Food | Gourmandistan

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

Camille Glenn’s plum tart, or Marian Burros’ plum torte?

August 16, 2013 by Steve

It’s a very tasty plum tart. Buttery, jammy yet still light. We got the recipe from a late 20th century Louisville Courier-Journal clipping (the back side of the undated article talks about Seinfeld leading the ratings so we know it had to have been published somewhere in the 1989 to 1998 time frame). And Michelle’s mother’s handwritten note marked it as a Camille Glenn recipe. Indeed, the “Classic Plum Tart” calls for “cognac vanilla,” a signature Glenn ingredient. And yet, […]

Categories: Cake, Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Old cookbooks, Plums, Recipes, Vegetarian

Nectarine peach chutney mostarda tautology redundancy

August 12, 2013 by Steve

Call this sweet, sassy, make-meat-more-savory sauce peach mostarda or nectarine chutney. Call it nectarine mostarda or peach chutney. Either way, you’ll quite possibly enjoy it as much as we have. Nectarines are to peaches as Channing Tatum is to Steve: basically the same thing, just without all the fuzz. (Steve acknowledges there may be additional differences between Channing Tatum and himself.) Indians and Italians may disagree, but some of their own authorities seem to think chutneys and mostardas are basically […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Jams & Preserves, Peaches/Nectarines, Recipes, Vegetarian

Breaking fried corn out of its Southern Belle stereotype

August 4, 2013 by Steve

While the American South certainly has a number of strong, smart and standout women (an excellent example can often be found in Gourmandistan), the region still unfortunately nurtures some particularly painful flowerings of Southern womanhood, a few of whom have started to get their comeuppance. But we’re not here to hand out faded roses—we just want people to stop buying (and sugaring) Silver Queen corn and its even sweeter siblings. While many of our non-United States friends may believe the grain […]

Categories: Cooking, Corn, Food, Peppers, Recipes, Vegetarian

Take your Old Fashioned over to Ang Sarap for a Hot Brown

August 2, 2013 by Steve

We have a guest post up at Ang Sarap, a blog we’ve followed for some time. Claiming to be neither “a cook nor a chef,” Raymund nevertheless is constantly creating interesting, appetizing dishes from all over the world and then takes gorgeous pictures of them. (All while raising a family and holding down an IT job, which is quite humbling.) Though he’s a New Zealander now, we especially love Raymund’s images and stories of Filipino dishes from his childhood. Our […]

Categories: Beverages, Food, Recipes

Blackberry chocolate chip ice cream makes you beg for a briar patch.

July 29, 2013 by Steve

Blackberries, it seems, would prefer you not pick them. That must be why in addition to hundreds of tiny sharp thorns ready to embed themselves in your skin, blackberry bushes arm themselves with an array of other nasty surprises. Poison ivy, snakes, spiders, hornets and wasps are only some of the things your fingers may brush while reaching for that plump purple berry. One taste of this ice cream, however, and you’ll be championing the return of Br’er Rabbit. (Hopefully this time […]

Categories: Blackberries, Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Ice cream, Recipes, Vegetarian

Bee suits, bittersweet, brambles and blackberry jam

July 27, 2013 by Steve

We are having a wonderful year for wild blackberries. Steve, determined to make the most of it, has been tramping out to a patch every morning for a couple of weeks. It’s a lovely spot, surrounded by sugar maple, tulip poplar and sassafras trees, and Steve doesn’t mind the hike through our (and, to be honest, our absentee neighbors’) overgrown old farm fields to get to them. He doesn’t mind spending an hour or so shuffling around a tangle of […]

Categories: Blackberries, Cooking, Food, Jams & Preserves, Recipes, Vegetarian

Sweet Cherry Mostarda, the new Mmm in Michelle’s life

July 22, 2013 by Steve

Steve would like to think he’s the tastiest dish in Gourmandistan. Unfortunately, his illusions are often interrupted by sights and sounds suggesting he’s not, mostly around mealtimes. His latest rival arrived as a result of an unwise impulse buy of sweet cherries at last Saturday’s market. Steve snatched up both boxes without even looking at them, as these were the first locally grown sweet cherries we have ever seen around here. At home, he discovered that not only were half […]

Categories: Cherries, Cooking, Food, Italy, Pickles, Vegetarian

Poppin’ tags this blueberry lemon tart (it is f*cking awesome)

July 19, 2013 by Steve

Everybody likes pop. You might be a hip downtown aesthete, a strangely-haired Hoosier, a B-girl, a King or perhaps just a jiggly pile of dough. At least for last week, “pop” in Gourmandistan simply referred to Blueberry Lemon Tart. As we near the end of local blueberry season, Michelle felt like making at least one last blueberry dessert. She turned to a recipe from Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Fruit, remembering how she liked this combination of blueberry and lemon curd. […]

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