Zester Daily

At a reading a few weeks ago in Portland, Ore., I finally blurted it out for the first time: “I hate the word veggies!” There was a stirring in the audience. I expected trouble, but instead, there was a solid murmur of agreement. One chef, Cathy Whims of Nostrana, said she couldn’t stand the word either, but was sometimes horrified to hear herself using it on occasion because it’s just around so much. Like using “like.” Can we make it go away?

And why would I bother to have and squander any emotion at all about the word veggies? I’ve wondered myself about why I don’t like it and won’t use it. I think it’s this: The word veggie is infantile. Like puppies. Or Cuties. It reduces vegetables to something fluffy and insubstantial. Think about it: We don’t say “fruities,” or “meaties” “or “wheaties” — unless it’s the cereal. We don’t say “eggies” or “beefies.” We don’t have a Thanksgiving birdy; we have the bird. But we don’t seem to be able to say vegetable.  Certainly it’s no longer than saying “Grass-fed beef” or “I’ll have a latte.”

Veggie turns vegetables into something kind of sweet but dumb, and in turn, one who eats a lot of vegetables might be construed as something of a lightweight, but one who can somehow excused. “It’s just veggies, after all. They’ll snap out of it.”

‘Vegetables’ speaks to their many strong traits

But the word isn’t used just by errant omnivores. Vegetarians are very fond of the word too, and they use it all the time. Plant foods, especially vegetables, are the backbone of vegetarian magazines, yet even there they’re reduced to veggies. I think vegetable is a more dignifying name by far. Just think of what plants do and what they’ve gone through to be on our plates.

They’ve been moved all around the world and gone rather willingly to where we humans have wanted them.

They’ve been altered to be pleasing to human palates.

They have adapted to all kinds of circumstances and survive against all odds and at extremes ranges of heat and cold, wetness and aridity.

The tiniest sprouts can move concrete. Eventually.

They can be dangerous and deadly, or they can be tender and sweet. And some come close to being both in the same plant. Like potatoes and tomatoes.

They can cure ills, for example, aspirin comes from willow; liver remedies are derived from members of the aster family, which include artichokes, burdock, chicories, milk thistle and lettuce among others; brassicas may prevent cancer. There’s the whole pharmaceutical stance one can take regarding vegetables given the truly amazing nutrition they offer.

Radicchio. Credit: Deborah Madison

Vegetables have serious means of protecting themselves — with spines and thorns, or by emitting subtle odors or substances. They can keep other plants at a distance so they alone can make use of limited amounts of water and nutrients; they can find ways to use other plants to climb on. Seed pods are cleverly designed to attach a ride to a jacket, a hat, a dog’s fur to be carried elsewhere to grow. (The burdock burr was the model for Velcro.) And they can defend themselves against predators; pinions discharge a sap that keeps bark beetles from boring in. (The food part is the pine nut).

Plants also keep other forms of life going by attracting bees and hummingbirds, moths and insects, which they feed.  They can sometimes cajole birds into carrying away their seeds to plant elsewhere. Plus they give us flowers and fruits in abundance. We love honey of all varietals — especially that derived from thyme, a member of the mint family, and flowers, too. We even use flowers in the kitchen.

Their seeds can sometimes last for hundreds of years or more. Some sprout only in fires, which is one reason burned forests can recover some kind of growth soon after a fire.

Angelica. Credit: Deborah Madison

They don’t complain when we waste them by using only the most tender parts and ignoring rough-looking leaves and stems and cores. Chickens are grateful of them.

In short, plants are generally quite amazing, strong and clever beings that evolve with time. Whether you are an omnivore or a vegetarian (or a chicken), we all benefit by eating plants. Plant foods. Vegetables. Fruits. Seeds. Stalks. Heads. Crowns. Skins. Cores.

I hadn’t thought about it when I was working on “Vegetable Literacy,” but I think — I hope — that the book, among other things, offers a way to go beyond the “veggie” concept of vegetables by introducing them as the eccentric and powerful personalities they are.

