Steve

Shrimp and grits pâté part of new Thanksgiving tradition

November 29, 2015 by Steve

Last year’s Gourmandistan Thanksgiving was a lovely gathering where everyone enjoyed themselves, including both Michelle and Steve. One reason, aside from some delightful company, was the decision to limit ourselves to simple, Southern-influenced items, many of which we could make ahead of the actual meal. Centered around country ham and roast chicken and featuring cornbread/biscuit stuffing, broccoli casserole, cranberry sauce and multiple pies, our dinner was such a lovely time we decided to do it again this year—and to share this simple […]

Categories: Appetizers, Family, Food, Holidays & Events, Old cookbooks, Recipes, Shrimp, Thanksgiving

“Vintage” burnt sugar cake with maple cream cheese frosting updated with pecans, salty chocolate

November 23, 2015 by Steve

Michelle recently picked up a copy of Julie Richardson’s Vintage Cakes from a bookstore remainder table. Richardson, a baker in Portland, Oregon, based many of the book’s recipes on a trove she found when taking over the 50-year-old bakery building she now occupies. Others come from old cookbooks and corporate marketing departments. It’s a charming book. This particular burnt sugar cake dates from “before the days of vanilla and almond extracts, gaining its deep flavor from burnt sugar syrup.” Richardson paired the […]

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

White chili, because we have a book to sell

November 9, 2015 by Steve

White chili has run wild on the Internet. But back in the 1980s, before everyone was connected, few people had heard of the idea. That was how Tim Barnes, a restaurateur featured in our just-released book, Lost Restaurants of Louisville, was able to convince many people that he had invented it. The recipe, using white beans instead of traditional red kidney beans and chicken instead of beef, was sometimes credited to Barnes and sometimes to his chef James Aydlett. The dish became so popular […]

Categories: Beans, Chicken, Cooking, Food, Recipes, Restaurants, Soups & Stews

Making room in the refrigerator with mezze

October 29, 2015 by Steve

Our refrigerator, American-(plus! Sub-Zero!)-sized though it is, has been a bit crowded of late. Steve has been storing large amounts of local apples (though he does eat quite a lot of them), and our root vegetable hoard has kept growing with each dwindling week of our CSA. In an effort to keep ahead of things, we recently treated ourselves to some lovely mezze. Claudia Roden, whose cookbook The New Book of Middle Eastern Food we grabbed these recipes from, writes that the word mezze comes from […]

Categories: Carrots, Food, Middle East, Peppers, Recipes, Salad, Vegetarian

Lack of grater leads to greatness with ham, celeriac and leek pie

October 18, 2015 by Steve

What started as an additional reason to resent holiday cottage kitchens turned into another success thanks to Michelle, with a bit of an assist from Nigel Slater. We had originally purchased a large knob of celeriac at a farmers’ market on our recent trip to Britain, imagining a picnic somewhere moor-ish where a bit of remoulade would accompany a leftover gammon (ham, to those non-English among us) sandwich and perhaps some crisps. Unfortunately, our rental was without a grater (or, at least we thought at the […]

Categories: Celery root, Cooking, Cured meats, England, Food, Pork, Recipes

walnut-apple-calvados-caramel cake says “autumn,” avoids awful pumpkin spice

October 11, 2015 by Steve

Gourmandistan enjoys autumn, and does not generally stand in opposition to cinnamon, cloves or nutmeg. (OK, Steve admits to being somewhat more averse to cinnamon than most people.) But we do not understand the current appeal of pairing the season with something called “pumpkin spice.” We are in awe of the marketing and social forces that have combined to make whatever constitutes “pumpkin pie” flavoring almost ubiquitous, but we wish more people would seek alternative “fall” flavors that are all around them. Apple, for one. It is […]

Categories: Apples, Cake, Cooking, Desserts & Sweets, Food, Fruit Desserts, Recipes

Plum buttercream further plumbs depths of fruit-based deliciousness

August 21, 2015 by Steve

Michelle’s discovery that most any fresh fruit juice can be used to flavor buttercream has created a bit of an unusual cake boom here in Gourmandistan. While handing over a hoarded, frozen slice of our white cake with wild blackberry buttercream to her mother, Michelle casually created another cake, this time with chocolate and red plum buttercream. The juice came from a batch of plums we luckily spotted on a recent market trip. We snatched them up to make jam (and several cold and […]

Categories: Cake, Chocolate, Cooking, Desserts & Sweets, Food, Fruit, Jams & Preserves, Plums, Recipes

Peach Ginger Rosemary Brown Betty makes brioche flop much better

August 2, 2015 by Steve

An anticipated bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich ended up as a Peach Brown Betty, and it really wasn’t a bad ending. It did begin somewhat sadly for Steve, who had fussed over his buttery brioche dough for two days before it all went wrong in the oven. What seemed to be a golden brown loaf revealed its still-raw core when the top fell off as Steve attempted to turn it onto a cooling rack. Putting the patched-together brioche back in the oven […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Peaches/Nectarines, Recipes, Vegetarian, Yeast breads

A bourbon-peach brisket blog for the 4th of July

July 4, 2015 by Steve

This particular Independence Day finds Gourmandistan a bit book-busy, a bit American-lazy and, in most ways, not particularly suited to a long, involved blog post. We’re having an almost blog-standard July 4th dinner of ribs, slaw and potato salad, but yesterday’s lunch (3-day weekend!) was the last bit of this lovely brisket. We changed virtually nothing in Louisville chef Edward Lee’s recipe from Bon Appétit. The combination of stout, bourbon, soy sauce and peach jam absolutely blew Michelle away, and she’s declared this the best brisket she’s ever […]

Categories: Beef, Cooking, Food, Independence Day, Recipes