Rick Stein: From Venice to Istanbul

Chef Rick Stein starts his culinary journey of the northeast Mediterranean coast cuisines in the Adriatic dogal city Venice, a monumental and tourist-adored pearl. It rose to riches and fame by trade with the Byzantine empire and trough it and the Silk Road the exotic East. This is well reflected in its cuisine, not in the least by the generous of spices, themselves historically a major commodity. Yet it's also typically Italian in relative simplicity, focusing on a few key ingredients, fitting a port often seafood. Yet one of the traditional dishes Rick tastes in ...

Rick leaves sophisticated Venice to continue his journey in formerly Venetian parts of the Byzantine empire, first to Ravenna, its major Italian monumental legacy, starring San Vitale basilica. The more basic cuisine includes risotto. Next he visits Croatia, notably Split, once the Roman emperor Diocletian's retirement seat, and the Island which claims to be the birth place of Marco Polo, himself allegedly the importer of pasta to Italy. Croatian cuisine focuses on simple dishes starring a few local ingredients, from seafood and meat to wine.

Rick continues first in Croatia, south to the Soti bay, famous for its prime salt and unique oysters. Trough Montenegro, where he picks up his adult son, he enters poor, long-isolated, nearly forgotten Balkanic rustic outsider Albania. They explore a generally ignored cuisine being rebuilt after the paranoid-isolationist communist regime banned even fishing, yet revives Original techniques like dry pasta or a shepherd's campfire 'oven'. Both seafood and meat star, with super-fresh ingredients and simplicity.

From Albania, Rick enters northern Greece in the region Epirus, long the literary heartland, with lakes rich in fish, the culinary focus. Following in the footsteps of romantic author and independence war ally lord Byron, Rick visits the seat of the cruel pasha which even the Ottoman sultans had to execute, the inaccessible monastery that inspired Rick's favorite poem and Byron's place of death, Mesalonghi port, named by a Venetian. Everywhere the cuisine is simply and based on a few local ingredients plus some spices.

Rick Stein continues his culinary 'Byzantine' voyage south, along the Peloponessos he knows and loves as tourist. He enjoys concentrating on real natives cuisine, mainly based on locally produced vegetables and herbs. In Navarino, he celebrates the sea battle that took the sunk Ottoman fleet out of the Greek war of Independence against peace keeping orders, rendering the British admiral in command a national hero to date. Rick celebrates with moussaka.

Rick ends his Greek chapter in Malvasia, the home of resurrected 'malmsy', once medieval Europe's most sought-after wine, and indulges in the British's favorite seafood, mullet and squid. Then he enters his voyage's Asian leg on Anatolia's Western coast. He enjoys the original Turkish wines and cuisine, main heir to Byzantine vegetables and spices, praising the opulence of breakfast, variety of cheese and sultan's delight, the favorite Ottoman lamb dish.