Japan celebrates the New Year on January 1st (not some time in late January like the Chinese). More accurately put, Japan celebrates the New Year from January 1st to the 3rd. The holiday always includes a visit to a Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine (actually, most people hit both… nothing wrong with hedging your bets). And wherever large crowds of Japanese congregate, good food is never far way. During major Japanese holidays like New Year’s the streets surrounding the largest temples and shrines are filled with vendors whipping up popular street food like yakisoba (fried noodles), karaage (fried chicken), okonomiyaki (vegetable and seafood pancakes), yakitori (grilled chicken), takoyaki (doughy balls filled with octopus), chocolate covered bananas, and numerous other treats. All these delicious morsels, accompanied with the free flowing sweetened hot sake and cold Japanese beer, make for an atmosphere that’s always festive and celebratory.

Read more…

I love July 4^th. What’s not to love about fireworks, barbeque, sun, water… and independence? This year I traveled to the small town of Green Lake, Wisconsin to spend the holiday with friends. I may be a city girl but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to enjoy a campfire pancake breakfast, fried cheese curds dipped in ranch and pizza sauce, sugar dusted funnel cake, butter dipped sweet corn, or smoky bratwursts with sauerkraut and spicy homemade relish.

I’ve been toying with the idea of doing occasional wordless or word-lite posts. Browsing through my photos from the holiday weekend I believe that this is the perfect beginning to the series. Ladies and gentlemen… Feast Your Eyes

To me vacationing in Western Europe means sitting atop a cliff in Majorca surrounded by the deep blue Mediterranean, feasting on prawns the length of a man’s hand, split from head to tail and grilled over an open fire. Dressed with a drizzle of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon and a pinch of salt. Digging into crisp bottomed paella, bright yellow from saffron, loaded with spicy chorizo and briny shellfish.

Enjoying a leisurely lunch at a sidewalk bistro in Paris. Tearing off a hunk from a still warm baguette and generously covering it with rich liver pâté. Hands hovering over a wooden board loaded with cheese, pickles and charcuterie. The hardest decision of the day is trying to decide between the duck mousse and rabbit rillettes.

Pausing at a hill town in Tuscany to savor a plate of delicate potato gnocchi covered in the most beautiful blanket… shaved black truffles. Dizzy from their pungent earthy charms I begin to fantasize about cashing out my 401K, buying a villa, (in my delirious state my meager 401K has turned into millions) and spending my days staring out at the rolling hills and statuesque cypress trees.

This is the Europe of my past trips. So, when the chance came to spend a week in Amsterdam, I booked a flight immediately. I had been warned that the term “Dutch cuisine” was an oxymoron, but wasn’t too worried. After all, Amsterdam is a short train ride from Brussels and Paris. Surely the French managed to slip some culinary secrets their way. Besides, Amsterdam is famously known for its liberal stance on legalized pot. A city with a perpetual case of the munchies—I reasoned—is bound to have some fairly decent late night snacks.

I was wrong.

If I were using very simple word association to describe cuisines, I would say Korean … garlicky, Indian…complex, Vietnamese…herbal, Dutch….flat. The Dutch food I encountered completely lacked distinct flavor—no acid, sweetness or spice. Above all, it was seriously missing salt. Your palate lies limp. Like a bad marriage bed, it’s present for the act but secretly hoping for a premature end.

I was excited to try the French fries in Amsterdam, but it would seem that French potato magic didn’t make it past Belgium. The Dutch fries are cut thick and smothered with mayonnaise. I don’t know how you can make garlic-herb mayonnaise flop, but they accomplished it with their overly sweet goop.

I couldn’t bring myself to order the popular deep fried skinless meat sausage or breaded meat ragout after the disappointing Dutch fries. Ground meat mixed with flour, breaded and fried like a croquette must be the answer to midnight munchies. On the tourist filled street Leidsestraat, an entire shop consists of hot snacks that can be purchased out of vending machines. A large fry station in the back of the establishment keeps the front machines filled. While this is may be a brilliant answer to dealing with the annoying, stoned tourists, a culinary treat it is not.

