Olive Oil

I am crazy for good olive oil, and I always bring some back home with me whenever I visit an olive-growing country -- it's probably my number one souvenir, and I've never once had a bottle break or a tin leak in my checked bags.  One day I'd like to participate in an olive harvest, but until that happens my most memorable oil experience has been a tasting at Olio & Convivium in Florence.  Similar to a wine tasting, it is remarkable how even olive oils from the same region (in the case at Olio all the oils were from Tuscany) taste incredibly different.   As olive oil is a culinary item I'm very fond of and I enjoy just about every day (my breakfast most days is a piece of good bread, toasted, with a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of salt), I have made it a point to taste a great number of oils from around the Mediterranean.  I also read a lot about it -- if you love olive oil as much as I do you might enjoy Olive: A Global History (one edition in The Edible Series published by Reaktion Books and written by Fabrizia Lanza, who now runs the wonderful Sicilian cooking school originally begun by her mother, Anna Tasca Lanza) and The Passionate Olive: 101 Things to do With Olive Oil by Carol Firenze (Ballantine, 2005).  

Freelance journalist/author Tom Mueller is also crazy for olive oil, and he first appeared on my radar with an article he wrote for The New Yorker entitled 'Slippery Business' (2007).  I referenced this great piece in several of my books, and I was really glad when, two years ago, he wrote Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, Norton, 2012.  One of my favorite food writers and cookbook authors, Nancy Harmon Jenkins, noted of Extra Virginity that it's "a story that all food-lovers need to read and understand."  With the publication of this engrossing and important story, Mueller went "steadily deeper into oil," exploring its cultural, culinary, chemical, and criminal sides.  He traveled all around the Mediterranean, from southern Spain and North Africa to the West Bank and the eastern coast of Crete.  He also went to California, Chile, South Africa, and Australia.  And he met oleophiles like Flavio Zaramella, president of the Corporazione Mastri Oleari in Milan (one of the most respected private olive oil associations), who is devoting the rest of his life to redeem the olive oil business from fraud.  Yes, big time fraud.       

Grazia De Carlo, the matriarch of the De Carlo olive oil family (they've had groves in Puglia since the 1600s), told Mueller about the wine scandal in Italy in 1986 -- hospitals across northwest Italy were admitting dozens of people suffering from symptoms like nausea, lack of coordination, fainting, and blurred vision.  Twenty-six people died, and twenty went blind.  It was eventually discovered that each victim had recently drunk a local white wine that had been cut with methanol, a very toxic substance also known as wood alcohol.  The scandal devastated the Italian wine industry, and hundreds of producers -- most of them honest -- went bankrupt. However, the scandal served to radically improve Italian wine-making, and forced a shift from quantity to quality.  Grazia noted that only after the methanol scare did the government get serious about enforcing quality, and today wine is a major export product for Italy.  She added that sometimes she wishes there could be a methanol scandal in olive oil, "which would obliterate this corrupt industry completely, and rebuild it in a healthy way.  It's been Babylon around here for far too long." 

Since I read Extra Virginity I've been paying closer attention to the oil I buy, and Mueller's Appendix 'Choosing Good Oil"has been very helpful as well as his website, www.truthinoliveoil.com.

There are a number of pointers to remember when buying oil, but I think one of the most important is to read the label and find out if the oil is from a specific mill and/or from a specific country or region.  'Packed in Italy'or 'Bottled in Italy' are phrases that are often meaningless and false -- Italy is one of the world's major importers of olive oil, from Spain, Greece, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, and elsewhere.  Some labels list a number of countries where the olives came from, but these are oils to be avoided.  Similarly, another misleading word I've seen on labels is 'frantoio,' the Italian word for olive mill, which at first might seem promising but then I notice the list of countries that provided olives further down the label, and sometimes Italy isn't even one of them. 

