Beef | Gourmandistan

Strong beef sparks stunning salad with silky shallot vinaigrette

November 12, 2016 by Steve

Recently we have been happily patronizing Red Hog, a craft butchery and restaurant opened by our friend Bob Hancock of Blue Dog Bakery. Their meat has the kind of impeccable sourcing and careful trimming we’ve come to expect from England and Italy. We’ve quickly learned to depend on the sausages, roasts, chops and other meats we’ve picked up on several visits. We’ve also learned Michelle needs a bit of adjustment to dry-aged beef. We’re certainly no strangers to finely-aged beef, having enjoyed many meat courses at some […]

Categories: Beef, Cooking, Food, Lettuce, Meats, Recipes, Salad

Simmering a bit more summeriness into beef pot roast

July 5, 2016 by Steve

Pot roast is something we usually associate with colder months here in Gourmandistan. But we had a really cool 4th of July weekend, and even as the weather increasingly becomes hot and sticky around here, we cannot stop buying beef from our biodynamic neighbors up the road. A slab of chuck roast recently caught our eye and demanded we do something with it. With the help of Alice Waters and Bradley Ogden, Michelle came up with this lighter-than-expected pot roast. She […]

Categories: Beef, Cooking, Dumplings, Food, Recipes

Saying goodbye to Fil with sukiyaki

June 26, 2016 by Michelle

After 94 years of curiosity, crossword puzzles, conversations, travel and more, Steve’s “mom,” Filomena DeMarzo Farley, died last week. Fil was the older sister of Steve’s real mother, who died when he was a toddler. Fil was born in Orange, New Jersey and grew up as part of a large, interrelated Italian family. Gourmandistan has brought you bits of Fil’s childhood before, told through stories of struffoli and eggplant parmesan, and we may very well visit Mechanic Street again. But on the […]

Categories: Beef, Cooking, Family, Food, Japan, Onions, Recipes, Tofu

Improvised umami-mazing oxtail and ramen soup, now that we’re cooking with gas

February 2, 2016 by Steve

A period of unfortunately-timed icy weather last week saw Gourmandistan once again facing an empty heating fuel tank, forcing us to lower our thermostat to a fairly chilly 50° F, to take short showers and to avoid using our gas cooktop. (Steve has already set reminders to check the tank level more frequently next winter.) Thanks to a pan of lasagna made before we knew the house was running on fumes, we did not suffer too greatly. An “emergency” request to our propane […]

Categories: Beef, Cooking, Food, Recipes, Soups & Stews

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

Pot roast with Guinness and dried cherries (skip the sweet potatoes, go for the slaw)

March 26, 2015 by Michelle

We have been working our way through a batch of beef we bought from our biodynamic farm neighbors. While we enjoyed much of it, we were unsatisfied with the lean roast cuts (one rump, one sirloin tip). We tried several different methods with them, and in each the meat turned out to be dry and fairly tasteless. The experience left Steve ruing not experimenting with barding and larding, and left Michelle with the idea to send Steve out to buy a chuck roast. When Steve returned from the grocery, he […]

Categories: Beef, Cherries, Cooking, Food, Recipes, Sweet potatoes

Paleoanthropology and persnickityness in potée

February 1, 2015 by Michelle

While other forms of cooking undoubtedly predate the pot, there certainly couldn’t have been too many of them. Once humanity got the hang of fire and sticks, some genius must shortly have realized that cooking meat in liquid makes not only better meat, but (bonus!) a nice broth as well. Whenever this happened, however, it was a mind-bogglingly long time ago, as we were recently reminded by watching Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” a documentary about the Chauvet Cave paintings. Chauvet’s astonishing art […]

Categories: Beef, Cooking, Cured meats, Food, France, Rabbit, Recipes, Soups & Stews, Vegetables

Moo meets Marco Polo in dan dan noodles with carrot pickles

January 13, 2015 by Michelle

Along with just about everyone who is interested in Sichuan food, we in Gourmandistan are fans of dan dan noodles. This classic dish usually calls for pork and some sort of Chinese noodle or ramen. Our current home version uses neither, and we’re mostly quite happy about it. Our pork-free, pasta-using version started with some surplus ground beef, which Michelle thought of using for dan dan after seeing such a version in Fuchsia Dunlop’s Land of Plenty credited to someone named Xie […]

Categories: Beef, Carrots, China, Cooking, Food, Old cookbooks, Pasta, Pickles, Recipes

Beef short ribs with bootlegged Michigan cherries

September 5, 2014 by Michelle

While we were in Michigan, we couldn’t stop buying cherries—a tic which continued even as we headed back to Kentucky. On our way down South we stopped at one last farmers’ market, buying up delicious fruit that we seldom find locally in the Bluegrass State. With a bag of ice in a cooler, the sacks of black cherries (the last of this year’s very late harvest) made it home safely, where they rested in the refrigerator until we could get to a market […]

Categories: Beef, Biscuits, Cherries, Cooking, Food, Recipes