This is part of a series of Q&A’s about cooking on vacation. The complete list of posts in this series is available here.
Molly Wizenberg writes the blog Orangette, known for its warm, distinctive voice. She is the author of the bestselling memoir A Homemade Life, and with her husband Brandon Pettit she helped open a beloved Seattle pizza restaurant called Delancey. Molly also co-hosts the weekly podcast Spilled Milk with Matthew Amster-Burton, and she is working on her second book.
Here she shares memories of mish-mash lunches, cooking in Saint-Émilion, and a particularly memorable meatball moment.
Did you take a vacation this summer, and did you have a chance to cook while there?
I traveled to Italy with my mother in late June. Brandon and I had been invited to a friend’s wedding near Urbino in the Marche, but he needed to stay behind to manage the restaurant, and I didn’t want to go alone, so my mom joined me. We flew into Rome, drove to Urbino, spent four nights there and made day trips around the region, then drove down the Adriatic coast to Puglia and stayed four nights near Ostuni. We didn’t do much cooking—staying in a hotel in Urbino and a masseria in Puglia left that to the hosts—but we ate extraordinarily well: fava purée with wild chicories, fried zucchini blossoms, generous olive oil, capocollo, and fist-sized green figs. It was all incredible.
In what way do you feel your vacation cooking style differs from your everyday cooking style?
Usually I prefer renting an apartment on vacation and cooking most nights, saving a few splurges for special dinners out. Cooking on the road excites me: I’ll find an ingredient I can’t get at home and build meals around it. The biggest difference is time—vacation gives me more of it. There’s space to daydream about meals, even if the cooking ends up being a simple picnic or a relaxed mish-mash lunch. Food feels more vivid on vacation: flavors, smells, and new ideas register differently, and I notice things more keenly.
Are there utensils or ingredients you always take with you when you go on vacation? If so, what are they? If not, what do you unfailingly regret not taking?
If we drive, I always pack a couple of good knives. Arriving at a picnic or cabin and having only dull blades is a real dampener. When we fly, though, we usually have to improvise and accept whatever’s available.