Globe Corner Blogs

Iceland --photo by Lisa

I am absurdly excited  about the upcoming Viking Invasion of Boston. From March 11-17,  Boston will be hosting A Taste of Iceland. This festival of Icelandic culture and entertainment is bringing Icelandic musicians, DJs, acclaimed chefs, and a film festival to various venues in and around Boston in celebration of all things Icelandic…and Icelandair’s non-stop service to Reykjavik. You can even enter a drawing to win a trip to Reykjavik! The full schedule of events can be found at the “Iceland Naturally” website.

Certain staff members of the Globe Corner have already expressed their love for all things Icelandic: from the delicious and addictive Skyr, Arnaldur Indridason’s Inspector Erlendur Series, and The Blue Lagoon (a geothermal spa) to the always interesting Iceland Airwaves Music Festival. We’re so excited about the festival that we’re taking 15% off all books about and maps of Iceland through March 17th. And as an extra bonus,  Icelandic singer Ólöf Arnalds will be dropping by the store on Saturday, March 13th at 4:30 p.m. to play a few songs for us!

For the past few weeks, whenever I told a friend that I was heading to Paris for a vacation, inevitably they would ask: “so… what are you going to eat there?” Some vegetarian friends warned with horror stories of growling stomachs, scouring the streets for someplace, anyplace, with even just a salad without a sprinkling of ham. I decided to prep as much as I could for our lacto-ovo diets by making notes of veggie-friendly restaurants on my maps of the city.

As a result, my Michelin Paris par Arrondissements atlas looked like the plan of attack of some crazed general. Scrawls of fine-point red sharpie noting cheese shops overwrote  important tourist locations like Notre-Dame. There was a sub-legend with symbols designating the 1970s sprouts-and-tempeh spots from the foodie restaurants who have a “menu au vert.”  Organic and macrobiotic joints were marked with an OM. Wine bars were heavily asterisked, the decided plan of retreat if it came to that.

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Thomas Jefferson really liked wine. While living in France, he acquired a profound knowledge about wine and amassed an impressive collection of fine wines. Apparently, he didn’t drink all of it though, because in 1985 a Chateau Lafite Bordeaux from 1787 that supposedly belonged to President Jefferson sold for $156,000 at an auction. Benjamin Wallace doesn’t lead us on a journey to exotic lands in The Billionaire’s Vinegar, but guides us through a journey filled with decadent wine tastings through the world of collecting rare wines. Whether the the wines tasted were genuine or forgeries, well,  you will have to read the book. However, if you want to find out more about Benjamin Wallace you can just continue reading.

1. Do you prefer aisle or window? (Please explain.)

Aisle. It’s bad enough to be compacted into a too-small seat in a too-small cabin, but at least in an aisle seat it’s possible to stretch out your legs, when the aisle’s clear, and easier to stand up and walk around the cabin.

2. Now for some general wine questions:

a) Red or white? Do you have a preference and why? Red *and* white (and pink, too, for that matter). It really depends on my mood, the weather, and what I’m eating.

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Are you a Secret Santa to a traveler and food lover? What follows is a list of books about cooking, eating, and drinking all around the world. Bon Appétit!

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Amarcord: Marcella Remembers
by Marcella Hazan ($16.00)
Bestselling cookbook author Marcella Hazan tells how a young girl raised in Emilia-Romagna became an icon of classic Italian cooking. Widely credited with introducing proper Italian food to the English-speaking world, Hazan, now 84, looks back on the adventures of a life lived for pleasure and a love of teaching.

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Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York
by William Grimes ($30.00)
Noted food critic Grimes explores what determined where a person would eat and how the restaurant scene mirrored the forces shaping 19th and 20th century New York.

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Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris
written by A. J. Liebling, illustrated by James Salte (14.00)
In his nostalgic review of his initiation into life’s finer pleasures, Liebling celebrates the richness and variety of French food, fondly recalling great meals and memorable wines.

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The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine
by Benjamin Wallace ($14.95)
The Billionaire’s Vinegar tells the true story of a 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux – supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson – that sold for $156,000 at auction and of the eccentrics whose lives intersected with it.

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Eat Memory: Great Writers at the Table: A Collection of Essays from the New York Times
edited by Amanda Hesser ($15.95)
New York Times Magazine food editor Amanda Hesser has showcased the food-inspired recollections of some of America’s leading writers. Eat, Memory collects the twenty-six best stories and recipes to accompany them.

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Food Journeys of a Lifetime: 500 Extraordinary Places to Eat Around the Globe
by National Geographic Traveler, introduction by Keith Bellows ($40.00)
In this illustrated travel gift book, readers find a full itinerary of foods, dishes, markets, and restaurants worth traveling far and wide to savor.

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Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food
by Jennifer 8 Lee ($13.00)
Lee writes humorously about the quirky history and worldwide popularity of Chinese restaurants and how traditional Chinese cuisine has been redefined.

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Heat
by Bill Buford ($15.00)
Heat is the chronicle – sharp, funny, wonderfully exuberant – of Buford’s time spent as Mario Batali’s “slave” and of apprenticeships with culinary masters in Italy.

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The Man Who Ate the World
by Jay Rayner ($15.00)
One of the world’s preeminent restaurant critics takes on the giants of haute cuisine in this fascinating and riotous look at the business and pleasure of fine dining.

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My Life in France
by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme ($15.00)
This is a delightful memoir of Julia’s years in Paris, Marseille, and Provence. Funny, earthy, forthright – Julia is with us on every page as she relishes the French way of life that transformed her, and us.

