This month's Gourmet - March 2009

Getting the hard copy of Gourmet in my mailbox is one of my monthly highlights. It's the only American food magazine I can get delivered over here - and I've been lucky enough to be given a gift subscription from my Aunt Sue. I love it.

So what's on the menu in this month's Gourmet? Some pretty cool stuff:

-"Smokra": jars of pickled okra in Spanish smoked paprika.

-A recipe for quick kimchi - this Korean sauce of sorts, made with cabbage, ginger, garlic, chilli and seafood. Having read the New York Times article about the new Los Angeles fusion food - Mexican and Korean - I'm keen to give this a try in my tacos.

-Why it's okay to cook with cheap wine (sometimes): Gourmet test-drove two pot roasts, one with a $20 bottle, and one with a $5 bottle, and it turns out that blind-taste-test preferences were split straight down the middle.

-Gourmet online - great for extra recipes

let it snow

Just when I thought spring was on my doorstep, it snows. In April. The night after I bought lots of beautiful plants for my balcony (including a lovely bay tree).

But I remain undeterred. I am not heading back to root vegetable land. I will simply think of today as winter's grand finale.

The new issue of Gourmet arrived in my postbox yesterday. The Italian issue. I worried it might have heavy mom-and-pop fare, that of the New York Italian persuasion.

I needn't have worried. The recipes were fresh - and most importantly - properly Italian. Little known areas like Puglia and Umbria were scoured, and recipes like baby octopus salad and stuffed mussels dominated the pages.

There were two that particularly took my fancy, and I simply couldn't decide which to cook first: pasta with spicy anchovy sauce and dill bread crumbs OR umbrian fish soup.

So I'm doing both.

I think this will actually work quite nicely. The Italians often eat a very small portion of pasta as a first course - and we could learn from them. Although a standard serving size is about 90 g (or 3 oz) officially, we more often than not eat about three times that.

So my goal is to have my pasta and eat it too.

Check out the recipes here. and here.

my first Gourmet

My Christmas present from my aunt and grandmother this past year was a year's subscription to Gourmet, my favourite American food magazine. The first issue finally arrived today, and I heartily dived in.

This month's issue is dedicated to French cuisine. My (not so healthy) favourite was profiteroles with coffee ice cream. And a lovely spring-inspired Meyer lemon cake with lavender cream. And a pear and almond tart. (The French do know their desserts, don't they?)

But there are plenty of tantalising dishes that seem quite healthy too. For example, the zucchini rice gratin, full of plum tomatoes, courgettes, garlic, eggs, and thyme, shows off the best of Provencal cooking. It calls for way too much olive oil in my opinion (6 1/2 tablespoons for 4-6 servings!), but despite that, it's still pretty good. Even better, it only takes 25 minutes to cook.

Other recipes I can't wait to try:

Creamy celery-root (celeriac) and haricot vert (green bean) salad, a lovely fresh late-winter salad with mayonnaise and lemon juice.

Merguez lamb patties with golden raisin couscous, made with lamb mince and a host of wonderful spices (fennel seeds, harissa, garlic, cumin, coiander and cinnamon). I'm not QUITE sure about the raisins yet though. Food for thought.