Travel Bite: Naschmarkt, Vienna

Vienna is a vibrant, sophisticated city with many historical sights, from the world-renowned Vienna Opera House (pictured above) and the Hofburg Imperial Palace, to a myriad of art museums and cafes famous for pastries like the linzer torte. When I visited there a few years ago, one of my favorite places was the city's most popular market and a Viennese institution.

The long, outdoor Naschmarkt was built over the Wien River in the 16th century. It started out as a place that mostly sold milk bottles, and produce was introduced in the late 1700s. Today it has about 120 stands and restaurants with fruits, vegetables, breads, meats, cheeses, olive oils, and a lot of international offerings. It was right across the street from my hotel, which meant that I had to ogle and sample my way through it twice a day when venturing out to catch a cable car or for a walk to the city center. You can see a few action shots of the market here since I didn't seem to take any.

I quickly realized that no olive goes unloved in Vienna.

My new BFF was this BOF (Big Oliven Fladen).

Then I met my newer BFFs, these BOFs.

These photogenic peppers posed in bright regalia when I said, “cheese.”

Not to be outdone, the squashes posed too, dressed in their finest almond hats.

I was admiring them for so long, I got pretty chummy with the chumus (hummus). Click to enlarge and see the flavors.

This exotic dragon fruit was not from these parts.

But the holier-than-thou Emmenthaler was.

I couldn't tell if this was really jackfruit or Emmenthaler with seeds.

Cheese-stuffed grape leaves were new to me. Wilkommen! Pleased to eat you!

Were the grape leaves and cheese-stuffed eggplant separated at birth? Come to momma!

Proof that when you leave the Naschmarkt, you'll be stuffed to the gills. Auf wiedersehen!

For a charming blog with original photos from Vienna, visit Merisi's Vienna for Beginners.

Related Links:

Travel Bite: Great Market Hall, Budapest

Travel Bite: Spice Bazaar, Istanbul

Travel Bite: Borough Market, London

Rapini with Sun-dried Tomatoes, Pine Nuts & Feta

This well-versed green will make a rapini artist out of anyone. Rapini. Broccoli rabe. Broccolini. This multi-monikered star is the P. Diddy of the veggie stage. Or is it Puff Daddy? I can’t keep track. Regardless of what you call it, this dark, leafy green has a pungent, full-flavored bite and is packed with B vitamins.

If you're not in a flashy mood, you can simply sautée it in olive oil and garlic, but here I’ve adorned it with some savory bling. Sun-dried tomatoes, pine nuts and feta cheese make for a bejeweled performance, and you can also trick it out with cannellini or ganbanzo beans. It’ll wear many ingredients well. And the best part? After you’ve scarfed down the whole pan yourself, no one will even notice in those baggy, low-riding pants. Here’s a little R. ditty to get you in the mood:

Rapini Rap

Just ate the whole plate ‘a greens yo, dawg

But you better not think 'a callin’ me a hawg

‘Cause I’m packin’ a weapon, hear what I say?

My mean garlic breath gonna blow you away

Recipe

1 large bunch rapini, including stalks, roughly chopped

1 TBSP olive oil

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes, julienned

2 TBSP toasted pine nuts

¼ cup feta cheese, crumbled

Salt and pepper to taste

If the tomatoes are packed in oil, rinse and drain well. Sautée garlic for a minute in oil and add the rapini stalks. Sautée for a couple of minutes and add the rest of the greens. Put the lid on and let it cook over low to medium heat for about 7 to 10 minutes, but check it along the way. When it’s almost done, season with salt and pepper, and add the tomatoes, pine nuts and cheese. Cook another couple of minutes until the rapini is fork-tender.

Makes about 3–4 servings as a side dish or 2 main courses

Gratitude, and Please Don't Call Me Bubba

After leaving the optician yesterday, I was feeling depressed. I hadn’t really looked at myself in the mirror lately until I started trying on glasses. “Who’s that?” I thought, before realizing it was moi. I was depressed over my new turkey neck, crows' feet, and well, the fact that I needed a special pair of blogging glasses.

So in my misanthropic malaise, I headed to Trader Joe’s. It was New Year’s Eve afternoon, and I knew it would be a madhouse. “Crap! Look at this parking lot!” I yelled to myself. “I could be here till 2012!” Then a spot opened up right before my aging eyes, and with George Costanza-like zeal, I sang my praises to the world. "Look at this spot!" I beamed. "Would you look at it?" I was the chosen one. Out of all the people waiting in that lot, I had won the lotto.

Then as I was strolling with my red shopping cart through the fruits and nuts section, I realized I had declined three invitations for New Year’s eve. What I really wanted to do was stay home, binge on pistachios and work on my blog. Has this social networking turned me anti-social? What happened to real person-on-person interaction? It’s social in a way. I’ve made so many new blogging friends, some of whom I actually see in real life, how could it be a bad thing? Besides, I talked to the real-life cashier. She was nice.

