Get Back to Where You Once Belonged, Part I: Split, Croatia

When I was 11, my nona’s cousin Frances took her niece on a visit to the “Old Country." When they got back, it seemed like every "-ich" on the Point squeezed into my Nona’s darkened living room to see their vacation slides.

After that, I always had a nagging desire to experience my roots for myself. The desire became an imperative after Hurricane Katrina wiped away our local history. I finally made the pilgrimage to the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia last May.

You know that American Express commercial where the father and son go to Sweden in search of their heritage and then find out they’re actually Norwegian? Well, my family really is from Croatia so, I didn’t have to shell out for any more plane tickets. But there were some surprises in store.

First surprise was how long it took to get there. Thirty hours from Hattiesburg including layovers. I think my grandfather had the right idea when he just jumped ship and swam to America’s shores – probably would’ve been quicker.

In Split, the capital of Dalmatia, upscale boutiques are housed in crumbling Venetian buildings that sprang up over the centuries around Diocletian’s retirement palace. Roman ruins are everywhere -- even the viaducts which still provide the city’s water supply.

Outside the decayed beauty of old town, it’s mostly proletarian apartment buildings with laundry hanging out the windows, remnants of the country’s not too distant Communist past.

Since travel for me is all about the food, I hung out at Split’s huge open air markets and snacked on pag cheese, fresh baked bread, prsut (cured Dalmatian ham like prosciutto but smokier) and produce (OMG, the most incredible cherries and strawberries). The fish market reminded me of the old Point Cadet.

With the recommendations of my Aussie innkeeper in hand, I prowled the back alleys in search of homestyle Dalmatian cuisine at mom and pop cafes known as konobas. One such place offered simple platters of seafood rizot (risotto) and pasta. What hooked me though was their perfect cucumber salad.

This deceptively simple salad is nothing but cucumber slices in a white vinaigrette (no fancy balsamic here) but you’d be surprised how hard this is to get right. When my mom made it, which was often, she salted the peeled cucumber slices to rid them of their inherent bitterness, then briefly soaked them in an ice water bath to remove the salt and also to keep the cukes crisp. Then she dressed the slices in a very simple vinaigrette of white vinegar and vegetable oil with salt and pepper.

Sometimes she’d add in a radish or two sliced very thinly or a few slivers of white onion, but that’s basically it. Don’t ask me why it tastes so different when I do it, it just does. Maybe my Croat genes are too diluted by the Heinz 57 that is my father’s bloodline.

But in this tiny restaurant an ocean away from Mississippi, I ate something that reminded me as much of my mother and grandmother as anything I've eaten in Biloxi lately. And I felt right at home.