Perplexingly, the Dutch don’t lack for quality ingredients. The local market displayed some of the most beautiful seafood I’d ever seen. This left me to speculate on the unfortunate events that must occur on its trip from the market to the dinner plate.

However, all is not lost. If you do find yourself in Amsterdam, and in desperate need to arouse your palate head over to the Peruvian restaurant, Casa Peru. Their lomo saltado— strips of savory beef pan-fried with fries, tomatoes, onions, ginger and cilantro—was the most flavorful plate of food I had while I was there. It had everything other dishes were missing: acid from tomatoes, sweetness from the caramelized onions, punchy ginger and herbal cilantro.

The fluffy homemade bread is served with an olive and sun dried tomato tapenade. You will be fighting with your dining partners for the honor of licking the bowl.

If you’re in the mood for French food—and don’t want to blow a month’s rent for dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant—visit Cote Ouest. Seared duck liver with stewed prunes required a couple generous shakes of salt, but the sweet prunes balanced the liver nicely. Together they make a luscious spread for slices of baguette.

The mussels could use a boost of flavor, perhaps they’ve been muted to suit the Dutch palate. But the French fries are thin, crisp, and thankfully someone in the kitchen knows how to make a good mayonnaise. The classic sole meunière, aided by a lemon wedge and saucer of melted butter, is simple but pleasant. Initially you may find yourself reaching for the saltshaker, but once you adjust the seasoning everything is quite satisfactory.

Perhaps I shouldn’t judge the cuisine before having a chance to enjoy a true Dutch delicacy—herring. I find the thought of buying a raw herring from a fish stall, covering it in onions, cocking my head back and chowing down like a hungry pelican both fascinating and terrifying.

Amsterdam is not a food vacation spot. However, its gorgeous architecture, canals, and people watching make it a fabulous city worth visiting. I will definitely return. However, next time I’ll be sure to tack on a few days at the end of the trip to fulfill some culinary fantasies… in France.

There are a few, some may call peculiar, activities that I tend to do whenever I travel outside the US.

One, I canvas convenience stores. 7-Eleven, Family Mart, Lawson, whichever has set up shop where I am. I love to see what oddities are commonplace. Tea eggs and cognac at the check-out counters in Taiwan, bento boxes, curry flavored shrimp chips, a plethora of pre-mixed cocktails in Tokyo, and the widest spectrum of fruit juices I’ve ever seen in Koh Samui.

Second, I look at a McDonald’s menu. Go ahead and scorn me. I know you’re thinking, “How can she call herself a food lover and even be in the same vicinity of a McDonald’s?”  Hey, I’m not going for the all organic-haute cuisine options coming out of the microwaves and fryers. The fascination lies in seeing what the super labs of McDonald’s have tested and found appealing to local tastes. Shrimp and potato croquettes instead of meat patties. Beef teriyaki burgers. Setting up shop in a rice loving country? Toss out the bun altogether and replace it with rice patties. When I was in Tuscany last summer, I was disappointed to find much of the food overly seasoned. But after sampling the uber-tested but super salty McDonald’s burgers I concluded that it must be the way Italians like their food (let the stone throwing commence… go ahead, I can take it).

Third, I visit the farmers’ markets. This is always a highlight for me. I love seeing what’s in season. How produce looks in different parts of the world. For instance, carrots in Taiwan and China are 3x the size they are here but the celery is 3x smaller. Beijing has the most amazing mushrooms, size and color wise, than anywhere else I’ve visited. But I was too terrified to venture into the meat section of the market for fear that I’d run into Lassie being portioned out to eagerly waiting chefs. If you don’t speak a lick of the language, or if most of the items are foreign to you, going to a local market alone can be overwhelming. Which brings me to my next activity.

