncratic guides to Amazonian and Indian wildlife and marine life in the South China Sea.

Insight also produces the Fleximap™ a laminated, folded city map. As an example, ISTANBUL includes a decent street index, detailed mini-maps of popular tourist areas, 26 short descriptions of major sites, and panels of emergency phone numbers with very basic notes on opening/closing hours, currency, and transportation. Tough enough to withstand a spilled glass of Turkish tea and fingers sticky from baklava, the map this would be perfect for the cruise passenger docked for two days in Istanbul.

Cruise ship docked in Kusadasi, the Turkish port for Ephesus

But suppose you’ll be touring one or more countries on your own for a couple of weeks? You don’t want to pack a library, but you do want more than a map to read when you’ve missed your Greek island ferry and need to plan the next sixteen hours. If I were to chose ONE series for on-the-spot utility, I would select the narrow-format green Michelin guides—not as light as they once were, but still portable and packed with intelligent, entertaining writing on history and sights. Still in evidence are those convenient stars of recommendation. In the old days, when the guides were only in French, we also had those stock phrases mérite un détour and vaut le voyage .) As before, the Michelin guides include annotated lodging and dining selections and excellent maps that anticipate the user’s needs. (The Athens metro plan notes stations as they are actually signed, in Greek, along with English phonetic spellings.)

For further utility, the latest green Michelins include Web addresses, making them truly helpful planning companions. Unfortunately, Michelin doesn’t cover nearly as many regions as the Insight series (You’ll get Thailand, British Columbia, Lauguedoc-Rousillon and Greece, but no Turkey.)

So, if you are “planning to plan” a trip, go to the library or a a real bookstore to actually see (and lift) a few books in the series mentioned. And to get a dizzying view of the coverage available from just ONE publisher-distributor, go to Langenscheidt.com. I knew them first for their language-learning series, and I still have my yellow plastic-covered pocket Turkish dictionary from the 1970’s. This German publishing conglomerate now handles both the Insight and Michelin guides, along with the Berlitz and Langenscheidt dictionaries, phrasebooks, and CDs. Langenscheidt is also distributing an interesting series of cookbooks, but we’ll save our take on those for a future post.

Holy Multiple Listing Service! St Joseph is the Ultimate Real Estate Agent.

March 19th has long been marked on Christian calendars as the Feast of St. Joseph.

It’s hardly surprising that Joseph, the carpenter-father figure in the Holy Family is the patron saint of carpenters and those who work with wood. (These days, he’s probably watching over the non-union work force at Home Depot, too.) Besides his association with the building trades, Joseph is also credited with some Renaissance miracles involving the Church’s acquistion of land.

And indeed, in recent years, we’ve known people who venerated the saint for his rumored ability to move real property; popular lore has it that images of the saint must be buried on the subject property. St. Joseph medals favored centuries ago have given way to little statues—interred in back yards or (in the case of condo apartments) efficaciously tucked into potted plants

Much to our amazement, we’ve found entire websites, complete with Twitteresque testimonials, extolling the realty marketing powers of St. Joseph. At first we thought that remodeling icon Bob Vila had finally been canonized and was now authorized to wear a halo. But no, it was just St Joseph (who probably never had to work with toxic sheet rock or pull a building permit).

“The best real estate agent ever…” proclaims one happy seller.

Another is ecstatic that St. Joseph got her $5K over her asking price.

Presumably these people benefited from all the components of the $10.99 Saint Joseph Home Sellers Kit, which includes:

• One painted 4″ St. Joseph statue
• Color Prayer Card
• Burial Instructions (presumably for the statue)

There’s also a $7.99 Kit (sans prayer card).

In this market, many of us need all the help we can get, so it’s worth noting that the same vendor also offers a statuette of St. Jude (whose bailiwick is Lost Causes…) Think about it: for the price of a couple of FSBO signs, you can have higher powers on your sales team.

It really is time for the saints to come marching in….

And if your heritage (or heart) is Italian you’ll also want to see today’s post on our food and culture blog about the Festival of San Giuseppe. It turns out that St. Joseph is so successful, he can get away with merely moonlighting as a Realtor. As San Giuseppe, he fulfills a very different role…

Note: Today, the 15th, is the Ides of March, signifying that the Vernal Equinox and March Madness will kick in next week and that your IRS returns are due a month from today.