As might be expected, there are very few olive oils available in North American supermarkets that are real -- again, the label is revealing: avoid oils with words like "pure," "light," "olive oil," and "pomace" -- these have undergone chemical treatments that strip away olive flavors and many of the oil's health benefits.   Generally I have one olive oil in my house that I use for cooking and another (more expensive) oil I use for salad dressing and drizzling on things.  I follow Mueller's recommendations to the letter, and my favorite source for more expensive oils is Gustiamo (which is my favorite source for a number of other Italian culinary items as well). 

Cost, too, is an indication of what you're buying -- real olive oil is not and never has been a bargain.  Any of my followers who may have read my Collected Traveler Central Italy book (devoted to Tuscany and Umbria, and published in 2000) may recall an article I included called 'Tuscan Olive Oils' by Faith Willinger.  In my introduction to the piece, I noted that Burton Anderson, in his wonderful book Treasures of the Italian Table (William Morrow, 1994), wrote that making extra-virgin olive oil is so labor intensive that "even the most expensive oils are in a sense under-priced."  I also mentioned an olive oil from Il Picciolo, near Siena, that is produced by an American named Ruth McVey.  According to an article in Saveur No. 8, McVey's harvest doesn't produce more than about 800 liters in a good year, too little to export.  But she was quoted in Saveur as saying, "Olive oil for me isn't about making money.  It's about quality, and whether that still matters anymore," a statement that could have been made by a great number of Tuscans who believe, as I do, that quality does indeed still matter. (And by the way, McVey's oil may be purchased on-site)   

I am now off for two weeks to France, where I'll spend some time in the south, one of the world's great olive growing areas, where many people also believe that quality does still matter.  More posts to follow after the 12th of June....

Vermeer at the Frick

OK, I'm abandoning my gifts posts for now because there are just too many other wonderful things to write about (but stay tuned for more of them this December!)

I feel incredibly grateful and happy that I was able to catch the exhibit 'Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis' at The Frick Collection the day before it closed two weekends ago. Grateful because the very next day I developed a vision problem in my right eye which would have prevented me from really seeing the exquisite paintings.  And happy because, well, I was truly so happy when I was there -- I love being at the Frick under any circumstances -- and I was reminded that I have not been doing a very good job of late at living my life, doing the things I really want to do.

When I had reached the final stage of the indoor line, which was on the right side of the entrance way to the exhibit, a man in front of me leaned all the way over and peered into the Oval Room.  He then turned to the woman who was with him and said, "There she is!"  I thought that was such a nice way to refer to 'Girl With a Pearl Earring' for of course "she" has become so personal to many of us since the publication of Tracy Chevalier's book in 1999.  The painting itself has been cleaned by art conservators since it was last in New York almost thirty years ago, and the girl depicted in the work has become "one of the most famous faces in Western art" according to Holland Cotter of The New York Times. 

But I loved all the other fifteen paintings on loan from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague as well, especially 'Still Life with Five Apricots' by Adriaen Coorte; 'View of Haarlem With Bleaching Grounds' by Jacob van Ruisdael; 'As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young' by Jan Steen; and 'Goldfinch' by Carel Fabritius (I haven't yet read Donna Tartt's novel of the same yet but I cannot wait to begin it).

The bookstore at the Frick naturally stocks some exceptional volumes on Dutch painting in general and on Vermeer in particular.  Books by noted author Arthur K. Wheelock (who is also Curator of Northern European Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.), including The Essential Johannes Vermeer (Abrams), are essential for those who want authoritative volumes.  But I am also very enthusiastic about a paperback series by Taschen, which includes an edition on Vermeer: The Complete Paintings by Norbert Schneider (pictured above).  In 91 pages Schneider reveals an awful lot about the town of Delft, Vermeer's life, and his painting career and features a plethora of color and black-and-white reproductions.  I am especially keen on the final chapter, 'The Rediscovery of Vermeer,' in which Schneider tells us that only since the middle of the 19th century has Vermeer's art enjoyed an enthusiastic reception.  The French socialist politician and journalist Théophile Burger-Thoré (1806-1869) is responsible for ushering in a new appreciation of Vermeer's art -- while he was traveling around England, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland, immersed in Dutch 17th century painting, he believed that these works corresponded with the art of the Barbizon school and Gustave Courbet.  "It is no coincidence that this dawning interest in Vermeer went hand in hand with the rise of Impressionism, whose agenda was the rejection of a dark-toned, academic style of painting in favour of brightly-lit plein-air painting using a full, unmixed palette."  Camille Pissarro, in a letter he wrote to his son Lucien in November of 1882, noted, "How shall I describe these portraits by Rembrandt and Hals, and this view of Delft by Vermeer, these masterpieces which come so close to Impressionism?"          

