Above is the buffet at our hotel in Sorrento, Italy. I love their dishes. And most of the food is prepared from produce they grow on-site. This was the location of the best honey we've had, produced from the flowers of their lemon grove. The Almafi Coast is known for lemons.
This is the best bread. It came from the bakery next to my great-grandmother's old house in Raccuja. I might be biased on this one. A lot of the bread in Italy is still baked by hand every morning. That's why, if you go to a restaurant, they get cranky if you eat more than one basket of bread. They only have so much, because it is not mass produced. I don't have pictures of the best Tiramisu, but it was in Rome, in front of the Pantheon. We discovered this restaurant last time we were in Rome, and we keep coming back to it. It also has the best Lasagna. There wasn't really any bad food in Italy, except for that weird herbal liquor.
In Greece, most all of the food was good. The best carbonara was there; it was cream based and very bacony and cheesy. Maybe not the purist's version of a carbonara, but it was tasty. The pastries were excellent, and filled with everything from pumpkin to spinach and garlic. Greek salads are not to be missed and are much better than the ones you get in America. They contain nothing except wedges of fresh tomato, cucumber, and feta cheese, with a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of oregano. Surprisingly, no olives that we saw. The feta cheese is much more mild and creamy than in America - it's actually good. And of course we tried Gyros. They are very greasy but good, a bit like a philly cheese steak.
In Morocco, it was tough going. About the only edible meal we had was at the Riad Elizabeth in Marrakech. They served a British version of local food, so the spice was toned down a bit. There we had rice similar to what we made in Cairo, except with chickpeas instead of almonds. Scott had a lamb tagine. A tagine can really be anything that is cooked in a tomato based sauce in a terracotta crock. Other food included more tagines of varying incredients, but all were heavily laden with spices and vegetables such as zuccini, eggplant, olives, etc. Middle eastern cuisine uses a lot of dried fruits like apricot, date, fig, plus nuts like almonds, walnuts, and chickpeas. This all sounds really delicious until you taste it. Even Scott thought it was seasoned to death. Egypt was pretty similar, except that rice is the main starch there and not couscous. We had more good meals there than in Morocco because we stayed at the Four Seasons, which had a breakfast buffet that is the stuff of legends and serves more international cuisine.
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