Top photo: Rainbow chard. Credit: Deborah Madison

A few carrots that didn’t get pulled one summer made their beautiful lacy flowers the next year, and it was easy to see that those blooms looked a lot like Queen Anne’s lace, cilantro blossoms and the diminutive chervil flower. Were they somehow related? More than just a pretty face, I knew there was something behind these flowers and the gorgeous vegetables I loved, something that united them and their forms, flavors and behaviors. But what?

I took those unread botany books off the shelves and found out that yes, these were all members of the umbellifer family and they all make umbel-like flowers, though varying enormously in size. This family includes a lot of  wild but familiar plants, including the deadly hemlock, and it turns out that  — minus the hemlock — they all happen to be harmonious in our mouths, both the vegetables and the many herbs in that family.

It’s all relative when it comes to vegetables

I started looking more into plant families, who is in them, their stories, their shared characteristics and the way they play in our kitchens. Like people, plant family members are indeed relatives.

The daisy (composite) family, a group of ruffians, includes the prickly artichokes and cardoons; salsify and scorzanera all with their habit of oxidizing; the bitter chicories; plus milk thistle, dandelion and burdock — a feisty bunch of plants. Break any of the roots and a thick white sap appears. Taste it and you will recoil from its bitterness. But a lot of these bitter plants are good for the liver, it turns out. Interesting.

Members of the nightshade family have been universally resisted wherever they’ve been introduced. Tomatoes were thought to cause stomach cancer. The Russian Orthodox Church believed potatoes were not food because they weren’t mentioned in the Bible, and besides, why eat what a dog didn’t even find interesting? Eggplant was thought to cause leprosy, and the consumption of eggplant (and nightshades in general) stimulates the pain of arthritis, which is why some people avoid it, even today. Belladonna got its name because when ingested, the pupils of the eyes grew large and dark, which was considered a form of beauty in women. The difficulties in this family, presumed or real, are due to alkaloids that can be deadly in large quantities but helpful in smaller ones; we all get our eyes dilated by the optometrist so the doctor can look deeply into our eyes, though not because of their lustrous beauty.

The chenopods, or goosefoots (yes, I looked at a goose’s gnarly foot to confirm the association), include spinach, chard, beets, wild spinach or lamb’s-quarters, and all are related to quinoa and amaranth, whose leaves can be and are eaten as well as the seeds. Speaking broadly, they are interchangeable in the kitchen with respect to flavor. And if you have chard bolting in your garden, might you still be able to eat the leaves as they becomes smaller and further apart on their ever-lengthening stems? Indeed you can. And at this stage they taste more like some of the wild greens they’re related to. This is the kind of stuff that I find fascinating!

Anyone who gardens has opportunities that deepen one’s vegetable literacy and excitement. You’ll find treasures that won’t appear in your supermarket, such as coriander buds that are still green and moist, so surprising in the mouth and so well-paired with lentils. You get to see — and eat — the whole plant, not just the parts and pieces that show up in the store. Broccoli leaves, as well as the crowns and stems, are quite tasty, and the same is true of radish and kohlrabi leaves.

Leeks produce enormous ribbons of leaves, sometimes referred to as flags, and indeed you can wave them back and forth to signal someone, if need be. When left in the garden over winter, the shanks can grow to a few feet in length(!), by which time a firm core has formed, too dense to eat, but a great ingredient for soup stock. When a leek is left in the garden long enough to bloom, its enormous spherical flower mimics that of the pretty chive blossom. And when you finally encounter a mature leek in the garden you can see that it is a mighty and noble vegetable (one variety is named King Richard). Is it surprising that the leek is the national symbol of Wales?

The name knotweed (the family that includes rhubarb, sorrel and buckwheat) refers to jointed stems, but you might see that the blossoms of these plants resemble the kind of embroidery that consists of little knots. Not the botanical definition, but my own, and you may have your own interpretation of names, too. I might add it doesn’t take much imagination to bring these three challenging plants together in a recipe.