As I was walking out of the store with my groceries, I looked up and saw a woman who looked just like Bill Clinton. Not the young, charismatic Bill Clinton. The elder statesman Bill Clinton. The white-haired, pale-faced, monochromatic Bill Clinton. The skinny, sorta-somber-because-he’s-not-still-president-and-isn’t-aloud-to-eat-fried-food Bill Clinton. Now, I love Bill, but after doing a double take at this lady, I thought, “Whoa. That is not a good look on a woman. She could even pass for Boris Yeltsin.” Then all of a sudden, I snapped out of my funk. I realized I had a lot to be grateful for. Sure, I’m losing my memory, my eyesight, my cheekbones and my marbles, but I have a parking spot, good friends, a bag of pistachios and I don’t look like Bubba. Life is pretty good.

Happy New Year!

Girl’s Fruitcake Memory, Interrupted

The Memory

When I was growing up in Dallas, every year my dad ordered the Deluxe Fruitcake from Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas to give as holiday gifts. Collin Street was—and still is—the reigning fruitcake empire, and you could only get their fruitcakes via mail order. My proud papa was on the fruitcake forefront—in the know about this company in a little town in Texas that sent thousands of fruitcakes to people all over the world. Every December, like clockwork, a cake would be sent to his secretary, business cronies and relatives in New York. And of course, we’d get one too.

Most people love them or hate them, but I am that rare bird who straddles the fruitcake fence. I always liked the cake and nut part. Dense with Texas pecans, what’s not to like? The red and green parts were the gray areas. I wasn’t sure what to make of them. At first, I’d simply eat around them. Then I’d dip my teeth into the shallow end of the fruit reservoir, trying to talk myself into taking the plunge. Finally I’d dive in, distrustfully chewing the red and green U.F.O.s (Unidentified Fruity Objects), in an attempt to brainwash myself into thinking they were good. Collin Street's cakes were good, as far as fruitcake goes.

The Collin Street Bakery started in 1896 when a master baker brought the fruitcake recipe from Wiesbaden, Germany to Corsicana. The bakery claims to have had visitors from Enrico Caruso to Will Rogers. When the Ringling Brothers Circus passed through town in 1914, they ordered dozens of cakes to be mailed to friends and family around the world. Thus, the company’s mail order business began.

Today the bakery ships to 196 countries, and they sell about 3 million pounds of fruitcake a year, or roughly 1.5 million individual cakes. That fruitcake wasn't cheap back then, and they cost a pretty penny now. You can still only buy them through mail order, but the bakery has expanded to another store in Corsicana and one in Waco.

I recently stopped at the store alongside the highway in Waco on my way from Dallas to Austin. It’s a big, attractive, airy-white refuge from the road, full of baked goods that I wanted to love. Fruitcakes make up 98 percent of their sales, but there were other pastries that looked enticing throughout the large shop. Unfortunately, I read the ingredients on some of the items and noticed most of them contained hydrogenated oil. Yes, hydrogenated oil!

The Interruption

Instead of riding off into the red and green sunset ensconced in the sweet air of yesteryear, I saw storm clouds on the horizon. This is what I read on the Collin Street Bakery web site:

Our world-famous DeLuxe® Fruitcake has been a favorite since 1896 — still baked faithfully to our original recipe.

Then I dug a little deeper and found this:

Ingredients: pecans, cherries, corn syrup, sugar, flour, pine-apple, raisins, eggs, invert sugar, honey, liquid soybean oil & hydrogenated soybean oil, papaya, water, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup solids, orange peel, natural and artificial flavor, sulphur dioxide, red #40, blue #1, tumeric (color)

Hmmm. All these modern, industrialized “food” ingredients in 1896? I decided to do a little research in order to set the historical record straight. Here are a few of my distilled findings:

Hydrogenated Oil

In 1901, a German chemist named Wilhelm Normann introduced the hydrogenation of fats, creating what later became known as trans fats. He acquired a German patent in 1902, and in 1909 Procter & Gamble acquired the US rights to his patent. In 1911 they began marketing Crisco. This invention of adding hydrogen atoms to food had a profound influence on the production of margarine and vegetable shortening, enabling a longer shelf life.

High Fructose Corn Syrup

Since corn naturally has glucose, not fructose, in 1957 researchers created an enzyme called glucose isomerase that rearranged the composition of glucose in corn syrup and made it into fructose. It turned a mildly sweet corn syrup into the highly sweet high fructose corn syrup. It was first produced on an industrial scale in the 1970s.

Food Coloring

Seven dyes were initially approved under the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, but several have been delisted and replacements have been found. In 1938, the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics (FD&C) Act approved 15 dyes for use in food, drugs, and cosmetics and assigned color numbers instead of their common names. As of 2007, there are seven artificial colorings permitted in food: FD&C Blue No. 1, FD&C Blue No. 2, FD&C Green No. 3, FD&C Red No. 40, FD&C Red No. 3, FD&C Yellow No. 5, and FD&C Yellow No. 6. (Yellow 5, 6 and Red 40 contain compounds that have been linked with cancer.)

So it’s not exactly baked faithfully to their original recipe, but it’s close. Kind of like me riding off into the red #40 and blue #1 sunset is close.

Naughty Holiday Biscotti (with Cleavage)

Who cares if you're a 36D when your biscotti is a 10.

