Day Thirteen – Ten Favorite Foods

Lucky thirteen and they give me a lot of leeway with “ten” favorites.  In March of 2021, I did a foodie post called “Wendy Eats World with Due Respect to Jimmy Eats World”. I am going to borrow a few things from that post, but I have added several countries to my travels since then.  My favorite foods often coincide with countries I have visited.

Itinerant:  a travel lover who has a gypsy soul.

Foodie:  a person who has an ardent or refined interest in food and who eats food not only out of hunger but also due to their interest or hobby and is passionate about food.

I guess that makes me an itinerant foodie.  I took my first trip of a mere 350 miles when I was 3 days old and rumor has it that as a baby/toddler, I ate anything put in front of me.  My palate was not picky.  Then came the pre-teen/teen years.  Can you believe I would eat spaghetti/noodles only with butter and I didn’t like pizza?  I had taken an aversion to tomato sauce.  That isn’t an issue today, although I still don’t eat raw tomatoes.  My love of travel has stayed with my gypsy soul and my palate has become more sophisticated.  If you have followed my journey, you might say I am eating my way around the world and there are not many things I haven’t tried, at least once.  Being a social media whore, many of you can probably predict several of my favs.

It’s highly unlikely that I would ever be vegetarian and even less likely a vegan.  Since I’m in Poland let’s start here.  My top dish in Poland is not pierogi.  As crazy as it sounds I have maybe eaten Pierogi 10 times in 4 years.  Maybe I ate so many 水饺 jiaozi (dumplings) in China that even though they aren’t the same, they just don’t have the appeal for me.  Now, give me a plate of steak tartare and I am in heaven.  Although it is said to be a French dish and I often eat it when in Paris, tartare is served at most Polish restaurants.  It is a dish of raw ground (minced) beef.  It is usually served with onions, capers, mushrooms, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and other seasonings, often presented separately, to be added to taste.  It is often served topped with a raw egg yolk. Side note, I don’t eat mushrooms so those never get mixed in.

I also took a walk on the wild side in Krakow and tried horse tartare.  While it was tasty because of the spices and add-ins, I found the texture not to my liking.  The only way I can describe it is chewy or rubbery.   I think I could eat steak tartare daily, but I haven’t braved making it at home even though I can buy the tartare meat at my local market.

“Without noodles, there would be chaos and darkness”, author unknown.  I could lump all noodles together, but that would be doing them a disservice.  Plus, if I treat them as individuals, I can cover four of my favorite foods.  First and foremost in the noodle category is 兰州拉面 Lanzhou LaMian.  It is said that Lanzhou, China has three local treasures, “auspicious gourd and beef noodles, and sheepskin raft like warship”.  I have no idea about the auspicious gourd or the sheepskin raft-like warship, but I feel I am an expert on Lanzhou LaMian.  One of the oldest beef noodle soups is the Lanzhou hand-pulled noodle. To identify the ingredients and the dish, it is suggested preparing the soup by the following five steps: “One Clear, Two White, Three Red, Four Green, Five Yellow” (一清、二白、三红、四绿、五黄).  First, the beef soup should look clear; Second, the radish slides should be crystal white; Thirdly, the color of the chili oil should be bright red; Fourth, the green cilantro leaves and garlic shoots should be jade, and, lastly, the noodle should be smooth and bright yellow.

I ate this soup probably a minimum of three times a week when I lived in Dong’e.  I even had the noodle guy try to teach me to hand-pull the noodles…unsuccessfully.  No matter where I am in the world I search out a Lanzhou noodle shop.  I even jumped off a bus in Istanbul after we passed a sign that said, “Uygur” restaurant…ding, ding, ding…this meant Lanzhou noodles. I had a nice hearty bowl for breakfast and then continued on to the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia.

I guess I will stick with noodles and move on to a dish I ate Every.Single.Day in Vietnam, Pho.  It was either Pho Bo Tai (beef) or Pho Ga (chicken).  There is nothing like eating Pho on a street corner in Saigon sitting on a small plastic stool and watching the world go by.  I have a favorite pho shop in Saigon, it is a couple blocks from the hotel I always stay at.  I kid you not, I do eat it every day when I’m in Vietnam.  I prefer the pho in Saigon over Hanoi and other places north.  However, I found a fresh market in Hoi An that the pho was phenomenal.  Pho is considered Vietnam’s national dish.  There is a population of Vietnamese in Warsaw.  After trying several restaurants, I have my favorite shop and I used to have it delivered several times per week.  Now I probably have it once every week or two.  Only because I am cutting back on my Uber Eats habit.