Does any of this matter?  Yes and no. We can still buy vegetables and cook them without knowing a bit of botany or history. But it is enormously fun to bring the familial nature of vegetables into view, to know that what relates in the garden often does so in the kitchen, which encourages both confidence and daring. And if you garden at all, your eyes will be open to possibilities that just don’t exist elsewhere.

To me, vegetable literacy enriches our world — and our culinary possibilities — by regarding the whole, wonderful plant and its relatives, not just the pieces and parts of a few cultivars.

Top photo: Deborah Madison holds an allium. Credit: Christopher Hirsheimer

Last month, my husband and I went to Dublin, Ireland, to make up for an earlier visit that was ruined by a bad oyster. We still wanted to see this city, and so we returned. As for food, we had no particular agenda except that we wanted to go to the same place several times just for that feeling of having a place in a strange city.

We’ve always like the food at the Avoca stores, which we knew from living in Ireland. Avoca features Irish products, from woolens to oatcakes, and Dublin’s store also has a restaurant that offers food both traditional (fish pie in cream under mashed potatoes) and contemporary (accompanied by a salad of micro greens). The staff was friendly the way the Irish tend to be, so when my husband forgot his hat that first jet-lagged day, from then on we were greeted and teased not to forget it again. There’s something to be said for being a regular someplace, but the other side is that once you’ve eaten a good way through a menu, you’re hungry to explore other choices.

On our previous visit in 2005, I, who did not get the bad oyster, was doing a piece for Gourmet magazine to accompany a story on Dublin. I ate at the most expensive restaurants, but only one of them was seemingly concerned with provenance. When we finally gave up our place at Avoca and turned to “eating out,” we had quite a different experience than in 2005. Here were menus where the source of every item, from vegetables to fish to game to breads, was named, along with those who made the bacon, made the cheese and smoked the haddock. It was surprising, astonishing even. The food was absolutely delicious and I was only sorry that we didn’t have another week to dine our way through the offerings at The Winding Stair, Chapter One and L’Ecrivain, among others.

Among the dishes we enjoyed was an earthy Jerusalem artichoke soup with ceps (they do not shy away from homely vegetables); Irish boxty with flat-cap mushrooms; Irish Hereford beef shin with colcannon (tender and oh so good); salmon cured with buttermilk whey; a spelt pearl risotto with beets and shaved fennel (and clearly a lot of good Irish butter); slow-cooked pork belly; and Ted Browne’s crab claws. Despite walking miles every day in chilly air, the desserts — of the rich and filling variety — were sadly unapproachable because there was absolutely no room for them.

Good Food Ireland a common theme during travels

One thing in common was that these restaurants claimed to be proud members of Good Food Ireland. What was that? Essentially, it’s a non-governmental industry group that links producers of Irish food to those who serve it. That sounded good, but was it for real or was Good Food Ireland (GFI) an organization that was just hitching a ride on the trend for the authentic and local?

Bags of apples for sale at a Dublin, Ireland, farmers market. Credit: Deborah Madison

As luck would have it, a few days after returning to New Mexico, Darina Allen, the doyen of Irish food and Ballymaloe Cookery School, called. She happened to be in Santa Fe, so we went to lunch and I asked her about Good Food Ireland. “Oh, that is a wonderful group!” she enthused. “And yes, they are the real deal!” Knowing that Darina’s opinion is based in reality, I was relieved. I liked the idea of Good Food Ireland. A lot. I wanted it to be just what it claimed.

GFI was started in 2006 by a woman named Margaret Jeffares, who was in the marketing business and lived on a farm in Wexford. It seemed obvious to her that there was a gap between the wonderful, authentic foods of Ireland and places where they might be experienced. Wouldn’t Irish tourism, both local and international (and with it farmers, producers and providers), be better served if there was a way to have a brand that established connection and authenticity to particular eateries? GFI is all about promoting Irish foods and linking food sources to restaurants to create “a trusted standard for authentic local food experiences.” The meals we ate at The Winding Stair, for example, certainly reflected this linkage, and to think that six years ago we never saw a menu that had so much transparency (or any, for that matter) regarding food sources.

