Gourmandistan

Damn hippies sure do know how to cook

June 23, 2010 by Michelle

The Summer of 1989 found us in San Francisco with Michelle’s mom, Jean. In that pre-Gourmandistan era, we weren’t really aware of the downsides of industrial food—instead, we were crazy for Asian. The San Francisco dining guide we bought before the trip had so many Asian restaurants marked we realized we’d have to eat about six meals a day to try all that we wanted. Not that we didn’t try to hit every one. We were enjoying siu mai, chicken […]

Categories: Cooking, Fennel, Food, Pasta, Recipes, Restaurants, Tomatoes, Vegetarian

Black raspberry jam

June 11, 2010 by Michelle

Black raspberries are the RuPaul of brambly drupelets. While they are raspberries, they have the sass and presence of a really good blackberry. The difference? It’s the core. Both blackberries and raspberries are collections of little seed-bearing fruits (called “drupelets”) attached to a central structure. In a blackberry, these drupelets remain attached, so the fruit has a “core.” Raspberry drupelets stick to each other instead of the structure, leaving them hollow. Michelle turned our recent find of farmers’ market black […]

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

Red Scarce

June 5, 2010 by Michelle

Sour cherries, in their meaty, sweety, tarty glory, have been appearing more frequently this year in Gourmandistan. In the past we could only get a couple of pints each year from Hazelfied Farm (though those few were, in true Raphe & Teresa fashion, exquisitely small and sour). But this year Michelle’s already scored a couple of quarts from Steve Hess at a recent Norton Commons market, and some neighbors up the road just put up a “cherries 4 sale” sign. […]

Categories: Cherries, Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Recipes, Vegetarian

Pea meets pie. Gourmandistan falls in love.

May 31, 2010 by Steve

First too-good-to-be-true thing: a large bag of in-shell English peas from the Norton Commons farmers market. Second too-good-to-be-true thing: a recipe for Fresh Green Pea Pie from Camille Glenn’s The Heritage of Southern Cooking, combining the fresh peas with a double crust. Glenn, food editor for the Louisville Courier-Journal back when it was a great newspaper who died earlier this year at the age of 100, wrote: If I were asked to name the greatest fresh vegetable dish in the […]

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

Attack of the giant veg

May 30, 2010 by Steve

This week’s Foxhollow Farm share arrived with a very large leaf lettuce plant. While Pavel, our farmer, assured Michelle that it was “still tasty,” even notoriously low-standard-when-it-comes-to-greens Steve thought the lettuce too leathery for salad. Michelle voted to send the gigantic greens to the chickens, but Steve became determined to see if we could salvage it—and thanks to the Gourmet Today cookbook, we did. This reasonably simple recipe, which can be found on the Epicurious website, features chopped lettuce, potato, […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Lettuce, Recipes, Soups & Stews, Vegetarian

A delicious frosting of “delay and divert.”

May 30, 2010 by Steve

Gourmandistan has nothing against salt—we use it liberally on and in all kinds of things, and enjoy a nice salt crust on a steak or roasted chicken. What we don’t like is big business hiding it—especially when also hiding how crappy processed food really is. This story deals with how the food industry wants to divert attention from a reasonable request to cut the amount of salt in food, and why they don’t want to do it. Here’s a sample […]

Categories: Food, News • Tags: Gross

Single-serving strawberry tarts

May 28, 2010 by Michelle

Michelle was craving strawberry pie. But the problem is that fruit pies, especially strawberry pies, last for only a short time before becoming mushy and unappetizing and we didn’t want to waste any of our precious fruit. Steve remembered that we had small tart pans stowed somewhere in the kitchen cabinets and so we made up a batch of tart dough from Maury Rubin’s book of tarts and froze six single-serving tart shells, pulling them out as needed and baking. […]

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

Eating, eccentricity and ethnocentrism at the “International” Bar-B-Q Fest

May 26, 2010 by Michelle

Earlier this month Steve’s friend and honorary Gourmandistani, Bill, invited him to Owensboro for the International Bar-B-Q Festival, held on the second Saturday in May since 1978 on the (at least for this year, somewhat rain-swollen) banks of the Ohio River. The Festival’s website advises one to “come for the food, stay for the fun,” but Bill insisted the right way to attend the “Fest” was to go early, beg for scraps of cooking ‘Q from the cooking teams and […]

Categories: Bar-B-Q, Festivals, Food, Holidays & Events

God bless our local farmers

May 25, 2010 by Michelle

Just like last year, we’re participating in two farm shares. Our friends Raphe & Teresa are no longer sharing their bounty with us, having found that increasing their wedding flower business far outweighed the pleasures of driving to Louisville to hear Steve incessantly begging for raw milk. We’re still with our neighbors at Foxhollow, but this year also got a share from Riverfarm Organics, a new CSA up in Goshen. Steve somehow missed the message about our first scheduled Riverfarm pickup. Luckily, we were […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Pasta, Peas, Recipes • Tags: Locavore