The way to Santa's heart may be through his stomach, but the old guy isn't blind. So why not show him a great pair? This comely coupling of cranberries and pistachios will have him drooling from his North to South Pole. The festive recipe, adapted from that cleavaged culinarian Giada De Laurentiis, will satisfy on all fronts.

These luscious lovelies are not only busting out with vibrant fruits and nuts, perky lemon zest is front and center too. Giada dips hers in white chocolate, but I say why constrain these babies in unnecessary accoutrements? Show off that strapping pair in all its red and green glory. Let the flavors shine on their own. And while I may not fill out a Wonder Bra like Giada, my biscotti are every bit as wunderbar as hers. In fact, when I made these last year, a guy called me a "ho" three times. What more could a girl ask for?

Recipe (adapted from Giada De Laurentiis)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

3/4 cup unsalted pistachios, coarsely chopped

2/3 cup dried cranberries (coarsely chopped if you wish)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Line a heavy large baking sheet with parchment paper. Whisk the flour and baking powder in a medium bowl to blend. Using an electric mixer, beat the sugar, butter, lemon zest, and salt in a large bowl to blend. Beat in the eggs 1 at a time. Add the flour mixture and beat just until blended. Stir in the pistachios and cranberries.

Form the dough into a 13-inch long, 3-inch wide log on the prepared baking sheet. Bake until light golden, about 40 minutes. Cool for 30 minutes. (Note: Make sure to let them cool the full 30 minutes before gently cutting them with a serrated knife or they will break.)

Place the log on the cutting board. Using a sharp serrated knife, cut the log on a diagonal into 1/2 to 3/4-inch-thick slices. Arrange the biscotti, cut side down, on the baking sheet. Bake the biscotti until they are pale golden, about 10-15 minutes. Transfer the biscotti to a rack and cool completely.

The biscotti can be made ahead. Store them in an airtight container up to 4 days, or wrap them in foil and freeze in resealable plastic bags up to 3 weeks.

Related Link: Orange-Hazelnut Biscotti

Single Bite: Salsa Bar

Ready to Salsa, Central Market, Dallas, Texas

Hope on a Farm in Watts

As he cups the small fruit in his hand, José informs me that it’s a guayaba. “It tastes good,” says the eight-year-old. “Is it tart?” I ask, faintly recalling that guayaba means “guava” in Spanish. He shakes his head yes. I’m pleased that he not only likes the fruit, but that he takes such pride in knowing about it.

José and his four-year-old friend Emily are hanging out at Mudtown Farms in Watts, where the children's grandparents are tending their plots in the community garden. This 2.5-acre parcel is across the street from the notorious Jordan Downs housing project—one of the flashpoints of the Watts riots and home to the Crips in South L.A. It's a gray, drizzly Saturday, and I'm touring the farm with my Food Bloggers Los Angeles group.

The farm was started after the riots in 1965, and today about 12 to 15 farmers pay $8 a month to grow things like cilantro, lettuce, chard and corn. I'd been to Watts a couple of times before—to see the famous Watts Towers, only a few blocks from here—and to go to the Central Avenue Jazz Festival. Central Avenue is a street steeped in history where some of the most celebrated jazz musicians in the 20's-50's played, from Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong to Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. But today, Watts is not exactly known for being a thriving artists' enclave.

In addition to the gangs and drug lords, the area is ruled by corporate fast-food pushers, out to get the 'hood hopped up on Happy Meals. With only one major grocery store in a wide area, fresh and nutritious is hard to come by. But you can get a quick fix from a 99-cent burger on any street. It's class warfare between the bottom liners in their corner offices and the bottom dwellers on every corner. The convenience-food and big-agro oligarchs with their processed and genetically modified agendas are pulling the nutritional strings, so it's no wonder this socioeconomic class has such elevated rates of obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes. In a bold move two years ago, the city put a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in South Los Angeles. That was a start, but there are still few alternatives to healthy eating in these parts. When you've been a junk-food junkie your whole life, how do you come clean?

Enter the Watts Labor Community Action Committee (WLCAC), a service and development organization who bought the land in 2005. The group has teamed up with architect Michael Pinto (above), a Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) professor and founder of Project Food LA. WLCAC and Pinto want to turn the under-utilized farm into a center for education and food sustainability, providing the residents with resources and access to healthy, locally grown food.

Pinto posed the possibilities as a project for his students, and they came up with a myriad of ideas, some of which are being seriously considered. WLCAC would like a professional farmer to oversee the land, and some of the options are to have an on-site kitchen with a chef offering cooking programs, a community-supported agriculture program, a seed library, as well as other avenues of education and support. Whatever they eventually decide on will hopefully bring healthier eating and more independence to the community.

It's hard for me to imagine a diet without fresh fruits and vegetables, but that's the grim reality for some. It's why we need to take matters into our own gardens and our own hands. They say real change starts from the ground up. I hope Mudtown Farms proves them right. Kids like José and Emily deserve a break today. But not at McDonald's.

Related links:

Watts' Community Garden, Los Angeles Times

Divided We Eat: What Food Says About Class in America, Newsweek

Single Bite: Festive Olives

Cerignola Olive Bin, Zabar's, New York City