I stood outside on line for an hour and a half on an exceptionally cold day with snow flurries and rain before I got inside the museum, so I was committed to this show; but I admit I was unprepared for how much I loved this exhibit.  Happily for the Frick and for fans of Dutch painting, over 220,000 people saw the exhibition, and the Frick now has many new members. Though the show has closed, anyone who may have missed it (or just wants to connect with other fans) can easily do so by visiting the Essential Vermeer website. This truly fantastic and thorough site is maintained by just the kind of quirky, passionate person I love, Jonathan Janson, an American painter who lives in Rome.  There is so much here it's hard to believe: a complete Vermeer catalogue, prints and posters, a Dutch glossary, maps, museums, interviews, even free Vermeer and Delft wallpapers.  Janson launched the site in 2001 and he spends about five hours a day keeping it up.  It's truly a labor of love and one of the most outstanding websites I've ever seen, on any subject.  Makes me want to quit this blog.  But I won't: he has inspired me to make it better. 



 

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

OK, it's officially 2014 and I got way behind keeping up with these "gift" posts, but as someone said to me a few days ago, early January is still a time of year when people need gifts for all kinds of occasions, so I will continue with a few more ideas.  After all, a good gift idea is a good gift idea, no matter when the idea first comes up, so you can always save the idea for a later time.

One of the few museums in North America that transports visitors to another place is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, in Boston.  If you have been to the Gardner you already know this, but if you haven't, you are in for a wonderful surprise when you step into the courtyard of the museum as you will really feel, for a short while, like you are in the middle of Venice (Isabella's favorite foreign destination).  The Gardner's exquisite courtyard alone is reason enough for the museum to be a favorite of so many people, but happily Mrs. Gardner's entire collection is stellar (I love practically everything here, but three works in particular are stand-outs for me: 'The Seated Scribe' (Gentile Bellini), 'The Rape of Europa' (Titian), and 'El Jaleo' (John Singer Sargent).

A gift of a Gardner museum membership to someone who lives in the northeast is a great idea (or tickets for a single visit), and if you know someone who will be visiting the Boston area it's also a good idea.  You could pair the membership or visit gift with one or more of the books below as the Gardner is of national and international significance: in the early morning on March 18, 1990, two thieves dressed as police officers entered the museum and in eighty-one minutes made off with thirteen works of art, valued today at over $500 million.  According to Ulrich Boser, author of The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft (HarperCollins, 2009), the theft remains the largest property robbery in American history, and the Gardner staff continues to offer a $5 million reward for any information on the whereabouts of the missing masterpieces (the stolen works include paintings as well as a Chinese bronze beaker and a finial from a pole holding a Napoleonic silk flag).  Boser notes that this is believed to be the biggest bounty ever offered by a private institution -- by comparison, the reward the Lindbergh family offered for any information on the kidnapping of their child is believed to be the second largest reward. At the time Boser's book was published, the Gardner's reward was exceeded only by the federal government's $25 million for Osama bin Laden.