We prefer to look backwards, to Shakespeare and his immortalization of Julius Caesar, the Emperor who chose the wrong neighborhood for what turned out to be his final stroll back in 44 BC (BC, btw stands for BEFORE CHICKEN, as in blackened chicken atop the salad most people suppose to have been named for the dude who said “I came, I saw, I ordered an antipasto…”

We first published this recipe in our other blog, Almost Italian, on October 12, 2007.

This was a favorite among the supper club crowd during the 1950’s, when tableside preparations were the rage from coast-to-coast. Head waiters in tuxedos relished the opportunity to make this salad as theatrical as anything the French had ever flambéed.

Lettuce Vendor

Technically, Caesar Salad would never have gotten a Green Card, let alone qualification as Italian-American, had its creator not been a bona fide Italian. Emigrating from Baveno, in the lake district of northern Italy, Cesare Cardini arrived in America in 1913. Within a few years, he had opened a restaurant just south of the California border in Tijuana, Mexico. It was there that he invented the salad that bears the revised spelling of his name, not that of the Roman emperor who dallied with Cleopatra.

Initially, the Hollywood patrons of Caesar’s Palace, Cardini’s first restaurant in Tijuana, came to take a break from Prohibition; but they were soon coming back for Caesar Salad. And it wasn’t too long before Caesar Salad began to appear on the menus of neighborhood Italian restaurants all over North America.

While Mr. Cardini’s salad contained several ingredients unusual for the period, like Worcestershire sauce and Parmesan cheese, the most unusual were the toasted croutons. One tale of the salad’s origin suggests that on the Fourth of July, 1924, Ceasar’s kitchen was running low on vegetables. Mr. Cardini is said to have gathered armloads of whatever was available, putting everything on a cart which he wheeled into the dining room. There, he began making this salad in full view of diners. Among his hastily gathered ingredients, were garlic-flavored croutons that had probably been destined to garnish soup.

The original salad didn’t include anchovies, but we have a clue as to how they eventually found their way into the standard Caesar Salad: Worcestershire sauce may contain many exotic flavor enhancers, like tamarind, asafoetida, cloves and—guess what—anchovies. I happen to love anchovies, so I have included them in my recipe.

Anchovies turned out to be among the more subtle subversions of Caesar Salad. Over the course of the 1980’s and 90’s, Italian-American chefs have pushed, prodded, and shoved additional ingredients into and around the salad. Blackened Chicken Caesar Salad, Grilled Tuna Caesar, Shrimp Caesar, Tofu-topped Ceasar, Caesar Burgers, and even Caesar burritos no longer raise eyebrows when they appear on upscale and fast-food menus.

During the 1990s, the California Department of Health banned the sale of Caesar Salad made with eggs. That regulation was suspended in 1998 when food scientists presented convincing evidence that coddling eggs, or dipping them into boiling water for 40 – 45 seconds, killed any lurking bacteria. If you do use eggs when making the dressing, please don’t omit this step.

Caesar Salad

For the Croutons:

2 Cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
Freshly ground black pepper
¼ Cup Extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups French baguette slices cut into 1-inch cubes.

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Combine the garlic, a few grindings from the pepper mill, and bread cubes in a bowl. Mix until seasonings cling evenly to cubes. Drizzle the olive oil over the cubes, stirring gently with a spatula. Spread the seasoned bread cubes on a sheet pan and bake until the croutons are golden, approximately10 minutes.

For the Salad:

1 Clove garlic, peeled and cut in half horizontally
4 oil-packed anchovies, minced
1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce
Juice of ½ Lemon
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
1 Large egg, coddled (submerged in boiling water for 45 seconds)
4 – 5 Tbs. Extra-virgin olive oil
2 Heads of Romaine lettuce (outer leaves removed and reserved for another use)
1/2 Cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Preparation:

Rub the inside of a wooden salad bowl* with the garlic halves, covering the bowl as evenly as possible. Discard the remaining garlic. Add the optional anchovies, and mash them with the back of a fork, while stirring to coat inside of the bowl as well.

Add the Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and mustard. Stir well. Crack the coddled egg into the bowl and beat vigorously with the back of a fork until all ingredients are well mixed.

Slowly add the oil in a steady stream, stirring constantly, until the mixture is smooth and the dressing begins to emulsify.

