Michelle

Off for a bit of Bordering

September 3, 2015 by Michelle

Should our readers wonder where we’ve wandered off to over the next month or so, rest assured we have not forever abandoned our realm of Gourmandistan, nor our two lovely British Shorthair cats. We have simply absented ourselves once again to Great Britain, this time on the coast of the North Sea in Alnmouth, a town about halfway between Edinburgh and Newcastle upon Tyne. While we certainly hope to do some cooking, we are at the moment unsure whether we’ll […]

Categories: Food, Vacation

Kentuckifying pasta with corn, country ham, butter and peppers

August 14, 2015 by Michelle

We are big fans of the late Judy Rodgers, even though we find some of the recipes in her fabulous Zuni Cafe Cookbook a bit confusing. However, Rodgers’ delicious “Pasta with Corn, Pancetta, Butter & Sage” isn’t one of them. We’ve enjoyed this simple-to-prepare dish many times. But, at this point of our summer season, we decided to vary it a bit. (This decision may have been influenced by our lack of sage plants, which drowned during our recent unseasonably heavy rains.) Instead […]

Categories: Cooking, Corn, Cured meats, Food, Pasta, Peppers, Pork, Recipes

Easy guinea hen gets less greasy

August 7, 2015 by Michelle

Gourmandistan was happy to learn that our favorite baker and pork supplier had decided to raise a flock of guineas and offer them for sale at our local market. We’re fans of the better-than-chicken flavor of guineas, but worried our favorite way to cook poultry would result in a too-dry dinner. Looking for an alternative, Steve vetoed any recipe that called for quartering or deboning, and pointed out that our purchase contained neither liver nor giblets, which some other ideas called for. We found a simple-looking one-pot recipe […]

Categories: Cabbage, Carrots, Cooking, Food, France, Guinea, Leeks, Potatoes, Recipes

Wild blackberry curd and buttercream make a lovely wedding (cake)

July 23, 2015 by Michelle

The wedding that eventually led to Gourmandistan happened many years ago, and it has been quite a while since we’ve attended anyone else’s. However, a combination of Michelle’s imagination and Steve’s perspiration recently led to one of the best wedding cakes either of us has ever eaten—and we didn’t have to get dressed up to do it. This year’s wild blackberry harvest was not that wonderful. February’s ice and snow smashed many canes flat; the oddly cool temperatures and torrential rains that followed didn’t […]

Categories: Blackberries, Cake, Chocolate, Cooking, Desserts & Sweets, Food, Fruit Desserts, Recipes, Vegetarian

Crispy okra fries make us yearn for Chai Pani, possibly larger okra.

July 16, 2015 by Michelle

When Gourmandistan had a larger garden, we once planted several rows of okra. We dreamt of the days we’d spend enjoying Southern cormeal-battered, deep fried tiny pods. Unfortunately, our okra seemed to grow so quickly that a tiny bud in the morning would become a six-inch monster by afternoon, unusable (at least to us) for anything. Our recent visits to Chai Pani introduced us to another way to enjoy fried okra, and now we (at least Steve) think we might welcome larger pods into our domain. After enjoying meals at […]

Categories: Appetizers, Cooking, Food, India, Okra, Recipes, Restaurants, Vegetables, Vegetarian

Besting the queen with blueberry-ginger ice cream pie

June 26, 2015 by Michelle

We have quite often catalogued the various nature-related nuisances of where Gourmandistan is most often located: our sometimes raging and/or icebound creek, roaming bands of garden-gobbling deer, coyotes that creep near to the house and our many, many issues with mice. We have recently been reminded that we also have ants. Our somewhat wet spring saw the return of marching lines of little brown ants, invading the sugars in our pantry, infesting the cats’ kibble bowl and generally making us re-examine our food storage methods. […]

Categories: Blueberries, Cooking, Desserts & Sweets, Fruit Desserts, Ice cream, Recipes, Vegetarian

Strawberry delight just one of many found on Dewees

May 23, 2015 by Michelle

Gourmandistan has once again been lucky enough to decamp with Michelle’s family to Dewees Island, a little eco-slice of paradise just off Charleston, South Carolina. The week we have been here has seemed to fly by. The weather has been just about perfect, and, as always, we have reveled in the sun, sand and extraordinary solitude of the island. We have stumbled across starfish, snails, storm clouds (which only provided picturesque light, not rain), hermit crabs and other wonderful things as we’ve […]

Categories: Cooking, Desserts & Sweets, Family, Food, Fruit Desserts, Ice cream, Recipes, Strawberries, Vegetarian

Grits, shrimp and baby artichoke casserole can’t replace Best Derby Ever

April 23, 2015 by Michelle

We very much like this casserole, which is a fancied-up, fresher-tasting version of the boring grits and cheese concoctions usually found on Derby buffets. But we don’t like it nearly as much as last year’s Derby. Faithful, years-long readers of Gourmandistan (and oh, how we love you so very, very much) may recall our previous posts, where we tended to take “The Greatest Two Minutes in Sports” with our tongues planted firmly in our cheeks. Last year, however, as Steve’s editorship of […]

Categories: Artichokes, Cheese, Cooking, Food, Kentucky Derby, Old cookbooks, Recipes, Shrimp

Deliciously dumbing down duck curry

April 13, 2015 by Michelle

Michelle has been revisiting David Thompson’s Thai Food, a cookbook we’ve had for many years. In addition to enjoying the stories about Thai culture and history, she has also been searching for some fresh recipe ideas. The ingredient list in a recipe for “red duck curry” drew her attention, and our first preparation went well in spite of the omission of shrimp paste (we need to visit some bigger city Asian markets again soon) and the addition of some vegetables. While we did bone out the […]

Categories: Broccoli, Cooking, Duck, Food, Recipes, Sweet potatoes, Thailand