Hearing Jeffares talk about founding GFI is to realize, as is always true with success stories, that her simple, obvious idea took an incredible amount of work to realize and its success was based in part on collaboration with the business sector of Ireland, with which she was familiar. She saw that “food tourism,” in which people should be able to experience the best foods a region had to offer, would benefit Ireland and its food producers and tourism in general.

As with Slow Food, Vermont Fresh Network and other movements here that promote authenticity and a true farm-to-table experience, even successful efforts involve a relatively small segment of the food-producing population. “Such establishments will always be in the minority,” Jeffares admits, in Ireland, too. But even so, there are more than 500 businesses committed to GFI’s core values of using locally produced food and products of high quality and service standards. And these core values apply not just to high-end restaurants but to B&Bs, hotels, pubs, cafes, cooking schools, farmers markets, food shops and more. It’s a great model for any country, but it probably helps to be a smaller one, like Ireland.

If you go to Ireland, look up Good Food Ireland and use it as a guide. You can even make your own tour based on where its member businesses are, if an authentic Irish food experience is what you want. And in my limited experience, I’d say it’s well worth having.

Photo: Cheeses for sale at a Dublin, Ireland, farmers market. Credit: Deborah Madison

Recently, I was at Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa, getting some last images for my new book, “Vegetable Literacy.” Although the late summer days were hot, it was chilly at 6 in the morning. Dew wet our feet and hems while gloves and socks, unthinkable until that moment, were very much desired. But the display garden at dawn mitigated any discomfort, especially the beds of Brassica vegetables — kale, collards, broccoli, cauliflower and cabbages — which had the whole summer to grow and were now displaying their enormous leaves.

There’s always that moment when a garden starts to sigh and sink and say, in so many plant expressions, “Enough. We’re done.” It looks so exhausted that you can’t imagine there’s much left to harvest. Probably all our gardens are looking this way about now. Yet if you dig around you often discover there are still a few more tomatoes yet to ripen, the Jerusalem artichokes are coming on strong, and tiny cabbages are starting to emerge on the stems of the Brussels sprouts. The garden is far from finished, despite the strain it shows from a summer of growth, and what’s really looking big and strong, albeit somewhat tired, are cabbages and collards and those other big Brassicas.

A Savoy cabbage at Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa. Credit: Deborah Madison

The cabbages were especially impressive. They always are because they take up so much more room than their harvested heads would lead you to imagine. The enormous old grandmother-grandfather leaves that had been there since the start of the plants’ growth showed their scars. Though weathered, punctured by hail and nibbled upon by insects, they were still gathering sunlight and feeding the edible head. They’re hard-working plants. My respect for them, already considerable, grew even more.

The broccoli’s larger heads had long been picked, but smaller sprouts were ready for the taking — had this not been a demonstration garden, that is. The kales seemed energized by the cooler days and looked as if they were ready to sprint along for the next several months. Nothing looks as if it would be better for you to eat than kale — it is just so robust. If it were a person, I might add tightly wound.

Collards? Also huge. Brussels sprouts? What an architectural plant with the branches jutting out from the stalk leaving a window that you can peer in and see the sprouts starting to take shape.

Garden color arrives with vibrant hues of Brassica vegetables

But among all this vigor what really stood out was the extraordinary range of garden color these plants exhibited. We think of cabbages of red and green, but the leaves themselves are more of a dusky plum or a muted grayish blue-green. Pull away the leaf that just covers a head of red cabbage and beneath it is shiny purple, nothing like the smoky purple outer leaves. The broccoli and the Tuscan kale leaves are a surprising shade of blue-green-gray that escapes you until you see them en masse, not just in a bunch. The stems of the Brussels sprout leaves radiate a suggestion of violet, while the little sprouts are that calm slate green of the leaves. Taken together, the effect of all these shades and hues is breathtaking and utterly surprising. What we think of as green is actually a wide range of hues that embraces purple on the one side, green-blacks on the other, with shades of slate, blue-green, gray-green and every other shade in between. It’s another good reason for having a garden, or for visiting one like that at Heritage Farm. The goodness of plants is nothing if not layered — taste, nourishment and beauty all at once.

