World In Difference

- Joseph Hayes

WHO AMONG US hasn’t curled up on the sofa with a travel guide or a good sojourner’s memoir (I highly recommend J.G. Link’s Venice For Pleasure) and escaped to another land for an afternoon? e only thing better is to take your taste buds on an imaginary holiday, and perhaps plan for next year’s vacation, with these recipe-filled odes to culinary travel.

Tasting Rome: Fresh Flavors and Forgotten Recipes From an Ancient City by Katie Parla and Kristina Gill (Clarkson Potter)

 I must admit that I love Italy with a particular passion, and I’ve had a lifelong fascination with the food that developed from Rome’s Jewish ghetto. Many dishes we now think of as quintessential Italian began as staples of Jews sequestered in seven acres of malarial land from the 1500s to 1800s. Stuffed zucchini flowers, rice balls, fried mozzarella sticks, even the fish and chips that migrated to England, came from cucina ebraica. So I was delighted to find a section of Ghetto cuisine in Tasting Rome,