Travel

If you asked me 10 years ago after feasting at a trattoria in Florence on fiocchetti alle pere con salsa di taleggio e asparagi that one day I would be able to replicate the experience, I would have laughed in your face. Back then the only thing I knew how to make was frozen pizza. But time has a way of changing us, and that trip to Florence changed me too. Here I am 10 years later, recreating that meal of a lifetime.

I recently spent a few days with Najmieh Batmanglij — known to many as the “Queen of Persian Cooking” — who opened me up to the cooking of her native Iran, and in particular to a rice dish called jeweled rice, or Javaher Polow. When I took my first bite, I almost cried from a near overload in flavor, fragrance, balance and a notable infusion of love in the grains of rice, tart little barberries, and strands of candied orange peel.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara: When it’s good, it can make your eyes roll back in your head with pleasure. It lurks there, beckoning, batting its eyelashes on Italian menus. When you don’t order it, you usually end up wishing you had. This pasta dish seems easy to make at home, requiring only few ingredients like bacon, eggs, and pasta.

From six-ingredient options to dessert on the go, there’s something for everyone.

Gas-station convenience stores are filled with everything you need to curate a charcuterie plate on the go.

Cheers to summer — and pretending our front stoop is an Italian piazza.

Seattle chef Renee Erickson is known for drop-dead gorgeous restaurants and carefully sourced produce, meats, and seafood. Between the oysters at The Walrus and the Carpenter, her sardine toast at The Whale Wins, and the beef from her own farm at Bateau, she’s also making her mark in the sustainability department, focusing on highlighting foods that aren’t seen as often (think: tiny fish and less traditional cuts of beef).

When I embarked on my trip to Greece last week, I knew I’d be documenting the heck out of it, and when I landed in Athens, the first thing I did was order a Greek salad, take notes, and snap it with my iPhone. It was beautiful: ripe red tomatoes from Crete, substantial chunks of feta cheese, perfectly sweet raw purple onions, and lots of fragrant olive oil and dried oregano. Seemed familiar, and yet I relished in the experience of consuming these simple ingredients on foreign soil.

If you know me just barely, you know that I’m summer’s biggest fan, and after 20 winters in the Northeast, I still moan and groan over winter’s double-whammy: no fresh vegetables in season and freezing temperatures. So today, in frigid Brooklyn, I give you a piece about a hot tomato soup a friend brought back from a recent trip to Egypt.