Luglio a Puglia

I went to Puglia this summer. Like seemingly the rest of the blog and travel and media world who have saturated your Instagram feeds and Feedly backlog with photos of turquoise water, orecchiete studded with broccoli rabe and crumbling churches.

Why Puglia? On one hand, it seems to be the last safe not-Tuscany-but-will-be-soon. Last summer Umbria suffered a catastrophic earthquake, from which they're still rebuilding. Nearly a decade ago, L'aquila in Abbruzzo suffered an earthquake as well. And so we go to Puglia, which, for now, seems safe. (We're ignoring last summer's train crash, after all, what anglophone media outlet cares about Italy's crumbling train infrastructure? Rent a Fiat or an Alfa! Rent a Vespa!).

I took the train. I took the train and went to Alberobello and Lecce, but also to Bari and Taranto and Matera because even though it's not in Puglia, it's close enough. Here are some of my favorite photos.

The view of the Sassi di Matera from our accommodation. What was once deemed the epitome of all that was wrong with

Via Duca di Genova in Taranto, Puglia

I was obsessed with this bold, graphic house on the main street in Bari.


Want a photo sans-tourists from Alberobello? This is what you'll get. The city's so-called trulli zone is a UNESCO world heritage sight and is accordingly swarmed with tourists gaping at the picturesque conical houses.


I loved Lecce! It's a small city and surprisingly cosmpolitan. Plenty of interesting, independent shops and restaurants that you're more used to seeing in London than in Italy.


At the end of the trip we went to Naples, which we'd been to before but were excited to see again. When I went last time it was my first real experience of the South and I loved it. Having been to Sicily, Puglia and Basilicata, I must say I was less enamoured, but still enjoyed my time there.


Taranto was such a surprise—and I loved it. The city had barely any tourism to speak of, a single bridge to get from the old town to the new town and a museum of anicent Greek artifacts that was easily the most impressive museum I'd encountered in Italy.


I'd been curious about Bari for quite sometime and enjoyed my time there, though I wouldn't recommend it unreservedly. If you're looking to convince someone that Southern Italy can resemble Northern Italy, send them to Bari.

Slurp Up Khinkali—the Georgian Soup Dumplings you Eat with your Hands

Flickr via Robyn Lee.

Ines introduced me to soup dumplings. Specifically, she introduced me to Georgian soup dumplings, called khinkali, which are richer, meatier and sturdier than their Chinese cousins and, in my opinion, more delicious. Unlike thin xiao long bao, you grab khinkali with your hands and douse them with pepper, before biting a hole to slurp up the rich, meaty broth. They’re big and satisfying and easy to fall in love with.

Needing to make up for years of missed khinkali eating, I devoured them London, found them in Budapest and unearthed them in Kiev. New York, I figured, would continue the romance. After all, this is a city where you could easily embrace a dumpling-only diet without hopping on a subway. Unfortunately, apart from a smattering of restaurants stranded out in Sheepshead Bay and Brighton Beach, Georgian cuisine is woefully underrepresented. There are, however, a few places that serve them. At Apani you can order them by the piece to takeaway. If you prefer to sit down there’s Mtskheta. Not that I can vouch for either of these places—I haven’t made it out there. When the khinkali cravings strike, I make my own.

But let’s back up a bit. How did my friend learn about Georgian soup dumplings? Ines’s longtime boyfriend is from Georgia and he introduced her to them. In Paris, her hometown, she gets her khinkali fix at the city’s Georgian restaurants. France, and Paris in particular, has one of the highest percentages of Georgian immigrants in Europe—in 2013, there were approximately 10,000 living there. In Europe, only Turkey, Ukraine, Greece and the UK have more (admittedly, approximately 500,000 Georgians live in the United States,). When Ines wants khinkali, she doesn’t need to convince her boyfriend to make them. She just books a meal at one of the city’s smattering of Georgian restaurants and shows up with some friends to feast.

Flickr via Nicolas de Camaret

Although the precise ingredients vary across the country—Georgia is, after all, huge—the recipe for khinkali follows the basic dumpling formula: wheat-based wrapper (no egg) and a meat-y filling with a smattering of spices. Fillings range from lamb with a pinch of cumin to beef and pork with cilantro, chili and onion. The latter version is particularly popular in Tbilisi where they are called kalakuri, or city style. You can also find vegetarian versions with potatoes, mushrooms and cheese.