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Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China
by Fuschia Dunlop ($16.95)
When award-winning food writer Dunlop lived in China, she vowed to eat everything she was offered, no matter how alien or bizarre. This work is a unique, evocative account of Chinese culinary culture.

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The Sharper Your Knife the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris
by Kathleen Flinn ($15.00)
Flinn, a 36-year-old American living and working in London, cleared out her savings and moved to Paris to pursue a dream diploma from the famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking school.

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The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World’s Most Glorious – And Perplexing – City
by David Lebovitz ($24.95)
Lebovitz, a pastry chef and cookbook author, always dreamed about living in Paris. This collection of recipes and observations is a funny, offbeat, and irreverent look at the city of lights, cheese, chocolate, and other confections.

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Tenth Muse: My Life in Food
by Judith Jones ($14.95)
Living in Paris after World War II, Jones broke free of bland American food and reveled in everyday French culinary delights.

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Why Italians Love to Talk about Food
by Elena Kostiokovitch, intros by Umberto Eco & Carol Field ($35.00)
Organized according to region and colorfully designed with illustrations, maps, menus, and glossaries, this is an exceptional celebration of Italy’s culinary gifts.

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Brooklyn EIPA - photo by Llalan

New Yorkers. They love their city, they love their Yankees, and by God, they love their beer. They have German beer bars, Belgian beer bars, American craft beer bars – whatever your thirsty little heart desires.

I wanted to get in on the love fest. Realizing that drinking at all of New York’s beer halls would take weeks and be hazardous to our health, my friend and I tackled a few in Williamsburg over a weekend.

First on the official tour: Spuyten Duyvil. (Don’t ask how it’s pronounced – I forget.) The tag line to the bar’s name is “rare and obscure,” and that it is. While I sipped an Oktoberfest on cask, my friend delicately held a tiny tulip of mead. For as powerful as the honey-heavy drink was, it sure didn’t come in a manly glass. He stuck out a pinky and muscled through.

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Hazer Baba Pistachio-rich Finest Turkish Delight

My roommate recently returned from a trip to Turkey.  Among the many exotic gifts she brought home (mini-Whirling Dervish dolls, embroidered scarves, sweet apple tea), was a small, unassuming box of candy.  Standard souvenir fare for the experienced traveler.  Often picked up at airport lounges and gift shops, in a last ditch effort to cover all her obligatory souvenir bases.  This, however, was not just any candy.  If it were purchased at the last minute in the Istanbul airport, I don’t even care.  Because it was Turkish Delight.  Specifically, Hazer Baba Pistachio-rich Finest Turkish Delight.  And it was wonderful.

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French Quarter - photo by Jess

Too broke and too busy to travel abroad, I instead took three small trips around the country this summer.

The subtitle of this post should be “24 hours driving, 24 hours there.” In early August I drove 24 hours, almost straight, to New Orleans, and had about the same amount of time in the city itself. The term “road trip” may suggest a fun, leisurely drive with numerous pit stops to see America’s eccentricities – the world’s largest rubber band ball, the country’s best apple pie, or the largest state fair, for example. But make no mistake, this road trip was strictly business – get to New Orleans! (I did, however, stop off in South Carolina for Chick-fil-A and Atlanta for Chipotle… yum.)

My time in New Orleans was unfairly short and I feel like I only had time to do about seven things… But, of those seven things, some stood out as winners. Here’s what I’d recommend:

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Lonely Planet Thailand

The food does not take me back. Pad thai here is not pad thai there. And only rarely, if the chef is generous, can you get khao neao gap som tom (sticky rice with papaya salad). In DC I had a chef so excited that someone wanted it he brought the generous portion out himself. But it’s just not the same in a sit-down American restaurant. Sometimes the orchids in vases on a restaurant’s clean white tablecloth take me back to the early mornings in Thailand. Walking to my meeting room, raincoat hood dripping over my nose, I stared at the gracefully curving stems and regal flowers growing in hanging gardens in people’s backyards. One basket hung on each limb of a wooden stand, like impatiens or geraniums, but orchids. And misted to some kind of dewy perfection.

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Bellagio from the Ferry on Lake Como - photo by Cecilia

Finally we arrive in Italy, where we will spend six days at Lake Como. As soon as we are on the Italian side of the Alps, the weather magically changes. It’s no longer that gloomy, drizzly day we saw while enjoying our last morning in Basel. We drive only fifteen minutes through the St. Gottard tunnel, and the warm and bright day that is waiting for us at the exit of the tunnel seems to belong to a different season.

We drive to the town of Cadenabbia di Griante in the Tremezzina region, located in the central region of the lake of Como. Griante is a small town, from where we can visit and explore some of the towns around in the mid-lake region.

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Colorful Albanian building--photo by Lisa

Last year when I was trying to figure out how I was going to go from Dubrovnik to Albania, I found that it was very difficult to do. Maybe not very difficult, but time consuming to say the least. This year I found that it was very simple to walk into a tourist agency and book a one day excursion to see the “Colors of Albania” via the shiny new high-speed catamaran that departs form Dubrovnik every Wednesday.

It only took three hours to speed down the Adriatic Coast and arrive in the historic port of Durrës, Albania. We were then whisked away to our assigned guides and herded onto buses to make the trek to the capital city of Tirana. The short distance took a very long time to cover as the entire highway seemed to be a parking lot of Mercedes, Hummers, and other flashy cars. Our guide told us that Albania has the highest number of Mercedes per capita and Albanians helped “clean” Germany of their Mercedes. Everyone on the bus just raised their eyebrows and nodded.

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