Boser's book reads like a true-crime tale because it is one.  This is no light story.  It involves art detectives, the FBI, the Boston police, con men, art experts, organized crime, international terrorism, and a number of unsavory characters.  Suspects have included the Irish Republican Army, the son of a police officer, Whitey Bulger, an antiques dealer, a Scotland Yard informant, and a New York City auction house employee.  People have been hurt, murdered, and thrown in jail as a result of this theft but no arrests have been made, and there are no reports of the artworks being sold.  An article in The New York Times that appeared on March 18, 2013 -- the twenty-third anniversary of the theft -- reported that federal authorities announced they knew the identities of the thieves and that they belonged to a criminal organization based in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states.  For his book, Boser spoke to many people who reacted to the theft as if it was very personal, and years later they are still deeply affected by it.  He also asks, if a sculpture doesn't stand in a courtyard and a painting only appears as an image in an art history book, does it even matter?  "...to any serious art lover, the answer is no.  Every work of art is singular, unique, and when a creation goes missing, there is nothing left behind but inadequate facsimiles -- and fading memories.  If a painting is stolen, if it's gone missing, it cannot be replaced.  Lost art is lost forever."    

The Art Forger by B. A. Shapiro (Algonquin, 2012) is a novel inspired by the theft.  It's a clever read that I very much enjoyed, with some good twists and moral questions to ponder.  It's a perfect companion read for anyone interested in the Gardner or about art, and art forgery, in general. 

Old Masters, New World: America's Raid on Europe's Great Pictures by Cynthia Saltzman (Penguin, 2008) traces the history of how a small handful of wealthy Americans created the first art museums in the United States, among them Isabella Stewart Gardner (the other collectors featured are J. P. Morgan, H. O. Havemeyer, Henry Clay Frick, and Henry Marquand).  Saltzman is also the author of The Portrait of Dr. Gachet (Penguin), a book I absolutely could not put down, and she has revealed a fascinating chapter in American history with Old Masters, New World.  She notes in the Introduction that though the United States in the late 19th century was a major world power, the country had meager collections of art.  Painter Mary Cassatt wrote in June 1871 from Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania that "I cannot tell you what I suffer for want of seeing a good picture."  Cassatt had spent five years painting in France  and was eager to return, and novelist Henry James told his mother in 1869 that Americans seem to have "the elements of the modern man with culture quite left out."  Even later, in 1906, when the British critic Roger Fry served as curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he noted the museum had "no Byzantine paintings, no Giotto, no Giottoesque, no Mantegna, no Botticelli, no Leonardo, no Raphael, no Michelangelo."  In 1917, Gardner herself stated that "years ago I decided that the greatest need in our Country was Art...So I determined to make it my life work if I could."  Saltzman refers to the Old Master works that crossed the Atlantic between the 1880s through the First World War as "one of history's great migrations of art," and this migration has come to a near standstill today as "those Old Masters that remain in European private collections are unlikely to leave the countries where they now reside because of export restrictions."


On the occasion of the Gardner's 100th anniversary in 2003, the Beacon Press published The Eye of the Beholder: Masterpieces from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and this is a beautiful and substantive book that is alone a very nice gift (and that's the fabulous 'El Jaleo' on the cover below).         

Until the 20th of January, the Gardner is hosting a special exhibit entitled 'The Inscrutable Eye: Watercolors by John Singer Sargent' (the museum has a particularly large and fine collection of Sargent's works).   Music lovers may also be happy to know that the museum offers a full program, on Sundays, Monday afternoons, and third Thursdays (devoted to jazz).

Empty frames are in the places where the stolen paintings once hung at the Gardner.  At the time Ulrich Boser was working on his book, Gardner security director Anthony Amore told him that "it's those frames that get me.  Because with those frames just hanging up there, you can't say, 'I'm not coming into work today.'  Every time I come in here, I think I have to get back in my office and start chasing those paintings down.  Something clearly belongs in those rectangles."  When Boser asked museum director Anne Hawley if she thought the artworks would ever be returned, she replied that "I live in hope.  I dwell in possibility, as Emily Dickinson says.  I just have to believe that the stolen paintings are still out there."

280 The Fenway / (617) 566.1401  

Open Wednesday to Monday 11:00 - 5:00, Thursday to 9:00, closed Tuesday

  

Jeff Koehler's Spain

Anyone who is as big a fan of Spain as I am will love writer/photographer/cook/traveler Jeff Koehler's new book, Spain: Recipes and Traditions from the Verdant Hills of the Basque Country to the Coastal Waters of Andalucia (Chronicle Books). But even for someone who may not (yet) be a fan of Spanish cuisine, this book is terrific.  As Koehler notes in his Introduction, "Spanish cooking has never been more in fashion, nor has it ever elicited such interest as it does now." 