“Peace will come to the world when the people have enough noodles to eat”, author unknown.  What can I say?  I collect quotes from noodle shops I have been to. Bali Indonesia…stole my soul and gave me mi ayam.  Mi ayam is a common Indonesian dish of seasoned wheat noodles (mi) topped with diced chicken meat (ayam).  In simple terms, chicken noodle soup, but with a kick because it isn’t complete without some sambal (hot sauce).

It is derived from Chinese cuisine.  In Indonesia, the dish is recognized as a popular Chinese Indonesian dish, served from simple traveling vendor carts frequenting residential areas, humble street-side warung to restaurants.  I found a favorite Warung not far from Kenari House and I was there so much that I didn’t even have to order.  I sat down and my soup appeared.

“Noodles are life”, Wendy Marvin.  My personal quote, I would never give up noodles in my life.  Number five on my favorite food list is ordinary spaghetti, especially my mom’s.  Her homemade sauce was delicious, and she made it at least once a week for dinner usually with meatballs.  Anytime I am back in the States for a visit, I love going to Mount Carmel Church with my friends Bill and Bobbie for the church’s Sunday spaghetti dinner aka, St. Spaghetti.

I can’t talk about pasta and not mention eating a giant bowl of Bolognese, carbonara, or cacio e pepe in any city in Italy.  To dine on pasta al fresco in Rome or Florence with a glass of wine and not a care in the world is truly one of life’s greatest pleasures.

It’s a good thing I ate a breakfast tortilla with bacon, egg, cheese, and lutenica before starting this or I would be powerful hungry right now.

Next up, is the simple avocado.  Avocados are one of my favorite foods.  I can make avocado toast, put them in my tortilla, on a salad, or make guacamole.  They pair nicely with beef carpaccio (a fav).  I can open an avocado, remove the pit, add a little salt, and eat it with a spoon right out of its skin.  I had to give a nod to this yummy fruit.  To eat an avocado, picked fresh from a tree in Bali, that was almost as big as my head, the avocado, not the tree, well, not quite, but you get the idea, is heaven on earth.

Let’s head back to China.  A dish I love and have been able to recreate is a vegetable dish, gān biān sìjì dòu 干煸四季豆 or dry-fried green beans.  A vegetable dish, but like many “vegetable” dishes in China it is prepared with ground pork.  It is a classic Sichuan dish with an interesting flavor combination: aromatic, umami, spicy, numbing, salty with a hint of sweetness.  It does require some specialty items like Ya Cai (Sichuan preserved mustard greens) and Shaoxing wine.  I do miss Chinese food.

 

As you may be noticing, my favorites are savory.  Although my number eight is sometimes sweet, I prefer a savory version with lots of gooey cheese.  Before ever visiting Paris, Tom asked me if I thought I could make Clătite.  Clătites are crepes in Romania.  He liked them with cream cheese and blueberries.  I became fairly good at making them at home and even purchased a special crepe pan.  While I thought mine were good, nothing can compare to eating a warm crepe (if you read day ten, even better in the rain), from a street vendor in Paris.  Living in Paris, I eventually became attached to a one crepe shop in the Latin Quarter near Shakespeare and Co. Book Store.   I still try to go there every time I am in Paris for a warm savory crepe fromage.

Number nine, simple, diverse, and delicious is the pickle. While I enjoy all types of pickled fruits and vegetables, for my top ten list I am sticking with the pickled cucumber.  I say simple, but maybe not when you consider the diversity – dill, sweet, bread and butter, kosher, gherkins, spicy, and so forth.  I personally never came across a pickled cucumber I didn’t like.  We usually have a jar of spicy ones on our kitchen counter here in Warsaw.  I’m just going to leave number nine at that and say pickles make my top ten list.

Finally, it must be pizza.  I make homemade pizza here in Warsaw every Friday night.  Sometimes pepperoni, sometimes margherita, sometimes pickle, and sometimes all three.  My mom made pizza quite often when we were growing up, but I also loved Carmen’s and Warren Baking pizza in Warren, Ohio.  Not to forget Sunrise Inn of Warren, but I didn’t start eating that until my late teens.  Probably when my brother started working there as a busboy.

Sunrise Pizza has met me at the airport when I have returned to the USA from China and other places.  It has been delivered to me in Paris, France, and eaten on the steps of the Sacre Coeur.  It has even made it to Amsterdam.  When I lived in China, I learned that Papa John’s, Dominoes, and Pizza Hut were acceptable because that was all that was available.  Of course, again, nothing beats a fresh pizza on the streets in Italy.

That rounds out my top ten.  As I continue to “eat my way around the world”, I have tasted amazing dishes in every country I have visited.  I’m looking forward to new and exciting cuisine as I take off next year to lands unknown.  Where I am sure I will find unique and amazing dishes and may have to update this list.

As Anthony Bourdain said, “Food is everything we are.  It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma.  It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.”