Michelle

Saying goodbye to Fil with sukiyaki

June 26, 2016 by Michelle

After 94 years of curiosity, crossword puzzles, conversations, travel and more, Steve’s “mom,” Filomena DeMarzo Farley, died last week. Fil was the older sister of Steve’s real mother, who died when he was a toddler. Fil was born in Orange, New Jersey and grew up as part of a large, interrelated Italian family. Gourmandistan has brought you bits of Fil’s childhood before, told through stories of struffoli and eggplant parmesan, and we may very well visit Mechanic Street again. But on the […]

Categories: Beef, Cooking, Family, Food, Japan, Onions, Recipes, Tofu

Bourbon Ball Trifle tastefully twists a Kentucky Derby tradition

April 23, 2016 by Michelle

The first Saturday in May is fast approaching and our thoughts are, once again, turning to the Kentucky Derby. Over our years of Derby partying, Gourmandistan has sampled plenty of bad bourbon balls. For those of you unfamiliar with this Kentucky candy, the bourbon ball was the invention of Ruth Hanly Booe, who began making candy in our state capital, Frankfort, after leasing a bar idled by Prohibition. While it’s possible that making candy in an old bar put the idea of liquor-infused candy into her […]

Categories: Cake, Chocolate, Desserts & Sweets, Food, Kentucky Derby, Recipes

Cocoa brownies with coconut icing sweetly kick chocolate to the curb

April 1, 2016 by Michelle

Gourmandistan has a long history of bringing our virtual world recipes from Alice Medrich’s Chewy Gooey Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies. (We are not sorry, dear readers, because the recipes are so damn good.) Today’s homage is to a batch of brownies that bypass chocolate for cocoa powder. As Medrich says, “the best brownies are not always made with a bar of chocolate,” asserting that cocoa gives brownies “divinely soft centers and slightly chewy, almost candylike tops.” We must admit the idea of coconut icing came […]

Categories: Baking, Brownies, Chocolate, Coconut, Desserts & Sweets, Food, Recipes

Bacon salad dressing brings back memories, blesses pea shoots and more

March 27, 2016 by Michelle

Michelle had never heard of Hillstone Restaurant Group before reading this month’s feature article in Bon Appétit Magazine. This “non-chain chain” is reportedly adored by such culinary luminaries as Danny Meyer and David Chang. As she read, Michelle felt a jolt of familiarity when she saw that HRG “started in 1977 with the opening of Houston’s in Nashville.” 1977, it seems, was the year Michelle and her college girlfriends also landed on Nashville’s West End Avenue, becoming a part of the beginning of what Andrew Knowlton, the article’s author, calls the “best-run, […]

Categories: Apples, Chicken, Cured meats, Food, Friends, Nuts, Pork, Recipes, Restaurants, Salad, Watercress

Does aging make banana cake with coffee buttercream, chocolate and walnut praline better?

February 28, 2016 by Michelle

Perhaps it was the praline that prevented Michelle from immediately warming to this cake. After announcing to Steve that she was going to make something sweet out of a small bunch of overly ripe bananas, Michelle quickly thought of pairing it with coffee buttercream and chocolate ganache, but struggled for a bit to find a way to insert a nut-laden layer as well. Steve did manage to raise a bit of interest with the idea of a baklava-esque layer of […]

Categories: Baking, Cake, Desserts & Sweets, Food, Recipes

Boozy cherry almond biscotti demonstrate thinking inside and outside the box

February 14, 2016 by Michelle

Many years ago, Steve had his first day at a new advertising agency, receiving a t-shirt with the company logo and the slogan, “think outside the box.” Steve received it politely but did not wear the shirt in public, as the clichéd slogan struck him as kind of silly. (They weren’t alone in their platitudes, as Steve’s previous agency liked to boast it “put the client at the center of everything we do.”) However, a recent batch of biscotti Michelle whipped up […]

Categories: Baking, Cherries, Cookies, Cooking, Desserts & Sweets, Food, Nuts, Recipes

A strong friendship continues in salt cod gratin

January 9, 2016 by Michelle

Nashville, Fall 1977. Two very different girls meet in a Vanderbilt University dormitory. One is visually-inclined, artistic, soft-spoken and sweet. The other is verbal, irreverent and opinionated. One had experienced private schools, exclusive high-rise Chicago Lakeshore Drive apartments, an artist mother and a stepfather whose family money came from woolen mills in Maine. The other attended public school in a Western Kentucky county where the main interests were coal mining and farming. While different from one another, what brought them together was not being “TVCs,” or “Typical […]

Categories: Cooking, Fish, Food, Friends, Old cookbooks, Potatoes

Merguez stew somewhat reduces bean surplus

November 17, 2015 by Michelle

Having snapped up quite a few containers at a recent farmers’ market, Gourmandistan currently has a surfeit of dried beans. Trying to decide what to do with some of them, Michelle came across a recipe from Steve Sando, founder of the Rancho Gordo heirloom bean company patronized by chefs such as Thomas Keller. Sando’s recipe called for marrow beans, which are white. Since we had made white chili not long ago (reminder: buy our book!), Michelle went with a different hue, choosing instead red kidney […]

Categories: Beans, Cooking, Food, Lamb, Recipes, Soups & Stews, Spinach

Easy lamb chops with onion and rosemary, a holiday cottage hero

October 6, 2015 by Michelle

Gourmandistan is back from its month in England and Scotland. (It was 28 days to be exact, as a somewhat-still-bitter-at-United Airlines Michelle will tell you.) While we were thrilled to swap our American domain for dramatic geography, history and much better social infrastructure, we once again had a beautiful house but were not that taken with our kitchen. Over the years we have been fortunate enough to enjoy month-long travel, we have found ourselves in many challenging cooking environments. There have been a few notable exceptions. […]

Categories: England, Food, Lamb, Recipes, Vacation