To serve:

Tear the Romaine lettuce into 2-inch pieces. Add them to the salad bowl and toss to coat them with the dressing. Add the Parmesan and croutons and toss the salad again. Serve immediately on chilled plates.

Serves six.

* For an erudite and extremely funny treatise on the mystique of wooden salad bowls, visit the Los Angeles Times online archives to read:
COOL FOOD When Salad Bowls Stalked the Earth by Charles Perry

We write a lot about food. Our interests in history, gardening, and cooking inform our enjoyment of food and reinforce our belief that understanding culinary culture is vital to maintaining a civilized world.

All this has us thinking about the ways in which people share their gastronomic enthusiasms. Beyond growing, preparing, and consuming food together, people want to share ideas about food—even if they themselves may never serve or even taste the food they discuss. The best illustrations of this truism are the recipe-laden food blogs—and reader comments:

‘Sparagi (Asparagus Omlette) from Almost Italian dot Com

Delish!
Best ever, thanks for sharing.
I’m putting off my diet for this one, LOL
Must try, ‘cuz my hubby LOOOVES marshmallows.
OMG—this is awesome.
Anyone got a recipe for a good tomato sauce?
A keeper for sure!

As food bloggers, we’ve learned that only a small percentage of readers (ours or anyone else’s) will ever make any of the hundreds of thousands recipes to be found, free-of-charge, on the Internet or in the volumes filling miles of public library shelves.

But that does not prevent enthusiasts from prowling the aisles of independent and mega-chain bookstores that allow browsing at will and even provide tables and comfortable chairs to those they hope may actually buy books if given a chance to sit down with them. Last week we witnessed a 70-ish woman in the café of our local Barnes & Noble. Beside her, we counted a stack of of eight new cookbooks from which she was selecting recipes that she then copied in long-hand on a yellow legal pad. It didn’t appear she’d bought so much as a bagel or the café du jour, but she sat there for at least 90 minutes, deep in her research. We hasten to add that she was well-dressed and wearing a pair of sneakers that would sell for close to $150. (One of us is Italian and always zeroes in on shoes.)

Setting aside that copyist’s unabashed sense of entitlement, we’re still not sure what our sighting reflected or portends. Was it a good or a bad sign for those who write, publish and try to SELL words good enough to eat?

The magazine Gourmet is lying in state; many major American newspapers are on IV’s as feature writers, reviewers, and food editors lose their jobs. But recipes and food-focused articles continue to appear in many other publications on health, cooking, travel, and decor. Sit in the waiting room of your accountant, Toyota dealer, or daughter’s orthodontist; whether you pick up a six-month-old copy of Southern Living, the latest AARP Magazine, or a newsletter from an insurance company, you’re rarely more than a page away from a recipe accompanied by a photograph or article on comfort food; exotic ingredients; anti-oxidant vegetables; low-sodium or ethnic twists on old favorites; fusion, healthy-fast, or slow food; low-calorie, vegan versions of ethnic favorites… You get the drift.

This glut is an indication of Americans’ fascination with novelty and current fixation on “free” food (as in free of—guilt, salt, fat, gluten, cruelty, dairy, carbs, sugar, peanuts, pesticides, genetically modified ingredients, or red meat). Yet even with food everywhere we look, these are days of food exclusion. In our neighborhood, we’re hard-pressed to gather half a dozen friends who can share the same meal with omnivores like us.

And, despite an avalanche of free recipes and the worst economy many of us have ever known, writers and publishers are still bringing out new cookbooks. And people are still buying them.

We’ve asked ourselves and our friends why anyone still purchases a cookbook when it’s so easy to go online and come up with 45 Pad Thai, Pot Roast, or Paella recipes in less time than it takes to open a bottle of wine.

We’re collectors ourselves and have been at this a while. Thus, we weren’t surprised by the answers we got, which confirmed that many of the most avid cookbook accumulators never make more than one or two recipes, even from a book they love.

So what forces are sustaining cookbook publishing?

In the coming days, we’ll be trying to answer that as we review some new titles on the Sarasota Soundings blog.

And we’d like your contributions, too. Tell us why you and those in your own circles buy cookbooks or like to receive them as gifts. If you want to cite a favorite (and agree to eschew words like “delish” and “awesome”) we’d welcome a couple of lines telling us why a particular book speaks to you.

Photo Courtesy Austin Evan

In the meantime, stay tuned for our take on several pounds of books on traditional and revamped food from Portugal to Korea…