Recipes | Gourmandistan

Fresh tofu skin pleases, produces tasty tailings

November 16, 2014 by Steve

There were some burnt fingers and a bit of frustration at Andrea Nguyen’s failure-assumptive instructions, but our first tofu-making project was an unqualified success. Not only did we enjoy some delicate, delicious fresh tofu skin, but also discovered that leftover lees make some lovely Asian croquettes. We began thinking about making our own tofu years ago after Steve reviewed a local restaurant for Louisville Magazine (on the magazine’s website, for some reason, Steve now seems to be known as “Lou”), enjoying both […]

Categories: Food, Meat substitutes, Recipes, Tofu, Vegetarian

Impossible Apple Cake with Maple Ice Cream

November 10, 2014 by Steve

We have mentioned this Caramelized Apple Cake before, because Michelle has tried to make it several times every apple season for years with little (OK, at least one) real success. The recipe pages in Susan Herrmann Loomis’ Cooking at Home on Rue Tatin have all sorts of scribbles covering them, adjusting the amount and thinness of apples, ingredients, mixing instructions and more. Time after time, it’s turned out underdone, overdone or just odd—but the damn thing keeps haunting us with its buttery, caramel […]

Categories: Apples, Cake, Cooking, Desserts & Sweets, Food, Fruit Desserts, Ice cream, Recipes, Vegetarian

Bringing harissa into Dinah Shore’s Basted Roasted Florida Chicken

October 31, 2014 by Steve

While not all Gourmandistan readers may be familiar with Dinah Shore, both Michelle and Steve remember watching her 1970s television shows. The Big Band-era star, 1938 graduate of Michelle’s alma mater and 1950s singer of “See the USA in Your Chevrolet” often hosted cooking segments and was a fairly adventurous cook for the era. Gourmandistan does not own a copy of Someone’s in the Kitchen With Dinah, Shore’s first cookbook, but we do often refer to our 1983 copy of The Dinah Shore Cookbook, especially her […]

Categories: Chicken, Cooking, Food, Old cookbooks, Recipes

Normandy Pudding slumps from soufflé to clafoutis, stays good.

October 27, 2014 by Michelle

It is once again apple season, and Steve has been bringing home several pounds of the fruit each time he goes to the market. While he’s happy to eat them out of hand, Michelle has been enjoying the chance to make tarte Tatin, apple crisp, clafoutis and other good desserts. Searching for something newish, she returned to Camille Glenn’s The Fine Art of Delectable Desserts, a 1980s-era philanthropic project from the legendary Louisville chef, teacher and author we’ve mentioned before. This […]

Categories: Apples, Cooking, Custards & Puddings, Desserts & Sweets, Food, Fruit Desserts, Old cookbooks, Recipes

Butternut squash, mushroom and country ham cannelloni lighten the load

October 19, 2014 by Michelle

We’re still working our way through our winter squash collection. After the recent pumpkin lasagne and a batch of Paula Wolfert’s squash soup (always delicious), we were still looking at a lot of squash. Michelle suggested making some squash pasta sauce, but Steve thought that would be too close to pouring soup over spaghetti. Instead (partly because he’s been on quite a pasta roll) he suggested making cannelloni, and Michelle quickly agreed. In the pantheon of pasta shapes invented by Italians, cannelloni (“little reeds”) […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Pasta, Pork, Recipes, Winter squash

Sandwiching a little history into peanut butter & Concord grape jelly cookies

October 12, 2014 by Steve

Along with its partners, peanut butter and sliced white bread, Concord grape jelly is an American staple, a symbol of something completely familiar and unsurprising. Which is why Steve was so delighted to find out that the original name for it was “Grapelade,” and the stuff became popular after it was included (along with cigarettes) in WWI ration kits. According to the Concord Grape Association (whose members “process more than 90% of the Concord grapes processed annually in the United States”), Concord […]

Categories: Cookies, Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Grapes, Jams & Preserves, Nuts, Recipes, Vegetarian

Pawpaw ice cream with unfamiliarity and added tropicality

October 2, 2014 by Michelle

Even though we were raised within their growing range, pawpaws have been mostly a mystery to Gourmandistan. We were somewhat familiar with the song “Way Down Yonder In The Pawpaw Patch,” and were tempted many years ago by the offer of free pawpaw saplings from the Kentucky State University Land Grant Program. We turned them down, as we believed they would suffer the same fate as our other orchard (gnawed to death by deer). KSU is home to the world’s only “full-time pawpaw research program,” which seems to serve as the Internet’s primary […]

Categories: Chocolate, Cooking, Food, Fruit, Fruit Desserts, Ice cream, Old cookbooks, Recipes, Vegetarian

Matzo ball soup made better with brownness

September 25, 2014 by Steve

In her charming 1989 book, Cooking with Memories, Lora Brody had a chapter called “Gourmet Chicken Soup,” which related her dismay at a Passover Seder where she was forced to endure a “highfalutin’ chicken soup” that lacked matzo balls. She wrote that her mother made the comment, “Escoffier would be proud”—a sly insult because the promulgator of haute cuisine “wasn’t Jewish and neither … [was] this soup.” Brody continued the chapter by offering her own chicken soup recipe, which includes cubes of chicken bouillon […]

Categories: Cooking, Family, Food, Holidays & Events, Old cookbooks, Recipes, Soups & Stews

Damson plums make some damn fine plum pie

September 12, 2014 by Steve

Except during our brief jaunt to Michigan, Gourmandistan has not seen many plums this year. While both of us remember plums picked from Kentucky trees in our youths, we don’t see them often in the markets—and we’ve been too lazy to ask the farmers why. (Though should any of you be reading this, we’d be happy to hear about it.) But we spotted a basket labeled “damson plums” at last week’s market and decided to ask about them. Our question turned into […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Jams & Preserves, Old cookbooks, Pies & Tarts, Plums, Recipes