Fourth, I sign up for a cooking class, many of which include market tours as part of their offering. Instructors will bring students to the local market, introduce local ingredients and processes like tofu and noodle making, which can be found at Beijing’s wet markets. So if you’re worried about being the only foreigner in a crowded Chinese market the size of two airport hangers (me at the Xinmin market in Beijing), joining a market tour might allow you to experience much of the same magic, but with a native speaker on your side who can make sense of the orderly chaos.

Taking cooking classes is relatively new to me. It started when I was in Beijing last March. I took classes at two schools, Black Sesame Kitchen and The Hutong.

Both schools are in the old Hutong area of Beijing.  If you’re traveling over there you have to visit, if not for the cooking schools then just to see what much of Beijing used to look like. Tiny houses and doorways open up to an elaborate labyrinth of interconnected courtyards. The streets are so small it’s a wonder cars are able to drive down them at all. On my visit, I found myself gawking at the maneuvering of two cars as they approached from opposite directions as if it were a circus act.

Black Sesame Kitchen was the better of the two schools. A local chef does the cooking demonstrations, while Candice (an American-born Chinese woman) translates, teaches and coordinates the class making communication a non-issue. The class begins with an introduction to the Chinese pantry, tasting and smelling key ingredients. Many of you may think that Chinese ingredients are familiar to you. After all, you buy them in the ethnic food aisle at your local grocery store… Ummm nope. That’s not the same thing. Sesame oil that was pressed at the local morning wet market is COMPLETELY different in smell and taste than the stuff that came off the processing plant over a year ago. Freshly roasted and pressed the resulting oil is smokey, nutty and rich. The smell isn’t muddled by aging oil and additives. It’s pure, tasting and smelling like real sesame seeds rather some kind of complex chemical composition. Anyone who has ever tasted great olive oil or fresh made peanut butter knows the kind of difference I’m talking about.

At Black Sesame Kitchen students receive a print out of the pantry basics both in English and Chinese with suggestions for the best brands of cooking wine, broad-bean paste and black vinegar (go out and buy Lao Chen cu from Shanxi province, it will change your life. Or at least your dumpling eating experiences).

The kitchen and prep area are small but not uncomfortably so. The kitchen has two wok and burner sets. After learning the pantry basics students are given ingredients, wooden cutting boards and cleavers. Everyone gets to work prepping ingredients for the first dish. One of the best parts? Lining up whole garlic cloves and smacking them with the cleavers (makes getting the papery skins off easier) it’s sort of like playing wack-a-mole but in a kitchen… and with a very large knife. Fun but definitely not a skill appreciated in the fine-dining kitchen world I find myself in now.

On the menu that day: Fish Fragrant Eggplant, Wok-Fried Bamboo Shoots, and Twice-Cooked Pork. All delicious, all relatively simple to make. Students prep and the chef tosses together examples of the dishes. Then the chef brings them to the communal tablewhere everyone samples the offerings. Next, each student picks a dish that they would like to learn hands-on. This is your chance to get behind the stove and put everything together. I chose to make Fish Fragrant Eggplant. It’s something I love to eat and unfortunately one that many American-Chinese restaurants love to screw up.

Traditionally the dish doesn’t have Szechuan peppercorns but I added them because I love that spicy numbing sensation that they bring to any dish. (When cooking with Szechuan peppercorns, the trick is to infuse flavor by adding them to your cooking oil, broth or water and removing them before adding the other ingredients.)

After all the cooking is done, everyone sits around the cleaned prep table tasting the different dishes and chatting. Remember, cooking schools are a great place to get restaurant ideas–from other students but especially from the staff. Some of the best food we had in Thailand was at a restaurant suggested by someone at the cooking school in Koh Samui. And if you want to do the market thing on your own, just ask the instructor which one they would suggest you visit.

So, those are my travel suggestions for the day. Next time you’re in an exotic location walk into a convenience store and take some time to look around. Buy the weirdest thing on the McDonald’s menu (or maybe just take a picture of it). Spend the morning at a local farmers’ market. And lastly, take a cooking class. There’s no better way to learn about the local food and take a little bit of that vacation magic home with you.