I'm as big a fan of Koehler as I am of Spain and Spanish food, and you may have read some of his writing in Saveur and Food & Wine, among a number of other periodicals.  Also, his book Morocco: A Culinary Journey with Recipes, is a favorite of mine, as are Rice Pasta Couscous: the Heart of the Mediterranean Kitchen (2009) and La Paella (2006), also published by Chronicle.

He has lived in Barcelona since 1996, and this newest book is not meant to be an authoritative tome like Claudia Roden's The Food of Spain but rather it focuses on the country kitchen, which Koehler notes is the traditional kitchen in Spain.  The tastes of rural landscapes "are not easily lost," Koelher writes, "making sure that the countryside is never far from any table in Spain, even in the cities."

Cooks and travelers alike will enjoy this book, in the kitchen as well as in the proverbial armchair.

www.jeff-koehler.com 

Honey

A few friends asked me recently for some travel-related gift suggestions, and I thought it would be a good idea to share these -- and many more -- here on my blog (and it is also a motivation for me to move more quickly through the enormous piles of books and materials I have set aside for the blog -- note photo below of towering books in my bedroom!).  So this month will be devoted to posts about gifts that I believe travelers like you will find of interest.

I often buy honey when I'm traveling to places where it's a specialty, which as it turns out is a great number of places in the world (honey bees live on every continent except the Arctic and Antarctic).  My favorite honey memory took place in the Peloponnese region of Greece, with my good friend Sarah.  We were driving on a very rural road, in a hilly but not quite mountainous area, when we saw an elderly man seated in front of a small table on the side of the road.  It really seemed he was in the middle of nowhere, so we felt we had to stop and see what he was selling.  What he had were glass jars of honey, of several varieties.  He offered us a few tastings, and after we'd purchased a few jars, he asked us where we were from -- not that he spoke English, but we got the gist of the question.  When we told him, he eagerly clasped our hands and said, "America!" as if it was a mythical, magical place.  And of course for him America really was a place he'd likely only heard about, and he clearly stood in awe of our country.  He was so sweet and so proud of his honey, which was deep and rich and delicious.

I not only buy honey for myself but also for gifts, and I no longer have to travel far to find it (but I'm not referring to the kinds of honey sold in most supermarkets).  Honey is no different from wine, cheese, coffee, and chocolate in that it's an artisanal product, and giving a quality honey with a copy of The Honey Connoisseur: Selecting, Tasting, and Pairing Honey, With a Guide to More than 30 Varietals (by C. Marina Marchese and Kim Flottum, Black Dog & Leventhal) is a wonderful present that just about anyone would be happy to receive. 

In case you hadn't noticed, honey is hot: it's found at practically every farmer's market anywhere and specialty retailers sell dozens and dozens of varieties, making it hard to choose what to buy, which is why The Honey Connoisseur is so useful (and it's a very handsome, beautifully illustrated book besides).  Williams-Sonoma offers its own artisanal honey collections that also include beekeeping kits, and as authors Marchese and Flottum note, the growing interest in beekeeping "reflects people's desire to have a say in where their food comes from" and "keeping a hive of honey bees is more than a hobby.  It changes one's entire outlook on nature and connects us to food."

Making the leap to beekeeping may be too large for many of us, myself included, but I am kind-of pondering it.  Marchese noted in an interview that "keeping honey bees is the best-kept secret...Beekeepers are the gentlest and wisest people I've ever met...once you join, you will never leave."  !  But for the moment I'm just enjoying several honeys in my house right now: honey produced from hives on the roof of the Palais Garnier Opera house in Paris (sold in the Opera's gift shop and at Fauchon; also, guests at Le Meurice receive small jars); Let it Bee; and honey from Littlefield Farm on Block Island.  All of these share the qualifications that authors Marchese and Flottum note, which is that honey should always be purchased closest to the source and if the label isn't clear about this try a different one.  Many varietal honeys (such as apple blossom, linden, and thyme) may not be local but they should be produced in areas where the best terroir is for that variety.

