"gourmet magazine" news and stories

With more than 3,500 cookbooks from the late Gourmet Magazine library just added to its collection, New York University's Fales Library Food Studies Collection has something major to cheer about. Slashfood attended the a recent celebration honoring award-winning cookbook author Rozanne Gold for her generous donation that made the acquisition possible. We caught up with Marvin J. Taylor, Director, The Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University to get the scoop on what's really on the shelves.

Slashfood: What makes The Fales Library Food Studies Collection the largest and most important in the country?
Marvin J. Taylor: First, sheer size. We hold more volumes than any of the other collections. It's most important because our collection looks at food from a cultural standpoint, not just from nutrition, science, women's studies, etcetera, but from all these viewpoints at once.

How many cookbooks are in the collection?
MJT: I'm not sure, but we estimate that there are 55,000 volumes and counting.

Before you pull out the same old snowman cookie cutter and butter-cookie recipe this holiday season, give a thought to the cookie as a sign of the times. The food editors at the late great Gourmet magazine did. They baked a lot of cookies in the 68 years the magazine was published (1941-2009). So some tough choices had to be made when former Executive Food Editor Kemp Minifie and her team pored over all those recipes to choose the finest cookie from each year (except maybe for 1962, when only one cookie appeared). What began as a "best of" feature for the Gourmet website has now become The Gourmet Cookie Book, published November 2 (from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). From the rich almond-flavored Cajun Macaroon (1941) that tasted of New Orleans to the very French Christmas bread, Grand Marnier Glazed Pain d'Épices cookies, of December 2009, this is a collection that says as much about what makes a great cookie as it does about cooking that's inspired us for almost seven decades.

Slashfood talked to Kemp Minifie, who created recipes for Gourmet for more than thirty years, about some of her favorite cookies from the magazine's early years.

Slashfood: How did you ever pick just one cookie for each year?

Kemp Minifie: We went through all the issues, and tried to choose the one cookie that would say a lot about the time in which it was made. Take the Honey Refrigerator cookies from 1942. There was a war on, and there was rationing. Sugar was scarce. So we cooked with honey, which also helped the cookies keep well. These cookies go great with a tangy cheese, like goat's-milk or gorgonzola. In 1943, the Scotch Oat Crunchies also worked with our need to stretch ingredients by using oatmeal, which was inexpensive. This English and Irish take on the biscuit is thin and crisp, not too sweet, and it's filled with jam.

Cool custard is what panna cotta is all about. Add a layer of fruit compote, such as the mango version above, and it's a chill summer dessert. There are no eggs in panna cotta, though the custard is made with cream and gelatin. In fact, according to The Gourmet Cookbook, "panna cotta means 'cooked cream' in Italian," and it's a dessert you need to make at least four hours in advance, so it can set. (Here's a Gourmet recipe for vanilla panna cotta with a fresh mango compote.)

Amp up the creaminess by adding yogurt to the cream. This citrusy panna cotta di casa recipe calls for lemon yogurt, lemon curd and mascarpone cheese, and is served with a blueberry sauce.

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When Gourmet shut down abruptly last fall, readers expected its celebrated editor, Ruth Reichl, would pop up again soon -- likely in bookstores. Sure enough, For You, Mom, Finally, a memoir about Reichl's career in food writing and her mother's influence, has just been released. A couple nights ago she spoke about her latest book, Gourmet's demise, and her foray into social media with Washington Post food editor Joe Yonan as part of a Smithsonian series.

The first topic was the book. Though the title is new, it's actually the paperback edition of Not Becoming My Mother, a title Reichl says she didn't like and never wanted. Yonan says the new title expresses what Reichl felt she owed her mother -- acknowledgment and gratitude. After Reichl's previous books had (lovingly) criticized her mother's cooking, For You, Mom provides "a truer exploration of a brilliant-but-bored woman who felt trapped by family life...and who was determined that her daughter have anything but that life." The irony is thick: Here was a woman who skipped the cooking so her child could have a brilliant career...writing about cooking.

And now, as the Monty Python group would say, for something completely different . . . and, in truth, something wild, we offer up a Wednesday side of ramps. A little bit garlic, a little bit leek, ramps are wild members of the Allium family. If you're lucky enough to find them growing rampantly (sorry!) in a field or being offered at the farmers market, grab them and sauté them with olive oil, salt and pepper, and eat them just like that. Or sauté the bulbs with garlic and sherry and wilt the leaves with lemon and shallots, as blogger garrettkern did, above, and serve them with griddle corn cakes and a swirl of sour cream.

Ramps are delicious in a creamy soup that also includes sweet onions (keeping it in the family). But I think my favorite ramps dish is one from Manhattan restaurant Babbo, which one of its former chefs, Yoshi Yamada, shared with Gourmet readers a couple of years ago. The recipe uses both bulb and leaf, mixes in breadcrumbs, and is a beautiful celebration of spring.

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