Coconut | Gourmandistan

Cocoa brownies with coconut icing sweetly kick chocolate to the curb

April 1, 2016 by Michelle

Gourmandistan has a long history of bringing our virtual world recipes from Alice Medrich’s Chewy Gooey Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies. (We are not sorry, dear readers, because the recipes are so damn good.) Today’s homage is to a batch of brownies that bypass chocolate for cocoa powder. As Medrich says, “the best brownies are not always made with a bar of chocolate,” asserting that cocoa gives brownies “divinely soft centers and slightly chewy, almost candylike tops.” We must admit the idea of coconut icing came […]

Categories: Baking, Brownies, Chocolate, Coconut, Desserts & Sweets, Food, Recipes

Sometimes you feel like a dark chocolate almond coconut bar, sometimes you don’t

May 5, 2015 by Steve

Those outside of America may be unaware of either Almond Joy® or Mounds® candy bars. This means they are also unaware of the “sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t” debate that would have torn America apart decades ago if not for shelf after shelf groaning with other candy options. Rest assured, however, there is a divide over which bar is best, which remained alive in Gourmandistan until Michelle created a delightful compromise. Both Michelle and Steve chose the coconut treats quite […]

Categories: Brownies, Candy, Chocolate, Coconut, Cooking, Food, Nuts, Recipes, Vegetarian

Rotating Shrimp Balls (and coconut milk) in Hot & Sour Thai Broth

March 1, 2013 by Steve

This amazing mix-and-match shrimp event started as many things in Gourmandistan do, with dim sum. Our successful shao mai, semi-successful har gow and further representations of our growing repertoire created quite a pile of shrimp shells. Steve, taking inspiration from Conor Bofin, decided he would maximize the value of the wild-caught, non-frozen shrimp and make shrimp stock. (Stunning revelation on checking Conor’s post: Steve forgot to add bay leaf. The stock turned out OK anyway.) Michelle, seeing Steve’s proposal as […]

Categories: Coconut, Cooking, Food, Recipes, Shrimp, Soups & Stews, Thailand

Piña colada in pie form

April 16, 2012 by Steve

Gourmandistanis are not really fond of either piña coladas or getting caught in the rain. (We’re also really not that fond of the late 1970s, a period we both endured when this horrible song and its dismal disco brethren were about the only things available on local radio.) But we do rather like pie, and this incredibly easy coconut-pineapple confection from François Payard is indeed a tasty piece of tart. We made one recently to use up some more of our […]

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

Thai veg curry and the vagaries of culling

March 12, 2012 by Steve

As a hedge against hoarding, Michelle’s cookbook space in Gourmandistan has been limited to specific spaces, mostly in the kitchen, though there have been slight containment breaches reported along a few isolated shelves elsewhere in the house and frequently around Michelle’s side of the bed. This means that every so often Michelle must purge her beloved panoply of chefs, cuisines and countries, assuring Steve he won’t face a future trapped under a collapsed column of cookbooks, and at the same […]

Categories: Coconut, Cooking, Food, Old cookbooks, Recipes, Thailand, Tofu, Vegetables, Vegetarian

Camille Glenn, coconut custard, chickens and coyotes

March 3, 2012 by Steve

Camille Glenn is a name instantly recognized by most food-inclined Kentuckians and even by some Yankees. The caterer, cooking teacher and food writer was, as noted in the Village Voice when she died at the age of 100 a couple of years ago, an “avid promoter of local, seasonal produce long before it became fashionable.” Glenn’s The Heritage of Southern Cooking has been one of our most-used volumes and most-given wedding gifts for decades. Michelle recently came upon a copy […]

Categories: Chicken keeping, Coconut, Cooking, Custards & Puddings, Food, Jams & Preserves, Old cookbooks, Recipes, Vegetarian

Gourmandistan

A fabled land of farmers, farm shares, fancy (and not so fancy) restaurants, family meals, food projects and more.

Category Archives: Coconut