My body is here in Hawai'i, but my heart and mind are thousands of miles away, in Venice, where I just spent 10 amazing days.

Of course, much of the focus of my holiday was on food. They say Venice isn't a food town, but they say wrong: My girlfriend and I had great meals in restaurants every day; made almost daily visits to delis, cheese shops and bakeries; shopped in the Rialto farmers market and made some great meals in the apartment where we were staying.

Our first evening, my girlfriend treated me to dinner in a restaurant literally perched over the Canale della Giudecca. My first course — atypical for Venice, where seafood is usually at the center of every plate — was a salad of shaved salted beef over mixed greens dressed with a reduction of balsamic vinegar and scattered with Parmesiano Reggiano. It was unforgettably delicious.

More typically Venetian was my friend's Granseo'le a' la Venessiana: spider crab cakes. But this was a crab cake unlike any I've previously had: There were no binders (such as egg or breadcrumbs) and it wasn't fried. Instead, the cake was composed of shreds of lightly steamed crab, grated zucchini, citrus juice (both lemon and grapefruit, I think) and minced parsley. Zucchini was in season while we were in Venice, and the vegetable appeared in everything but the desserts. I've never been particularly fond of zucchini, but these were so young, tender and fresh that I enjoyed them in everything from a plate of buttery gnocchi (potato dumplings) to an appetizer of battered and fried sticks of zucchini.

I was lucky enough to find an English-language cookbook about Venice and a culinary dictionary in five languages, which was very helpful in deciphering menus and identifying ingredients.

Here's a version of the crab cake. You can use fresh steamed crab or good-quality frozen cooked crab (such as the Phillips brand you can find in cans, frozen, at Costco). I wouldn't recommend regular canned crab.

VENETIAN CRAB CAKES