(Heritage Farm is the headquarters for the Seed Savers Exchange. Visiting hours and events are posted on its website at www.seedsavers.org.)

Top photo: A Mammoth Red Rock cabbage at Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa. Credit: Deborah Madison

Summer is the season when people get in their cars for vacation and when articles appear about what to eat while on the road. Some magazines detail routes to coincide with great eating experiences. Others are more about self-defense. There are individuals like Elissa Altman, who, encountering the ghastly offerings on a trip to Maine, wrote on her blog, “Poor Man’s Feast,” about how truly dismal it all was and how it really was time to change the entire food system.  (And she knew that already.) I’ve had more than a few requests to write about how to eat well when traveling; how to find food that won’t make you sick or put on pounds. I have road experiences of my own to draw on: For more than 20 years, I’ve been making at least one drive a year from Santa Fe, N.M., to Davis, Calif., plus I love more local road trips, too. I should have figured things out by now, but mostly I’ve come to conclusion that it’s really, really hard to eat well on the road.

When you’re traveling on highways through the empty West, those magazine articles pointing you to culinary treasures won’t help much.  The good family-owned cafes are largely gone. Espresso (and/or good coffee) is rare. Farmers markets are dicey to connect with. Because there’s not much chance for real food anywhere, the obvious solution, it would seem, is to bring your own.

Drink up and DIY on your road trip

I suggest starting with beverages. Pack a small espresso pot and a small camping burner and you can at least stave off the misery of bad coffee. (If you’re a tea drinker, do the same for tea.) You can make good, strong coffee at rest stops or in your motel room. Or you can exit the freeway,  and find a boulder to lean against and a cool spot to set up your machine. Having a satisfying hot beverage in a beautiful spot can be magical. You sip, gratefully, listen to birds you don’t normally hear, breathe in the creosote smells of the Mojave Desert or the big sage on the “Loneliest Highway in Basin and Range Country,” maybe watch the sun rise or a hawk circle. Your only obstacle to this sublime pause, aside from running out of matches, water or coffee, is wind. I’ve been forced to give up the coffee experience because of wind more than once.

Other beverages are easy to bring and refreshing. A bottle of kombucha or decent iced tea has saved me from a spate of brain fatigue more than once when the temperature is hovering around 100 degrees. Makings for a gin and tonic or a bottle of wine will vastly improve the ambience of your cheap hotel room. Add some good crackers and cheese, a cucumber, some fruit and you don’t even have to look for place to eat in Barstow.

The hope for breakfast

Finding food is the harder part for road trip dining in the West. Yes, you can pack your own, but the problem is that after hours in the car I want to get out and stretch and sit and eat somewhere else, preferably in an air-conditioned restaurant with soft banquettes. More than once I’ve had food with me and still chosen to breakfast in a restaurant, just for the change. Breakfast is often the better meal to have on the road. If you don’t eat it normally, it’s kind of fun to have fried eggs and hash browns or eggs scrambled with chorizo. The eggs won’t be organic and nothing will be local or homemade, but you won’t perish and you will get fed.

Lunch and dinner are more difficult. That’s when the food you’ve brought comes in handy. I have absolutely relished my Motel 6 room in Needles, Calif., (105 F outdoors) because it had a little table and chair, and I had a delicious menu to assemble from my cooler, plus a bottle of chilled wine. I even had a little tablecloth to spread over the plastic table — a great help for atmosphere — and was happy as can be.

The local eatery challenge

Because there aren’t great choices for routes between New Mexico and California, I have gotten to know towns, cities and crossroads over the years. I’ve learned that Flagstaff has some good places to eat and a really good coffeehouse (Macy’s); that you can get a good cappuccino at a little café in Williams; that Kingman, my least favorite place next to Barstow, has a Mexican restaurant (Oyster’s Mexican and Seafood) with creaky fans that aren’t too effective but very cold beer that is and the chance for an OK, albeit fairly predictable, meal. There’s a café in Ludlow that will do in a pinch, too.

