Gourmandistan

Harvest lasagne with pumpkin, kale and pork

October 7, 2014 by Michelle

Last week we were told by our CSA farmer, Pavel, that the enormous orange and green gourd he handed us was known as a Musque de Provence pumpkin. Maybe some of our francophone friends will tell us whether it should be called musque or musquée. The English language sites seem to be just about equally split, though the French sites do lean toward the side of musquée. It’s apparently also known as the “Fairytale Pumpkin,” for obvious reasons. We can’t say exactly where it sits on the pumpkin family […]

Categories: Cheese, Cooking, Food, Kale, Pasta, Pork, Winter squash

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

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

Pork chops with plums, cider and Petoskey stones

August 29, 2014 by Steve

This week, Gourmandistan briefly relocated to Lake Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay, just north of Northport, Michigan on the Leelanau Peninsula. It’s the first time we’ve been to a Great Lakes beach (downtown Chicago doesn’t count), and seeing the sand and sculpted landscapes left from ancient glacial action has indeed been impressive. Steve has enjoyed wandering the cool, curiously critter-free water, finding colorful minerals, smooth pebbles and a few things he’s convinced himself are Petoskey stones, since he’s resisted buying the varnished […]

Categories: Cooking, Plums, Pork, Recipes

Lamb with Sweet Corn Kernels, our one Pushpesh Pant/Phaidon success

August 19, 2014 by Steve

Much like Wikipedia, we are willing to grant Pushpesh Pant his status as a “noted Indian academic, food critic and historian,” and we will not doubt (as per Wikipedia) that his India Cookbook was named by The New York Times as one of the best cookbooks of 2011. Unfortunately, “best” may be attributed to the book’s lovely design and comprehensive nature, because once again Gourmandistan has been foiled by the publisher’s inept and/or nonexistent editors, proofreaders and recipe testers. We were seduced […]

Categories: Cooking, Corn, Food, India, Lamb

Zucchini pancakes for (and from) victory

August 11, 2014 by Michelle

We are not going to waste time weeping about zucchini, as the clichéd stance of despairing what to do with it is quite possibly as old as the vegetable itself. Instead, we will offer a simple, no-nonsense solution: zucchini pancakes. We’ve made this recipe pretty much every summer since the 1980s, when this cookbook based on recipes from the PBS show The Victory Garden came out. The TV series, created by Russell Morash, was a pioneer in both food and garden television, […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Old cookbooks, Recipes, Summer Squash, Vegetarian

Crispy curried lamb ribs with suspect authenticity (and slaw)

August 1, 2014 by Michelle

We’ve made these spicy, sweet and only slightly sticky ribs several times, adjusting the recipe (and accompaniments) as we’ve gone along. We started with something called “Chinese Style Honey Mustard Lamb Riblets” from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s 1993 Rose’s Melting Pot: A Cooking Tour of America’s Ethnic Celebrations. Beranbaum says she based her version on “the memory … [her] husband had of his favorite chicken wing dish in a Chinese restaurant in Toronto,” so we knew we were already starting fairly far afield from […]

Categories: Cabbage, Cooking, Food, Lamb, Old cookbooks, Recipes, Salad

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