How Travelers Turn Food Souvenirs Into a Vacation-Inspired Dinner Party

I used to be sitting on a blustery, balmy ferry deck within the Aegean Sea final August after I began dreaming of a cocktail party again dwelling in Brooklyn. I had simply completed an almost two-month solo journey via the Balkans, the place native meals tradition has been closely influenced by the Ottomans, Italy, and the Adriatic. Whereas I hardly ever discovered myself lonely on the journey, there have been many meals I wished to share with shut associates, so I texted them photographs of meals as in the event that they have been digital postcards saying, “Want you have been right here!”

After I lastly invited them to A Very Balkan Dinner Social gathering within the winter, I seemed again at these snaps to assemble my menu: stuffed fermented cabbage leaves (a wintery model of the stuffed grape leaves I loved all summer season), flaky borek full of spinach and salty cheeses, roasted peppers with kaymak from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, smoky Macedonian eggplant dip, arugula dressed with pumpkin seed oil in a nod to Slovenia, and poppy seed ice cream with bitter cherry compote impressed by a cone I ate on a blazingly scorching day in Belgrade, Serbia.

I set out on a snowy Sunday for Parrot Coffee Grocery, a Balkan store in Queens, and chatted for some time with a salesman from Romania about stuffed cabbage and her most popular model of ajvar. Earlier than my associates arrived, I turned on a Balkan playlist and set out a small handmade cheese knife I purchased in Kosovo and a ceramic bowl from Albania. A good friend requested me to share a bit about every dish as we ate, and after dessert, I launched my company to a toasting customized with raki I realized at Alpeta, a family-run vineyard I stayed at in Albania. For one evening, I felt like I used to be again on my journey and that I used to be capable of take my associates with me.

As I began to ask round about dinner events like this one, I heard from greater than a dozen vacationers who’ve hosted related gatherings. With the assistance of memento components and recreated dishes, they’ve shared their journeys with family and friends round their tables at dwelling.

By meals, you may carry somebody into the expertise of your journey, says Liz Furman, who works for a toy firm. She and her husband co-hosted a Greek ceremonial dinner for her thirtieth birthday after a visit to Santorini.

“That’s our most popular method of sharing a few of our travels, fairly than exhibiting a bunch of photographs,” Furman says.

For Jerome Halm, a semi-retired scientific psychologist, picture slides have been truly a vital a part of 20 or so dinner events he and his late spouse Beverly Halm hosted after their travels to locations like Italy, Russia, China, and Peru. The dinners of their houses in Queens and Lengthy Island adopted a sample: Beverly, who was a librarian and culinary educator, would oversee the cooking whereas Jerome ready a slideshow from the journey to share between dinner and dessert.

The inspiration for one memorable social gathering started at a convention in Peru within the Sixties. After returning to New York, Beverly linked with a Peruvian chef in Queens to learn to make mazamorra morada, a purple corn pudding. Between programs on the ensuing dinner, Jerome clicked via photographs of the Nazca Strains, a collection of geoglyphs carved into coastal plains in Peru, whereas telling a narrative a few serendipitous lunch with Maria Reiche, a famed archeologist who studied the traces.

For some, these dinner events are a possibility to cook dinner with components from the opposite aspect of the world. Within the early 2000s, it was onerous for Singapore-based meals author Annette Tan to supply components she examine in cookbooks by authors like Claudia Roden and Paula Wolfert, so she would purchase them on journeys.

“I couldn’t cook dinner [those dishes] with out touring at the moment,” Tan explains.

One Christmas, she made a timballo from The Splendid Table: Recipes from Emilia-Romagna, the Heartland of Northern Italian Food by Lynne Rossetto Kasper for a dozen cousins and served porcini mushrooms, Parmesan, ham, and heirloom tomatoes she introduced dwelling from Italy. On one other event, a visit to Japan yielded miso and mentaiko (spicy cod roe), which she used to organize oxtail stew and a yoshoku (Western-style) pasta dish for associates.

For some, like cookbook literary agent Sally Ekus, these meals are a method to give again to locations they’ve traveled. In 2007, Ekus and her mom Lisa visited Vietnam on a culinary delegation with PeaceTrees Vietnam, a landmine schooling and clearance non-profit. Once they returned dwelling to Western Massachusetts, they made bánh tráng rế (netted rice paper wraps) for spring rolls and banana blossom salad for a 30-person fundraiser for the group at Lisa’s dwelling.

“That is simply ingrained in Lisa and me. If we go someplace we have now to carry it again and share it, letting it remodel each our lives and the individuals we’re excited to [eat] with,” says Ekus.

In the meantime, author Caroline Eden, who was in Ukraine shortly earlier than Russia invaded in 2022 and has traveled extensively within the area, organized two eight-person supper golf equipment at her kitchen desk in Edinburgh, Scotland, to lift funds for #CookForUkraine. Visitors mentioned the warfare over a meal of pickled mushrooms, challah, and regional recipes like a Black Sea borek from Eden’s cookbook Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes, Through Darkness and Light.

In depth kitchen expertise isn’t essentially required for these meals; for those who store correctly in your journey, cooking may be non-compulsory. The evening after they returned from Amsterdam to New York, senior social media supervisor Irina Groushevaia of Punch (owned by Vox Media together with Eater) hosted a celebration they known as Again from ’Dam that includes a big unfold of snacks.

“The issues I introduced have been telling the story of what I did in Amsterdam,” Groushevaia says. Cheese and stroopwafel recalled a motorcycle tour, whereas social gathering favors of tea and elderflower lemonade focus got here from a go to to the botanic gardens. As associates snacked, Groushevaia shared watercolors they painted on their journey.

Irina Groushevaia

Whereas many of those dinners deal with a single vacation spot, giving company a style of a spot they may go to, a meal may also mirror the journey itself. Final December, after a protracted journey to and from Antarctica, Tan served conservas and olive oil she picked up in Portugal, wine from a cease in Buenos Aires, and chocolate truffles from a brief transit in Zurich. Her dinners are as a lot about sharing an expertise as they’re about particular cuisines.

“I similar to the concept that I’m sharing a bit of the vacation with them and, typically, type of encouraging them to go,” Tan says. “It’s a suggestion in bodily type.”

Devra Ferst is a meals and journey author primarily based in Brooklyn. Her phrases have appeared within the New York Instances, Bon Appetit, Conde Nast Traveler, and lots of different publications. She is the co-author of The Jewish Holiday Table: A World of Recipes, Traditions & Stories to Celebrate All Year Long.