If I have the time to take Highway 395 up the east side of the Sierra, there are all kinds of OK restaurants in Bishop, Bridgeport and in between. But that does require extra time. Route 99 North is fast, intense and daunting.  It doesn’t take much longer to cross over the valley to the more relaxed pace of Interstate 5. And that’s where I found Baja Fresh, a relatively large restaurant chain but a welcome find in a gas station near Coalinga. I’ve had fish tacos there (grilled to order) more than a few times and found them, with their rice, beans and salsas, a fine meal. When I was there last, in June, I noticed the following words scrawled over the wall in big, friendly cursive: No Microwave. No Can Opener. No MSG. No Freezer. No Lard.

No wonder the tacos were so good.

Normally, a travel center would not be my culinary destination, but if you don’t want a steak at the Harris Ranch, a bowl of Andersen’s pea soup or a boiled egg wrapped in plastic, it might be that a travel center harbors a treasure. I have it bookmarked in my brain along with all the other little places that offer something out of the ordinary. I still do rely on my cooler, though, even if its contents more often than not aren’t eaten until my destination is reached, or until I’ve returned home.

Top photo: A taco café at Kramer Junction, the intersection of California Highways 395 and 58. Credit: Deborah Madison

When I travel I can’t imagine just lounging around, which is one of the reasons agritourism has such appeal. You have your own agenda, but you’re also part of something larger, namely a farm whose foods you will experience at dinner each night. And if eco-tourism is what lures you to a spot, you will have the opportunity to learn about the food of an area, or its flora, history, language, customs, ecosystem. Such active study engenders a visit with purpose, whether you’re staying on a funky farm or an elegant old mansion. But a 5-star resort? What might it offer along such lines? Thread count isn’t something that matters a great deal to me, but I’m open to being exposed to something new and good. In this case it was Costa Navarino, in the Peloponnese region of Greece.

A resort that taps into local culture

Costa Navarino is in Messinia, the part of Greece that is green and lush. The beautiful resort (run by Westin) is situated at the edge of the Ionian sea, and the area is free of shops proffering Chanel and St. John. Started and owned by a local family, Costa Navarino is one of those seamless, large, well-appointed hotels in which you are well fed and lavishly cared for. Follow the signs to the beach and soon you’re standing on the sand or (swimming) in the sea. If you know where to look, you can see the ruins of a Venetian palace. The palace of Nestor is not far away, either, and while the location adds up to something exceptional, there’s more, for this is a resort that strides two worlds, that of hospitality and that which has to do with the preservation of the traditional life of Messinia and the protection of its exceptional landscape.

This part of the Peloponnese is an agriculturally rich area, but poor, and Messinians have long had to leave their homeland to find their fortunes elsewhere in the world. One man who left, Capt. Vassilis C. Constantakopoulos, vowed that he would make his fortune, return to Messinia and build something that would allow others to come home. Over a period of 20 years, he and his family created this resort that not only employs hundreds of Messininans, many who have finally been able to return to the area from afar, but is extremely sensitive to its environment and produces some very good food, starting with olive oil.

Olive oil, honey and sweets

When the hotel built a reservoir a few miles away, more than 7,500 olive trees were transplanted to Costa Navarino. The robust and spicy Koroneiki olive oil that is produced from these trees is used in the resort’s restaurants. (It is also available from Dean & DeLuca.) This olive oil is but one of about 25 foods produced, used and sold at Costa Navarino. Local artisans, working in small batches, also produce the irresistible olive oil biscuits (laid by your pillow instead of chocolates), the intense honey and sesame sweets called pastelli, an unusual, complex vinegar, wild sage tea, plump Kalamata olives simmered in a red wine syrup, preserved wild figs, seasonal spoon sweets (a small jar greets you when you arrive at your room), sea salt, and other choice foods including thyme honey embedded with a chunk of honeycomb. These, and other traditional foods, can be enjoyed at breakfast with or in lieu of the enormous spread of international delicacies. On my recent fall visit to Costa Navarino, I watched one husband and wife team make the honey-sesame pastelli, another couple, with their young daughter, make the olive oil biscuits, and three women fashion extraordinarily elaborate wedding breads.

