Food | Gourmandistan

And dough-three: Pasta

July 17, 2010 by Steve

It doesn’t take much to make pasta. Just a cup of flour, an egg, and practice. Oh, and if you’re in Gourmandistan, machinery. Actually, several pieces of machinery. Of course, you don’t actually need the machinery. You can, if you wish, use the 1:1 egg:flour ratio and your hands. Mound the flour in a large bowl, making a well in the center. Lightly scramble the egg, then place in the well. Using a fork or your fingers, stir the egg […]

Categories: Basics, Cooking, Food, Italy, Pasta, Recipes, Vegetarian

And dough-two: Pizza

July 16, 2010 by Steve

We’ve had a few requests for our pizza dough recipe. Since Steve can’t stand to knead (for reasons reaching from his carpal-tunnel-raddled wrists to his brain’s general hatred of things that are boring), the mixer’s dough hook is essential for him. Those made of sterner, less easily distracted stuff can hand-knead to their hearts’ content. Alice Waters (on page 60 of The Art of Simple Food) is right—letting the dough rise slowly overnight in the refrigerator makes it extra tender. […]

Categories: Basics, Cooking, Food, Italy, Pizza, Recipes, Vegetarian, Yeast breads

And dough-one: Pâte brisée

July 13, 2010 by Steve

When Steve successfully produced his first version of this simple butter crust, Michelle told him he no longer had any excuse not to make dessert. While he hasn’t exactly prepared a tart per day, Steve has put together plenty of pâte brisée, and doesn’t even need to consult a recipe. His current eyeball-only version is a combination of recipes from Patricia Wells and Alice Waters. In Gourmandistan, butter is the key to a good pie crust. Steve takes Alice Waters’ […]

Categories: Basics, Cooking, Food, France, Pies & Tarts, Recipes, Vegetarian

Disco and Coniglio

July 8, 2010 by Steve

As we’ve mentioned, Michelle has hundreds of cookbooks, enjoying the authors’ stories as much as (and in some cases more than) the recipes themselves. What we didn’t mention is she got this way with the help of her mother. In a recent purge of some of her own innumerable cookbooks, Michelle’s mom gifted Gourmandistan with several volumes, the only real value of most being in the currency of camp, or perhaps of Schadenfreudeistan. (The Joanne & Rick Pitino Wildcat Cookbook […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Italy, Old cookbooks, Rabbit, Recipes

Microwave corn on the cob

July 3, 2010 by Steve

Microwave technology never really caught on in Gourmandistan. Steve’s family hosted a beta version of a mid-70s GE microwave oven. (Steve still remembers his crushing disappointment as he realized the boxy, black-fronted thing in the kitchen was not, as he thought, a new television but, instead, an oven his dad had brought home from work.) And, sadly, both Michelle and Steve had youthful indiscretions involving Lean Cuisine®. We have a microwave in our kitchen, but it’s mostly used for warming milk […]

Categories: Cooking, Corn, Food, Recipes, Vegetarian

Herb shortbread cookies

June 29, 2010 by Michelle

Several months back, seeking a nice finish for a “ladies lunch,” Michelle made Martha Stewart’s Rosemary Butter Cookies. Served with sliced oranges in rosemary-steeped honey (it was still citrus season), the cookies were a great success. Michelle’s friend Ruth deemed them “the best possible mixture of sweet and savory.” The cookie dough is sweet and rich, yet the flavors are subdued enough to let the herb through. Since then, Michelle has been wondering what other herbs might be good in […]

Categories: Cookies, Cooking, Desserts & Sweets, Food, Recipes, Vegetarian

Damn hippies sure do know how to cook

June 23, 2010 by Michelle

The Summer of 1989 found us in San Francisco with Michelle’s mom, Jean. In that pre-Gourmandistan era, we weren’t really aware of the downsides of industrial food—instead, we were crazy for Asian. The San Francisco dining guide we bought before the trip had so many Asian restaurants marked we realized we’d have to eat about six meals a day to try all that we wanted. Not that we didn’t try to hit every one. We were enjoying siu mai, chicken […]

Categories: Cooking, Fennel, Food, Pasta, Recipes, Restaurants, Tomatoes, Vegetarian

Black raspberry jam

June 11, 2010 by Michelle

Black raspberries are the RuPaul of brambly drupelets. While they are raspberries, they have the sass and presence of a really good blackberry. The difference? It’s the core. Both blackberries and raspberries are collections of little seed-bearing fruits (called “drupelets”) attached to a central structure. In a blackberry, these drupelets remain attached, so the fruit has a “core.” Raspberry drupelets stick to each other instead of the structure, leaving them hollow. Michelle turned our recent find of farmers’ market black […]

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

Red Scarce

June 5, 2010 by Michelle

Sour cherries, in their meaty, sweety, tarty glory, have been appearing more frequently this year in Gourmandistan. In the past we could only get a couple of pints each year from Hazelfied Farm (though those few were, in true Raphe & Teresa fashion, exquisitely small and sour). But this year Michelle’s already scored a couple of quarts from Steve Hess at a recent Norton Commons market, and some neighbors up the road just put up a “cherries 4 sale” sign. […]

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