Today’s cool link comes courtesy of the Vatican Museum – a 360 degree view of the interior of the Sistine Chapel. One interesting thing about this view: it is entirely free of tourists.
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Cool Website: Sistine Chapel
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European Cooking: Sorrel
Sorrel is a perrenial herb that resembles spinach. It has green, oblong leaves and produces a red / purple flower. A second variety is red veined sorrel with lighter green leaves and distinctive dark red veins. Finally, French sorrel has green, tongue shaped leaves. The plant has a tangy, slightly bitter taste due to a low level of toxic elements (which can be fatal in large doses). Consumed in small quantities, the herb can add a tangy flavor to salads or be used instead of lettuce or arugala to add tang to a sandwich. The most popular use of sorrel is as a puree to make Sorrel Soup, a popular French dish. It is also used to make soups in Hungary, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, and Finland. In Mediterranean cooking, it is sometimes used to add flavor to the Greek favorite spanokopita.
red veined sorrel
French Sorrel
Campbell’s Soup will Always Have Paris
If you’ve ever looked closely at the gold seal in the middle of a Cambell’s Soup can, you’ll notice it reads “Paris International Exposition,” with the date 1900 at the bottom. The seal depicts the gold medal awarded at the Paris World’s Fair, held in 1900. Cambell’s won the gold medal for the best commercial food innovation: condensed canned soup. The company has displayed their medal proudly on cans since 1900, though a few designs over the years have not featured the medal. Being fond of the medal, we hope Campbell’s will always have Paris.
Paris: Book Vending Machines & Chalkboard Menus
A few years ago when AOE was visiting Paris, we took this picture of a book vending machine. It struck me as unusual because you would not see this in North America – though there would be plenty of machines filled with junk food and high calorie sodas. Perhaps Parisians aspire to feed their mind rather than indulge in snacks. The quirkiness of the machine was entertaining, but this larger cultural aspect was also impressive. Note: I believe this was taken in the Latin Quarter or somewhere on the Left Bank.
Now that the Kindle, the iPad, and other e-readers are becoming more prominent, we wonder if the bookstores and vending machines will lose popularity? To answer such a question, perhaps we should look to another seemingly antiquated Parisian institution- the chalkboard menu.
In today’s world, it would be easy to type a new menu everyday on a word processor and print it up. (Many restaurants do.) Yet, Parisian cafés and zinc bar bistros continue the time honored tradition of hand writing the day’s menu and prices on a chalkboard. To them, it is part of the elegance of tradition; everyone agrees it is a nice touch. This piece of human elegance doesn’t cost much, nor does it take much extra time. It’s hard to say if Parisians will keep their affinity for bound paper books, but given their liking of the chalkboards we think they will not soon let them go.
Describing 19th Century Amsterdam
AOE thought it would be nice to share another quote from Geert Mak’s Amsterdam, where he shares Italian visitor Edmondo de Amicis’s description of the city from 1873:
The rumbling of the bridge chains merges with the rattling of the wagons, the whistle of the steam boats drowns out the chimes from the bell tower; the rigging of the ships blends into the leaves on the trees; the carriage rides next to the barge; the shop is mirrored in the canal and the sails are reflected in the shop windows. Life on land and sea go hand in hand here… and thus form a new and lively stage, a feast of peace and community.
While present day Amsterdam is still a port, visitors will not see as much of the shipping industry. They will, however, still find de Amicis’s “a new and lively stage, a feast of peace and community.”
European Cuisine: Borage
Borage, a/k/a Starflower, is an herb used in German, Italian, and Spanish cooking. The plant has hairy stems and leaves with flowers having 5 petals alternating with spokes that create a five point star.
The herb is used to make a special green sauce (Grüne Soße) in Frankfurt, to fill ravioli in Ligurian cuisine, and is often used to flavor soups, pickles, and even some cocktails. The leaves may also be eaten as a vegetable and have a cucumber-like taste. The flowers are sometimes used as a dessert garnish and have a faint honey taste.
Cool Website: German City Panoramas
German City Panoramas is a cool website that gives you 360 views from around Germany. Ok, google earth offers some of the same features, but this is an interesting way to explore the ‘main sights’ of many German cities in panorama photo format. All the major cities are included, i.e. Berlin, Cologne, Munich, Frankfurt; but also a lot of smaller historic towns – Koblenz, Oldenburg, Dresden, Wiesbaden, etc. Some of these smaller towns make good day trips, or even stop overs in their own right while visiting Germany. For example, here’s a link to Freiburg’s historic center.
Paris Footage from the 1920′s
After featuring footage from the 1900 World’s Fair, we thought it would be interesting to follow up with a travel video from the 1920′s. Amusez-vous.
NYT 36 hrs visits Hamburg
… with a cool slideshow.
European Cooking: Chicory
Chicory is a popular European herb with a bitter taste. It is is also known as blue sailors, succory, and coffeeweed. They are also sometimes called endives (with Belgian French endive one variety), though true endives are not closely related. Instead of long slender green leaves, Chicory may have white, tightly-packed cabbage like leaves, however most varieties have small, bright blue flowers. The leaves are used in salads, and are popular in Italian cuisine as part of pasta and in other dishes. According to Wikipedia:
Wild chicory leaves are usually bitter. Their bitterness is appreciated in certain cuisines, such as in the Liguria and Puglia regions of Italy and also in Catalonia (Spain), in Greece and in Turkey. In Ligurian cuisine the wild chicory leaves are an ingredient of preboggion and in Greek cuisine of horta; in the Puglian region wild chicory leaves are combined with fava bean puree in the traditional local dish Fave e Cicorie Selvatiche.
By cooking and discarding the water the bitterness is reduced, after which the chicory leaves may be sauteed with garlic, anchovies and other ingredients. In this form the resulting greens might be combined with pasta or accompany meat dishes.
The root may also be ground up and used as a coffee substitute or additive, used by brewers to add flavor to beer, or used for herbal medicine. Chicory is effective against parasites (and thus added to livestock forage as well), and has had a variety of other uses. In Germany, it has been commonly used to treat digestive ailments, sinus problems, cuts, and bruises, and to help with weight loss. As with most herbs, there are many uses for the plant.