The Honey Connoisseur is the kind of book that you can get lost in for hours -- I had no idea there were so many varieties of honey...Saw Palmetto? Sourwood? Catclaw?...clearly there is a whole honey world out there to explore.  And of course the authors would not leave out recommendations for tasting flights of honey and five recipes (right now I have my eye on Honey Struck Chocolate Truffles). 

Great book, great gift.  And I can't resist noting one of my all-time favorite episodes of 'I Love Lucy,' where Lucy gets a loving cup trophy stuck on her head upside down.  She has to get down to the club so that Ricky can try and help figure out a way to get the cup off her head, so Ethel ties a scarf around the cup and under her chin.  They're on the subway, and Lucy notices that a man is staring at her.  She turns to him and says, "What's the matter, haven't you ever seen a beekeeper on the subway before?"  I have a whole new appreciation for beekeeping, as well as for the honey I drizzle on my yogurt in the morning.
    

The authors of these three books pictured here may appear to have nothing in common, but in fact they do: all three of them -- Katie Workman, R. J. Palacio, and Luke Barr -- will be guest authors at the Goddard Riverside Community Center's 27th Annual Book Bash this Friday night the 22nd!

Goddard Riverside's headquarters are on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, on Columbus Avenue at 88th Street, though its 27 programs change the lives of children, adults, and the elderly at 21 sites throughout Manhattan, from Wall Street to 140th Street. 

The Book Bash cocktail party kicks off the weekend-long Book Fair, where brand new, current releases are for sale at 50% off the cover price (there are no musty paperback novels or out-of-date road atlases that have been stored in someone's attic for twenty years).  The Book Fair opens to the public on Saturday morning whereas the Book Bash requires a ticket ($125 in advance, $150 at the door) -- go to goddard.org for full details. 

I've been volunteering for Goddard for 20 years, and I would never have continued my involvement were it not for the wonderful staff there as well as for all the wonderful people who passionately support Goddard.

I have fond memories of every Book Bash, but wow, these three authors coming this year is amazing!  The Mom 100 (Workman Publishing) is truly the book I wish I'd had when my daughter was younger.  Full disclosure: Katie is a friend, so you might expect me to endorse her book; but in all honesty, even though my copy isn't exactly dog-eared, I have still found a number of recipes and tips in the book that have proven popular with my 15-year-old.  Wonder (Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers) is just simply one of my absolute most favorite books and one that I think every single human being should read.  (And I was fortunate to meet R. J. Palacio once and she exudes such warmth you just want to hug her and not let go.)

Provence, 1970: M. F. K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste (Clarkson Potter) may be of most interest to readers of this blog as it is at least partially a travelogue.  Sans doute, some  readers will recognize Barr's name -- he is news director at Travel + Leisure (read his piece entitled 'A Kitchen in Provence' in the November issue of T+L) and he is a grandnephew of M. F. K. Fisher.  I was utterly engrossed in this account of a particular time in a particular place, among these now legendary culinary icons, and I think the book may surprise some readers; it is an eye-opener in some regards.

December of 1970 found M. F. K. Fisher, Julia Child, Simone Beck, James Beard, Judith Jones, and Richard Olney all in the south of France, and they could not only feel their world was changing but they had in fact set many of the changes in motion.   Barr notes in the Prologue that his book is a narrow slice of history that is also a personal story.  "It is the story of my great-aunt, trying to decide at age sixty-two what to make of her life thus far, and what to do with the rest of it.  And that had everything to do with the events in Provence that winter, and with the future of American cooking, its debt to France, and M. F.'s role in that trajectory.  France had been her ideal for decades, and that was changing.  She was changing.  I know this because I found her diary."

And on that key note I will not spoil the rest of this revealing and unique historical moment.

If you live in the New York area come to the Book Bash or the Book Fair!  I'll see you there.

