Meats | Gourmandistan

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

Because sometimes you get the carrot.

May 15, 2010 by Michelle

Friday night, Gourmandistan served chicken and dumplings for dinner, along with a little watercress salad. The salad we threw together in a trice—Michelle’s high leaf-selection standards were the biggest delay. The chicken and dumplings? Getting that dish together took a bit over a year. We started with several baby chicks, which grew into heritage French Houdan hens running around the yard with the rest of the flock. Actually, these Houdans spent much of their time running from the rest of […]

Categories: Chicken, Chicken keeping, Cooking, Food, Recipes, Soups & Stews • Tags: Chicken keeping

A Quick(ish) Duck Confit

May 12, 2010 by Michelle

Duck confit is one of the world’s wonder ingredients. The rich, salty and herb-tingly tasty meat can be used on pizzas, in salads or soups. Or, you can make a quick meal by crisping up a couple of legs in a pan to go with whatever else happens to be around. In France, we’ve bought packages of traditional confit, made by slow-cooking duck legs in their own fat, then preserved by covering them in more duck fat. But here in […]

Categories: Cooking, Duck, Food, Recipes

Birthday Soup

April 27, 2010 by Michelle

Recently, Michelle had a birthday. Since Steve’s is only a week after Michelle’s, the usual practice is to have a joint celebration of some sort. (This year we’re going back to Alinea in Chicago—and, in keeping with chef Grant Achatz’s direction, the only self-indulgent table shots will be a couple discretely taken with an iPhone.) But on her actual birthday, Michelle decided to cook a variation of Thomas Keller’s Chicken Soup With Dumplings. After a full day of work, she just […]

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

The Route from Nose to Tail often leads through Pozole.

April 19, 2010 by Michelle

Several months ago we were offered the opportunity to buy an entire lamb from some folks just down the road, said opportunity arriving with the information that we were free to select the method in which the lamb arrived, packaged and sealed, at our door. Steve, inspired by reading Gourmandistan cookbooks such as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Meat Book and Stéphane Reynaud’s Pork & Sons, believed he could get better use of the animal by insisting on “primal cuts.” Joyce […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Lamb, Mexico, Nose-to-tail, Recipes, Soups & Stews