There are a number of cuisines represented in the resort’s many restaurants, including Italian and Japanese, but Greek food dominates. A particularly interesting concept is expressed in the Omega restaurant, which offers modern dishes based on an ideal proportion of omega 3s and 6s. Instead of some vague international hotel style, the food at Costa Navarino echoes the high quality of the local products and the distinctive flavors of the area’s cuisine. Generous platters of vegetables (some vegetables are grown in the hotel’s gardens) fooled us at each meal, for my friends and I ate them as if they were dinner, forgetting to allow room for the octopus stew, the roasted pork shoulder, grilled grouper and wild greens, or the lamb dish to follow. After all, it was impossible to resist the silky puree of yellow peas studded with capers, platters of grilled eggplant, peppers and zucchini as sensual as they were simple, or the vivid salads that were nothing like what passes for “Greek salad” at home. Greek varietal wines were poured. I’m especially fond of these wines that, not surprisingly, are so right with the flavors of the vegetables, herbs and the olive oil.

Breathtaking surroundings

“As comfortable and delicious as everything was at Costa Navarino, who wants to stay in a resort when the surrounding area is so beautiful? An enormous lagoon offers refuge to birds during their migrations, among them, flamingos. There are hikes to take, golf, if you play, the sea to swim in, or pools. Kalamata (which has a great vegetable market) is a 45-minute drive away, and the charming village of Pylos is even closer. The resort will guide you to places to eat other than its own good restaurants. One, high above Pylos, was simply a house, the house, in fact, where the chef was born. While we gazed over the hills to the Ionian Sea he prepared a braised rooster dish with handmade noodles, among other delicacies. You can also end up in a small house where two local women will cook a very traditional meal and give those who yearn to try a hand at rolling phyllo dough, which is tricky but actually possible. If you’re one who has wondered about those Greek pies that combine sweet and savory flavors, like squash, sugar and leeks, this little house is where you can experience such dishes.

All the designed elements of the resort, from the buildings to the gardens the uniforms, to pillows and chandeliers were created in Greece. The tins for the oil are made in Greece. In fact, Greece has been the source of the physical manifestation of Costa Navarino, from the modern architecture to traditional stone walls built by local Messinians. Outsourcing has not figured here nor has it been necessary to create a place of beauty, plus jobs have remained in Greece, a lesson from which we could learn. So in the end Costa Navarino ends up being an interesting mix of tourism, environmental sensitivity blended with the goal of benefiting local people and keeping the area’s food and building traditions alive. The success of the resort is shared. In nearby small towns, tavernas and cafes that were once dead are now bustling. Life has returned. Still, the area is rural, the roads are small.

An American friend who lives elsewhere in Greece scoffed when I told her about Costa Navarino, projecting an over-populated tourist belt that would destroy the ambiance of this area. I hope that doesn’t happen. Rather I hope that Costa Navarino can become a model for others, for resorts will continue to be built. Certainly, if all resorts were created with the same goals in mind — to benefit locals in a meaningful way, to exist intelligently within an environment that it strives to protect, to encourage the production and use of traditional food — it would be a different and richer and more delicious world. Of course Greece has its financial nightmares right now, as do many other countries, including ours. But if you’re in want of sun and sea, good olive oil and gracious hospitality, you might lend a hand to this beautiful country while enjoying the pleasures it has to offer.

Zester Daily contributor Deborah Madison is the author many books on food and cooking, including “The Greens Cookbook” and “Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating From America’s Farmers Markets.” Her latest book is “Seasonal Fruit Desserts from Orchard, Farm and Market.”

Photo: A view of the Costa Navarino resort. Credit: Deborah Madison