Today’s lunch began with an eggplant sitting in my refrigerator.
I had roasted it a few days earlier and was looking for something different to do with it. As I stood in the kitchen, a memory surfaced from more than twenty-five years ago.
In 2000, during a visit to St. Petersburg, I had lunch at a cafe called Joy. The cafe is long gone now, but one dish never left me. Thin slices of roasted eggplant wrapped around a creamy filling, simple, elegant, and memorable enough that I still think about it all these years later and periodically make it.
So today, again I created my own version. I mixed goat cheese with Greek yogurt, garlic, and crushed walnuts, then layered the filling between slices of roasted eggplant and finished it with a sprinkle of walnuts on top. A small salad, a piece of whole wheat bread, and lunch was ready.
Travel has a funny way of staying with us. Sometimes it is a photograph. Sometimes it is a conversation. Sometimes it is a place we never forget. And sometimes it is a flavor.
The cafe where I first tasted this dish may no longer exist, but somehow a small part of it found its way to my table in Croatia today.
That is one of the gifts of travel. Long after the suitcases are unpacked, pieces of the journey continue to live with us. They appear unexpectedly in our kitchens, in our memories, and occasionally on our lunch plates. Some recipes come from cookbooks, others travel the world with us.