Cooking Around the World

Anything that combines food and travel definitely gets my vote. So when I heard about the new Bravo show, "Around the World in 80 Plates," I knew I had to check it out.

The concept is pretty simple. Twelve chefs travel around the world, putting their cooking skills to the test in various competitions. Each episode takes place in a different city where the chefs learn the local cuisine, customs and cultures. In the first two episodes, the chefs have been split into two teams and have to race through the city completing tasks that will educate them on local fare. Whoever wins the competition gets to use the "secret ingredient" at the ultimate challenge, where the teams take over a restaurant's kitchen, recreate the delicacies they tasted earlier and have the residents of the city judge their personal interpretations of the dishes.At the end of the competition, the diners pick which team they like best. The losing team then has to pick one of its chefs to go home.

In the first episode, the chefs were in London. They went on a pub crawl where they tasted steak and kidney pie, blood pudding, and fish and chips--and of course drank lots of great British beer. The winning team won the right to use potatoes in their dishes, which is pretty much a staple in all British dishes, while the other team was not allowed to use that ingredient. It was certainly interesting to see what they used to substitute for potatoes, and all the dishes they created looked amazing. I personally love traditional British pub food, so I could appreciate everything they made.

The second episode takes place in Lyon, France. The teams race through the Beaujolais countryside, where they face some interesting sheep challenges. In the first task, they have to identify the six cheeses that are made from sheep milk, and there are at least 20 cheeses on the table. That's a lot of cheese, but I would certainly be ok with that challenge, because I love cheese, especially French varieties. Later, they had to taste eight different kinds of wine and pair them with the foods that were infused in the bottles. The winning team was taught how to make a famous regional dish, pike quenelle with nantua sauce, from a master chef in Lyon, while the other team had to fend for themselves on how to make the signature dish. It seems like a simple meal, but its actually kind of complicated. Once again, it was interesting to see how the teams executed the dishes. It really made me want to try all these French delicacies, and I certainly plan on visiting Lyon the next time I go to France.

The next city is Barcelona, Spain, a place I've actually been. I really hope they have to make tapas, because the city is known for its simple, shareable dishes. I'm curious to see what happens. 

I am definitely enjoying the series, though I do prefer Top Chef when it comes to cooking shows. So, I recommend the show for anyone who really appreciates international cuisine and world travel.

Culinary Excursions

A large part of travel is, of course, food. And it makes sense, because most of the time, the places we visit have cuisine that is completely different from our home town, especially if you venture to a different country. Personally, I don't feel I have truly experienced a place until I've eaten one of its local specialities. If you can find a trip that not only offers unique delicacies, but also an opportunity to learn about the culinary process of making it, then you've really got something special.

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I have had the privilege of partaking in some of these activities, and I highly recommend them. If you happen to go to Sienna, Italy, I suggest signing up for a personal cooking class. I, along with my family and friends, got the chance to cook with a Tuscan-style chef right in the comfort of her own kitchen. We chopped, sliced, seasoned, sipped and tasted our way through the afternoon, enjoying classic dishes like bruschetta, chickpea soup a four herb pasta. We ate each dish as it was prepared, heading back into the kitchen after each one to dive into the next, all the while drinking glass after glass of Italian wine.

Being from Colorado, I know a number of quality brewery tours that give you a first-hand glance at the beer-makign process...but these can usually be found in any city nowadays, especially with the popularity of craft beers in our culture. However, I recently stumbled upon a new business in Chicago's West Loop neighborhood called Brew & Grow, where home brewers can buy all the supplies they need to make beer on their own. Not only that, but it offers beer making classes, where you can make your own stout or ale, learn about flavors and consistency, as well as what food is best to pair with it. It's a great way to learn about a local activity while experiencing a city that is becoming a big player in the craft brew arena.

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal that covers a couple more food getaways for the upcoming harvest season. One in particular that caught my interest--and this should be no surprise to my readers--was the Grape Education at Blackberry Farm in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. In mid-November, the farm hosts its Wine Geek 101 event, where guests learn all about wine tasting, selection and pairing. You can also partake in cooking demonstrations and tours of the farm. It's relatively pricey ($1,200 per person) but if you have the time and funds, I think it would be a magical trip.

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Of the other suggestions, I think the next one I would pick is the bread making in Bath, England. Not exactly the easiest location to get to, but for fresh Italian and French bread, I think it's worth it. The five day course costs $300 a day, with one- and three-day courses available, too. An award-winning chef leads the class, where you learn how to make a vast array of different breads, and at the end, I'm pretty sure you get to eat some, too.

For the autumn season, when cooking and comfort food reign supreme (how many days until Thanksgiving?), it seems appropriate to indulge in a culinary excursions. The best part about them is that they can usually be squeezed into a quick weekend trip, making it super easy to enjoy another location on short notice.

A Day of Armchair Travel

I read about this concept in an article and couldn't help but be intrigued by it. What exactly is armchair travel? It's basically being transported to a destination without actually leaving your seat--or kitchen, or office, or wherever you happen to be situated. There are the typical mediums for armchair travel: movies, music, books, pictures, etc. But there are also some other ways to discover a place without physically going there. Food, drinks, language, art and news stories are all methods of learning, providing want-to-be travelers with the means to venture around the world, even if they cannot find the time or the money to actually do it.

To give you a better idea of what I mean, I'll give you a glimpse into what a day of armchair travel--or as the article sometimes calls it, lazy travel--can look like. As a news analyst, I spend the day perusing the internet for stories about current events relating to business, politics, technology, marketing, hospitality, lifestyle, and, of course, travel. In the morning, I traveled to the Philippines (U.S. issued a travel warning to the country), Charleston, SC (residents there are suing Carnival Cruises over their massive ship), San Francisco, CA (the Fairmont Hotel is being put up for sale), and Vancouver, Canada (Canucks fans went on a rampage after losing the Stanley Cup finals to Boston). Within the span of one work day, I can move from one coast to the other, leap over the pond, scale the terrain abroad, and cruise back on over to my desk, all before clocking out. What's even better is that I learn something in the process. I gain knowledge about a place through the events that are going on right now. News stories are a window into how people are living, responding to the daily problems, triumphs, concerns and hopes that they encounter every day. I will admit that reading through story after story can get a little tedious, despite all the fascinating things happening in our world. Also, the articles are so brief, it doesn't give me a chance to really get lost in a single location. Just as I'm getting pulled in, the final sentence approaches and I move on to the next place.

Books offer more of an opportunity to immerse yourself in a destination. As I pedalled and climbed to sweaty glory in the wee hours of the morning, I did it all from the mountain farms of southern Appalachia. I was reading Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, the story of three individuals whose lives are magically entwined through nature, love and the wilderness. I felt connected to this world I had never seen, and it made me feel like I knew what people living in that region of America are like, how they talk, their daily routines, their culture, their general environment. I still have more to read, more to learn, but I am eager to venture back there in the evening before drifting off into my own dream world.

But before going to Appalachia, I visited Spain. My friend Laura and I sat down at a table in a bustling, warm restaurant in Chicago, only to quickly drift into the kitchen of a Spanish Tapas bar, the spicy aromas wafting around our heads, penetrating our senses. The sizzling plates of spiced potatoes in tomato sauce, mushrooms stuffed with pork and cheese, and grilled fresh vegetables titillated our appetites and rocketed us into another culture completely diverse from the modern American city outside. We were in a quiant town in the Spanish neighborhoods outside Madrid, sitting at a wrought-iron table atop cobble-stone streets, sipping sweet sangria in the afternoon sun.

The perfect end to a day of armchair travel.