Steve

Semi-tarting up our demi-Tarte Tatin

November 18, 2013 by Steve

We are almost as fond of our Tarte Tatin as we are of apples (and Steve is very, very fond of apples). It’s something we make just about every year when apples are in season. But like just about everyone else, we at times crave variety. So this season we decided to see what a little spice would do to one of our favorite desserts. After Steve took five minutes to bang out one of his patented pâte brisées, Michelle […]

Categories: Apples, Cooking, Food, Fruit, Fruit Desserts, Pies & Tarts, Recipes, Vegetarian

Fried Pie Face-off: Neal vs. Egerton

November 9, 2013 by Steve

Fried dried-fruit pie is one of those foods that everyone loves to argue about because nobody can find the “real thing” anymore. Michelle remembers her parents debating, decades ago, the merits of pies her dad would bring home from country stores all over Western Kentucky. It seems they were never quite as good as they remembered their mothers making. Then chains like McDonald’s and Popeye’s started offering their own versions, trans-fats took over, and the “real thing” became even harder […]

Categories: Apples, Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Old cookbooks, Pies & Tarts, Recipes

Nigel Slater’s spiced sesame lamb (with a few Americanizations)

November 3, 2013 by Steve

Nigel Slater’s Eat is a nice volume of mostly-quick meals. We picked up a copy in Britain. (It has not yet been released in the United States.) Another “in Britain” bonus was getting to view several episodes of Downton Abbey months before the American audience does. (Spoiler alert: Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, at times becomes discomfited by modern manners.) Among the fun things for us about British cookbooks is the constant reminder that cooking terms are not nearly as […]

Categories: Cooking, Cucumber, England, Food, Lamb, Recipes, Yogurt

Apple Crisp with Candied Ginger and Dried Cherries gives Ahab a break.

October 29, 2013 by Steve

Every Fall for nearly a decade, when the apples are in season, Michelle returns to the hunt for perfecting the Caramelized Apple Cake in Susan Herrmann Loomis’ Cooking at Home on Rue Tatin. It has become her obsession. Loomis describes the cake as “dense and buttery with a pure flavor.” Michelle would possibly describe it as “all that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the […]

Categories: Apples, Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Recipes, Vegetarian

Roasted tomatillo salsa base with basically no rules

October 25, 2013 by Steve

Do you have fresh tomatillos? Access to a broiler? A couple of heads of garlic, some various peppers, onion-ish bulbs and maybe 20-25 minutes? Then you’re well on your way to Salsa Town, and that’s about all the direction we can give you. We’ve been making this salsa base for many years now, freezing it in one-cup batches for the occasional taco night or a try at chilaquiles—adding salt, cilantro and lime after defrosting since we found their tastes disappear […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Mexico, Recipes, Vegetarian

“Trip’s over” treacle tarts with Tamasin Day-Lewis and tourist photos

October 17, 2013 by Steve

We very much enjoyed our month in Britain. Like all good vacations, this one has left us with fond memories and renewed energies to do more things while not on vacation, such as sculpting our woodland with pathways and plants, and cooking more out of our British cookbooks. We have already achieved one of these goals, and at this point believe we will (after 20-odd years) finally do the other, at least when springtime rolls back around. We were somewhat […]

Categories: Cooking, Desserts & Sweets, England, Food, Pies & Tarts, Recipes, Vegetarian

Almond sauce adds goodness to almost any ball of meat.

September 10, 2013 by Steve

Even Claudia Roden is ambivalent about what meatballs to use with this wonderful sauce of fried almonds and garlic, based on a Catalan picada. “Veal was once the prodigious expensive partner, pork the plebeian one…but you can use one or the other meat alone,” she writes in The Food Of Spain, prefacing a recipe that includes both meats, egg, soaked bread and more. Trust us, it’s not the meatballs that matter—it’s this delicious sauce. Some of the goodness comes from […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Meatballs, Nuts, Recipes, Spain

Peach curd takes precedence over citrus

September 5, 2013 by Steve

Gourmandistan has seen the last of summer for this year, unless some lovely reader wishes to spirit us away to the Southern Hemisphere. (We will be available for away-spiriting after mid-October.) Which means peach season has sadly passed us by, but not before we discovered a delicious new way to use them. After Michelle once again pointed out the many, many jars of jam in our freezer, Steve grudgingly admitted making peach jam wasn’t quite the necessity he believed it […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Jams & Preserves, Peaches/Nectarines, Pies & Tarts, Recipes, Vegetarian

Pita, parity, pasta makers and pressing the perfect lavash cracker

August 25, 2013 by Steve

Recently we’ve been messing around with meze, cracking the spines of Ottolenghi and Tamimi’s Jerusalem and Claudia Roden’s Arabesque and The New Book of Middle Eastern Food in search of small somethings to serve alongside what has turned out to be a surprisingly addictive version of David Lebovitz’s baba ganoush. (We’ve been roasting the thin-skinned Asian eggplants from our farm share under the broiler until charred and soft, then blending the skins and flesh into the mix. Smokily delicious!) We also needed […]

Categories: Cooking, Crackers, Food, Recipes, Vegetarian