Summer Food Reading
/Just before Memorial Day, we are used to seeing magazines and newspapers listing their recommended books to read for summer vacation or summer travel. We would like to suggest a few that emphasize food and travel. Food and travel writing often go together, since eating well can be the best reason for traveling. Few people were better at this than Anthony Bourdain, who introduced us to cultures through their food.
I have visited more than 50 countries and only a few of them had disappointing food. One was Greenland, primarily because it was Spring and they hadn’t had a supply ship since October. Seal meat and narwhale stew remain the two most disgusting things I have ever eaten. During my first visit to Cuba, the food was dreadful, primarily due to food shortages. Restaurants were owned by the government and the governments chefs were indifferent at best - any worth cooking was overcooked.
If I am not excited about a destination’s food, then I’m usually not excited about going there.
Here is a list of favorite books about food and travel, beginning with Italy.
Eating My Way Through Italy by Elizabeth Minchilli (St. Martin’s Griffen 2018)
Minchilli moved to Rome with her family when she was twelve and never left. She is married to an Italian and travels and eats in off-the-beaten-path towns in Italy, Sicily and Sardinia. She lists places to eat, sleep and the best times to visit. As a plus, there are a few recipes in each chapter.
See You in the Piazza by Frances Mayes (Crown 2019)
The best-selling author of Under the Tuscan Sun also visits small towns around the peninsula and on the islands. Having lived in Italy for many years, she writes passionately about the food and the culture. If you are a fan of churches with their frescoes and artwork, this book will thrill you. A great resource for planning your next trip to Italy. Although you’ll probably need a bestseller, a hit movie, or a winning lottery ticket to be able to afford the hotels and restaurants she visits.
Pasta, Pane, Vino by Matt Goulding (Harper Collins 2018)
La Gazzeta printed an excerpt of this book last month, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it is a favorite. Golding writes with authority and great insight into the joys of eating, traveling and cooking in Italy. My most recent purchase, which is on my reading list for summer is his book about eating and traveling in Spain: Grape, Olive, Pig.
One of my favorite novelists, the late Jim Harrison, was also a lover of good food and wine. For a number of years he wrote a food column for Esquire magazine and contributed food essays to many magazines. Two of his books include some of those columns and essays about food and travel. He, like Matt Golding, was a friend and dining companion of the great travel and food writer, Anthony Bourdain. Both of Harrison’s books about food and travel, The Raw and the Cooked (2007) and A Really Big Lunch (2017) should be in your library. His writing is poetic and some of his meals legendary, especially the 37-course meal in France which inspired the title for one of the books.
Finally, an essay by Nevin Martell on National Geographic’s website suggests several titles of both fiction and non-fiction that will make for good summer reading. These sound good:
Dirt (2020), by Bill Buford. After befriending the always great (now late) French chef Michel Richard, the Italophile-turned-Francophile writer winds up at a cooking school in Lyon studying the country’s gastronomic secrets. Ultimately, he walks away having “learned the taste of good food. That comes from a place, as it has for thousands of years, from a soil that is a testament to its ancient history.”
The Spice Necklace: A Food-Lover’s Caribbean Adventure (2010), by Anne Vanderhoof. As an intrepid couple pilots their sailboat, the Receta (Spanish for recipe), around the Caribbean, they dig into local delicacies along the way. The breezy memoir-cookbook will make you want to head to the tropics—or at least your kitchen—to try chilled curried pumpkin soup or toothsome coconut-custard tarts.
Now that you are hungry, check out the Weekend Specials and don’t forget to make a reservation!
Weekend Specials
M’tucci’s Italian
16 oz Hand Cut Ribeye: Crispy Salt Water Potatoes, Grilled Broccolini, Balsamic Reduction $38
Pan-Seared Rockfish - Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Grilled Artichokes, Sautéed Arugula, Lemon Caper Sauce $21
Appetizers
Beer Battered Herbed Ricotta Stuffed Squash Blossoms: Capers, Oil Pickled Zucchini $10
Clam Toasts & Pancetta with Fennel, Sun-Dried Tomato, White Wine Butter Broth $12
Weekend Cocktail
Twilight Hour: Caravedo Pisco, Aperol, Sherry, Lime & Simple Syrup
Sunday Only
Half Rack of Smoked Baby Back Ribs, Salt Water Potatoes, House Made Cole Slaw and House BBQ Sauce for $18
M’tucci’s Moderno
6 oz. Beef Tenderloin: Crispy Saltwater Potatoes, Grilled Asparagus, Salsa Verde $36
Pan-Seared Rockfish: Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Sautéed Arugula, Roasted Artichokes, Lemon Caper Butter Sauce, Prosciutto Powder $21
Shrimp Diablo: Patagonia Shrimp, Spicy Marinara & Spaghettini $19
M’tucci’s Twenty-Five
NY Strip: Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Grilled Broccolini, Smoked Blackberry Bone Marrow Butter $23
Ruby Trout: Seared Artichokes, Grilled Escarole, Garlic Whipped Potatoes, Lemon Caper Butter Sauce $21
Smoked Beef Tip Tortelloni: Cold Smoked Beef Tips, Roasted Mushrooms, Marinated Tomatoes, Cajun Tomato Cream Sauce, 5 Cheese Tortelloni Garnished with Scallions and Feta. $19
Coming Soon to all M’tucci’s Restaurants and to Albertsons Markets in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos.
We’ve been working on this for awhile and are pretty excited to share it with you.
Thanks for reading. See you next Friday. Ciao!
