Recipes | Gourmandistan

Breaking fried corn out of its Southern Belle stereotype

August 4, 2013 by Steve

While the American South certainly has a number of strong, smart and standout women (an excellent example can often be found in Gourmandistan), the region still unfortunately nurtures some particularly painful flowerings of Southern womanhood, a few of whom have started to get their comeuppance. But we’re not here to hand out faded roses—we just want people to stop buying (and sugaring) Silver Queen corn and its even sweeter siblings. While many of our non-United States friends may believe the grain […]

Categories: Cooking, Corn, Food, Peppers, Recipes, Vegetarian

Take your Old Fashioned over to Ang Sarap for a Hot Brown

August 2, 2013 by Steve

We have a guest post up at Ang Sarap, a blog we’ve followed for some time. Claiming to be neither “a cook nor a chef,” Raymund nevertheless is constantly creating interesting, appetizing dishes from all over the world and then takes gorgeous pictures of them. (All while raising a family and holding down an IT job, which is quite humbling.) Though he’s a New Zealander now, we especially love Raymund’s images and stories of Filipino dishes from his childhood. Our […]

Categories: Beverages, Food, Recipes

Blackberry chocolate chip ice cream makes you beg for a briar patch.

July 29, 2013 by Steve

Blackberries, it seems, would prefer you not pick them. That must be why in addition to hundreds of tiny sharp thorns ready to embed themselves in your skin, blackberry bushes arm themselves with an array of other nasty surprises. Poison ivy, snakes, spiders, hornets and wasps are only some of the things your fingers may brush while reaching for that plump purple berry. One taste of this ice cream, however, and you’ll be championing the return of Br’er Rabbit. (Hopefully this time […]

Categories: Blackberries, Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Ice cream, Recipes, Vegetarian

Bee suits, bittersweet, brambles and blackberry jam

July 27, 2013 by Steve

We are having a wonderful year for wild blackberries. Steve, determined to make the most of it, has been tramping out to a patch every morning for a couple of weeks. It’s a lovely spot, surrounded by sugar maple, tulip poplar and sassafras trees, and Steve doesn’t mind the hike through our (and, to be honest, our absentee neighbors’) overgrown old farm fields to get to them. He doesn’t mind spending an hour or so shuffling around a tangle of […]

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

Poppin’ tags this blueberry lemon tart (it is f*cking awesome)

July 19, 2013 by Steve

Everybody likes pop. You might be a hip downtown aesthete, a strangely-haired Hoosier, a B-girl, a King or perhaps just a jiggly pile of dough. At least for last week, “pop” in Gourmandistan simply referred to Blueberry Lemon Tart. As we near the end of local blueberry season, Michelle felt like making at least one last blueberry dessert. She turned to a recipe from Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Fruit, remembering how she liked this combination of blueberry and lemon curd. […]

Categories: Blueberries, Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Lemon, Pies & Tarts, Recipes, Vegetarian

Deliciously dingy-watered finger-dirtying dill pickles

July 14, 2013 by Steve

Michelle almost didn’t take a picture of these pickles, even though they may be her favorite dill. It’s the Dill Pickles recipe from City Cuisine, the cookbook Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken wrote back in the Eighties before they became the “Too Hot Tamales” (befitting their rather spicy personal story). In addition to vinegar, salt, sugar (and of course, dill), the pickling spices include cumin, ginger and turmeric, which give the pickles a spicy, earthy, almost Indian flavor. The […]

Categories: Cooking, Cucumber, Food, Old cookbooks, Pickles, Recipes

Trying to recapture Venice with a tray of Tramezzini

July 10, 2013 by Steve

Many, many, many places on Earth describe themselves as “the Venice” of something or somewhere. Some of these alternati-Venices we find intriguing; others appalling. We have even visited a few of them. As we’ve also been lucky enough to visit Venice itself, we can assure you nothing really compares. Begun as an escape from brigands and barbarians, the sandy archipelago became a commercial (some might say piratical) powerhouse—an island nation of amazing canals, buildings and bridges. Steve, especially, was quite dubious about Venice […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Italy, Recipes, Sandwiches

Blueberry Surprise Cake: a tasty surprise witness to unbelievable testimony

July 3, 2013 by Steve

As an attorney, Michelle is keenly aware of the unreliability of eyewitnesses, preferring the certainty of written documents to sworn statements which often color fact with fanciful opinion. Steve, who has himself coached “testimonials” from video subjects (“Would you say this hospital is one of the finest in the state?” “Yes.” “I meant would you say that to the camera.”) can be troubled by “true stories.” Which is probably why he started to poke holes in Michelle’s childhood recollection of […]

Categories: Blueberries, Cake, Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Old cookbooks, Recipes, Vegetarian

Unhealthily balancing Swiss chard with gemelli pasta and pine nuts

June 23, 2013 by Steve

It is well known that this time of year finds Gourmandistan searching for new ways to deal with CSA chard. We’ve long been fans of this healthy idea from Martha Rose Schulman, but were recently in the mood for something a little more robust. Enter Martha Stewart and her circa 2003 recipe for Gemelli with Sausage, Swiss Chard and Pine Nuts. Pre-prison Martha saw the wisdom of loading carbs into the mix of chard, raisins and nuts, with some sausage added to […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Nuts, Pasta, Pork, Recipes, Swiss chard