The distances I will travel for good pizza

On recent international travels, I had the pleasure of dining in two of the top-ranked culinary destinations in Europe. You can probably guess one of them was France. But unless you happen to have read recent foodie travel articles or are on top of the travel documentary scene, you may not have guessed the second: Croatia. I’ll tackle France in a separate blog post, but let me be the first to tell you that Croatian food is the best-kept secret of culinary travel in Europe. Well… except of course for all of the other better-kept secrets I’m not privy to yet.

The Dalmatian Coast of Croatia is really what I’m referring to, and as it is all coastline and islands, it’s not surprising that much of their food showcases delicious fresh seafood. The highlights that really stuck out to me were mussels, squid and lots of grilled whole fish. What was a little surprising to me however, was their pizza. I suppose that Croatia’s proximity to Italy may have tipped off other food-savvy tourists, but not this gal. I foolishly thought pizza was an out-of-place tourist food, and was floored to find out that not only is it is part of the local cuisine, but it’s really tasty!

Croatian pizza features fresh and original toppings (arugula, or “rocket,” comes to mind), and chewy crispy crusts. I even now have a theory that Croatia is where the “anchovies on pizza” idea really came from, but feel free to dispute. We had pizza almost every day while we were there, and my husband and I have recently been experimenting with our own pizza in an attempt to replicate. Stay tuned for a future post where Mr. Food Adventurer shares his pizza dough recipe and techniques.

Salmon salmon everywhere...

As you may have noticed, I cook a lot of animals killed by my husband. Its very cavewoman, but I actually enjoy it for the most part (exception: the pheasant - it had an actual piece of a shot pellet in the flesh, it was just disturbing). When Jeff went on his annual salmon fishing trip and came back with about 40 pounds of fresh caught fish, I was excited for the chance to cook (well, mostly to eat) such a fantastic treat, brought home to me by my caveman. Now, 30 pounds of salmon later, I am running out of ideas. We've grilled, baked, sauteed, and even fried our bounty, and we've tried about 10 different recipes for salmon cakes. Enough already! A woman (or cavewoman) can only eat so much fish - even if its been hunted down by her man.

What to make when veggies attack

Every summer that I can remember, my mother has had a vegetable garden. And every summer that I can remember, she ends up with the inevitable mountain of squash and tomatoes.... we used to actually keep count of the cherry tomatoes throughout the summer, in the order of hundreds. Now that I have my own yard I grow an herb garden every year, but I don't have enough space for a veggie garden. So this year I joined a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), where for an obscene membership fee, we get an equally obscene amount of locally grown organic produce each week.

Since the veggie takeover has started at my own house, I've been bugging my mom for good recipes for hacking away at the mountain, so she shared her recipe for Garden Vegetable Casserole. Its a tasty way to use excess produce and fresh summer herbs, and it's hearty enough to stand alone as an entree. It's a flexible recipe, so tweak it for whatever herbs and veggies you have this week. If you don't love this one, then you deserve to lose the battle against the veggies.

Hot Summer Cold Soup

If you are a soup person like me, you love the mid-winter coziness of creamy butternut squash soup or thick and hearty chili. And even in the summer (when there is sufficient high-power office building AC), I crave a warm bowl of corn & crab chowder (just had that today for lunch, so good!). But in the peak of summer heat when you face day after day of melting in your sunbaked car and you don't want to even blow dry your hair much less use your oven, a big bowl of chilled soup sounds pretty appealing. So does a salt-rimmed margarita on the rocks, but I digress....

So over the past few summers, I have tried several different varieties of gazpacho, a cold tomato-based soup (usually raw) created by the culinary geniuses in Spain. I've tried various interpretations and levels of chunkiness, and in my attempts I've found a lot of gazpacho recipes that I like, and a few that made me feel like I was eating cold baby food. But I've finally settled on my favorite gazpacho, one that has wandered a bit from it's Spanish roots but is simple, healthy and packed with bold flavors. Most importantly, it requires no cooking whatsoever, so its the perfect dinner after a day of losing layers of skin to a hot leather drivers seat.