But you won’t know what’s inside until you try. Part of what makes khinkali khinkali and not pelmeni or xiao long bao is their distinctive top knot. This piece of pinched dough is called the kudi, hat, or k’uch’i, stomach. Whether or not this bit should be eaten and why is a hotly debated topic. Some argue that it’s undercooked, while others contend that not eating the top prevents you from overeating these delicious dumplings as you can track how many you’ve had. Personally, I’ll often toss back even this bit, the comparatively bland doughy chew serving as an antidote to the rich meaty filling.

Yet I find myself languishing in a soup dumpling-less world until one weekend in March when I decided to break out my rolling pin and make them myself. I was intimidated. My dumplings are gnocchi and ravioli or ordered out from the local Chinese restaurants. How could I make this recipe that was the domain of Georgian restaurants? Did people even make them at home? Turns out the answer is yes. And so, I decided, I could take on the mantle of preparing these doughy little beasts myself.

Preparing them is relatively simple. You start with the wrapper, a simple combination of flour and water, kneaded until smooth and left to rest for a bit. While that’s happening you make your meat filling, which is no more complicated than tossing together a meatball. Combine the meat of your choosing with some spices—I chose lamb because it’s my favorite and threw in some chili, parsley and pepper for good measure. The hardest bit is rolling out the wrappers, even bundling them up is easy as the top knot requires no more than a generous pinch.

As dumplings become a trend against a rise of populist sentiment, Georgian dumplings seem uniquely poised to help Americans better understand the nuances of Russian-inflected cultures. After the conflicts with Russia in 2008, Georgia has stayed out of the minds of most Americans. But the region has much to offer us, even if we never make a trip to Tbilisi or Batumi. Georgia boasts one of the world’s most ancient wine cultures, they have a rich folklore tradition—to say nothing of their amazing food. Georgian soup dumplings deserve a wider audience and you should make them and invite everyone over to discover the delights of khinkali.

Five Friday Reads 3.24.2017

1. "The Weird Things People Leave in Books" from Publisher's Weekly. You've probably left a ticket stub in a library book, but food? These librarians have found everything from shrimp to raw bacon in their books.
2. "'London Bridge is down': the secret plan for the days after the Queen's death" from The Guardian. Queen Elizabeth II's death won't just be a national tragedy, but signal an end to an era of British supremacy.
3. "A Guide to the Texture You Didn't Know Had a Name" from Lucky Peach. QQ is that dense, chewy texture that's similar to mochi or gnocchi. Finally, I have a word to describe my favorite texture.
4. "From Chop Suey to Haute Cuisine: A Case Study in American 'Ethnic Food'" from LA Review of Books. Oliver Wang's review of From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express explores the history of Chinese food in the US and questions what it means to serve ethnic cuisine in the first place.
5. "Printing the Ancient Way Keeps Buddhist Texts Alive in Tibet" from The New York Times. An inside glimpse at this traditional printing press in Tibet that is preserving not only Buddhist texts, but a forgotten art form.

Five Friday Reads 3.17.2017

1. "Otherworldly Architecture in Japan's Magical Moutainside" from The New York Times. More than there simply stunning lines, these houses boast bare bones interiors that put the landscape on display.
2. "Photographer Will Scott shoots Britain's endangered seaside shelters" from The Spaces. These dilapidated and unpopulated seaside shelters are haunting reminders that what society values is cyclical.
3. "13 of Our Favorite Lucky Peach stories" from Eater. Following the news that quarterly food journal Lucky Peach will fold in May, Eater explores the off-beat, in-depth stories that characterized the magazine's 22 issue run.
4. "Donald Trump is a Gift, and a Quandry for Late-Night Hosts" from New York. Cultural commentators have noted that Trump seems impervious to satire, but that hasn't prevented late-night shows such as SNL and Full-Frontal with Samantha Bee from lambasting the new-President in ways that, somehow, manage to make us laugh.
5. Hanna Stefansson's blog. After New York got pummeled with another round of snow, I'm dreaming of sandals, shorts and dresses. In the meantime, I'm dressing vicariously through Hanna Stefansson's spot-on style blog—and pretending that scrolling through will help me learn Swedish!