November 23-24, 2013 Always the weekend before Thanksgiving  Children's book authors on Saturday & Sunday!  Meet these great children's book authors: Roxie Munro (1:00pm Saturday) Jessie Hartland (2:30pm Saturday) Fiona Robinson (12:30 Sunday) Daniel Kirk (2:00pm Sunday) Don't miss out on great book discounts! Goddard Riverside Community Center 593 Columbus Avenue | New York, New York 10024 www.goddard.org/bookfair | 212.873.4448

Marcella Hazan and Penelope Casas

A number of memorials to Marcella Hazan have appeared since the announcement of her passing recently, and while this is yet one more, I want to also acknowledge the passing of another culinary icon, Penelope Casas, who passed away on the 11th of August.  For those of you who cook, you know what I mean when I say that you feel you know the author of a cookbook you use a lot even if you've never met that person -- in my house, my husband and I refer to these authors on a first name basis, as if we really do know them.  The names Marcella and Penelope are among these because we have made so very many of their recipes.  We knew Marcella first, and our paperback edition of her first book, The Classic Italian Cookbook (1973, Ballantine), is so tattered and the pages are so brittle that it is barely holding together.  We only have one other Marcella cookbook, The Essentials of Italian Cooking (Knopf, 1994), even though she has a number of others.  I like to note, as I did in my book on Venice, the Veneto, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, that there is a recipe in Essentials for a risotto with celery that may sound dull but is absolutely delicious and full of flavor.  Less known perhaps is her husband Victor's book on Italian Wine (pictured above; Knopf, 1982), which I think is still an excellent book even if some of the information is outdated.  I love that he dedicated the book to Marcella, "insostituibile e carissima compagna"(irreplacable and dear companion).

Everything I've read over the last few weeks about Marcella has focused on her career as a cookbook author and cooking instructor.  I admire her for both of these talents, but the singular point I am making here about her is that she was also a culinary authority for travelers: I learned so much from her books about what to expect at restaurants and trattorie in Italy, about the courses served, about ingredients, and most importantly about the differences in the cuisines in each region in Italy.  As she noted, "Italian cooking" is an expression that is rarely used by Italians. "The cooking of Venice, for example, is so distant from that of Naples, although they are both Italian cities specializing in seafood, that not a single authentic dish from the one is to be found on the other's table.  There are unbridgeable differences between Bologna and Florence, each the capital of its own region, yet only sixty miles apart."  She also observed that  "The unique features of each region and of the individual towns and cites within it can still be easily observed when one travels through Italy today.  These are living differences that appear in the physical cast of the people, in their temperament, in their spoken language, and, most clearly, in their cooking."   

I have long recommended to travelers that they include cookbooks in their trip planning reading, even if they are not cooks and have no intention of making a single recipe (though this would, I think, be a shame because cooking some of the dishes unique to the place you're going is a great way to  immerse yourself in the destination).  I feel you cannot separate the history of food from the history of a city or country, and really great cookbooks -- the kind with both authentic, tried-and-true recipes and detailed commentary on food traditions and unique ingredients -- are just as essential to travel as guidebooks.  I read them like novels, and often the authors share the names of their favorite markets, shops, and restaurants.

Though I have made a great number of Marcella's recipes, I have made even more of Penelope's.  The Foods & Wines of Spain (Knopf, 1982) remains an essential book, and Craig Claiborne referred to it as "the definitive book on Spanish cooking" at the time of its publication.  I refer travelers to Spain to this book's Preface, which includes entries on 'What is Spanish cuisine?,' 'Spanish Life-Style,' and 'Regional Cooking.' 

I also cook from Delicioso! and Tapas, and have put together some great feasts for friends with recipes from these books (also published by Knopf).  I was pleased to feature three articles by Penelope in my book on Northern Spain, and I received a very nice note from her when it was published in 2003.  But best for travelers is her book Discovering Spain: An Uncommon Guide, pictured to the right (also published by Knopf), which is out of print but I recommend it if you can find a copy as a great many of her recommendations are still accurate and worthwhile.

Farewell to Marcella and Penelope, who will live on in their many excellent books.