Damon Lee Fowler

Easter dinner in our house always begins with a chilled soup. Even if the weather outside isn't exactly spring-like, it's a welcome reminder that warmer days are on the way. But mainly, it's because a cold first course can be made ahead and, as a bonus, is often the better for it.

My usual is a chilled carrot puree, but this year my spouse asked for vichyssoise, the cold soup that has become practically synonymous with the idea.

It may seem a bit old-fashioned, having been around for more than a century and unhappily, having been done to death (and all too often done badly) in the "gourmet" seventies and eighties of the last century. But when carefully and well made, vichyssoise is a deeply satisfying and delicious beginning for any meal (or as a meal in itself), and that should never be out of style. Read More 

In the late seventies and early eighties, the airwaves of public radio were graced with the homespun wit and wisdom of Kim Williams, a naturalist and writer from Missoula, Montana. Her commentary covered just about every aspect of life, but the one that has stayed with me, and is inevitably brought to mind by this time of year, extolled the virtues of joyfully abandoning our self-control for a season of unchecked feasting.

Taking a cue from the oft-quoted beginning of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, "To everything there is a season," she believed that periods of unreserved celebrating were essential Read More 

The summer heat and humidity in our corner of Southern Virginia may not be quite as intense as it was in coastal Georgia, but it's still summer in the South. My cooking continues to be heavy on summer comfort food: lots of fresh produce, pan-roasted meat and poultry, salads, and cold soups.

Luckily, Petersburg has a lovely Farmers' Market in an open lot of Old Towne's River Street, Read More 

Last night, we ventured out to a neighborhood holiday pot-luck. It was the first time we'd done anything like it since our move, and I'm a little out of practice with cooking for crowds, so my contribution was a standard that I could do without thinking about it, an extravagant but very easy potato gratin.

And as it always does, my gratin dish came home scraped clean.

It's a simple concoction of thinly-sliced potatoes, cream, and good cheese for which I can't take any credit, since the recipe is a timeless classic French one, Read More 

Dropping by Charles J. Russo's, my neighborhood fish market, for the shrimp that went into that sauté with new potatoes a couple of days back, some lovely fresh bay scallops caught my imagination and, like a child in the grocery, it started begging me to take some home.

A nice, simple gratin seemed like just the thing for them, with a touch of garlic, scallions, and a little hot pepper to season them, a few soft crumbs to soak up the juice they inevitably shed, and a few buttered dry crumbs to finish their top.

What could possibly go wrong? Well. It wasn't exactly wrong, but the garlic turned out to be way more than "a touch." Read More 

Arguably the easiest and best way to prepare asparagus is to cook it whole in a large pan of boiling salted water until it's just crisp-tender—as little as two and no more than four minutes if the spears are nice and fat, then carefully drain, drizzle it with melted butter, and serve it forth. Second to that is to spread it on a baking pan, sprinkle it with olive oil and salt, and roast it in a very hot oven.

The drawback to both those methods is that they're best done just before serving and require the cook's almost undivided attention. When I know my attention is likely to be spread out over several things at the last minute, this sauté is what I turn to.

The asparagus is already mostly cooked, so it's really just a matter of warming it up in the pan,  Read More 

For those who prefer potatoes as the starchy side at Easter, an alternative to the pasta suggested earlier is this luxurious but simple potato gratin. Based on a classic French one, it's usually made with caramelized onions, but here thinly sliced scallions and a few spring herbs give it a fresh lift and make it a fine accompaniment for either lamb or ham.

Actually, it's pretty compatible with just about anything, and is also lovely with poultry (especially roasted), fish, pork, and venison.

The only real work is grating cheese and scrubbing, peeling, and slicing potatoes. And, actually, those probably don't even have to be peeled if you like the skins. Once those chores are done, it's just a matter of tossing it together and popping it into the oven. Read More 

Braising may well be my favorite way of cooking. Not only does it concentrate flavors and tenderize tough foods, it actually keeps delicate foods moist and succulent.

While it's ideal for winter and for the hearty but tough cuts of meat that we favor in cold weather, this versatile method really knows no season. I turn to it year round. It's really ideal for this strange time in our lives, too, since any quantity of food, large or small, can be braised.

But probably the best thing about braising is that it's easy on the cook:  Read More 

Probably no one will disagree that this has been the oddest of summers. It almost feels as if it passed us by without really happening. Yes, we've had the fresh produce, the heat and humidity, long hours of sunshine, and crashing thunderstorms that mark the season.

And to get out of the apartment and see something other than one another and the same four walls, we've enjoyed long walks in the lovely summer-green parks that make Savannah unique and have even walked on the warm surf-washed sand of Tybee Beach. But for us, at least, it's been with a kind of odd detachment, as if time suspended in March and hasn't really caught up.

My cooking this summer has been reflective of that: Read More 

16 May 2020: Quarantine Cooking for Two—Pan-Broiled Hamburger Steaks

One of the most revealing things about this pandemic lockdown is the power that the comfortably familiar has had over us, especially in the kitchen and at the table.

Many of us who cook as much for pleasure as necessity have a list of things we're always saying we'd master if only we had the time. Well, now we have it. But instead of leaping to explore those uncharted culinary avenues, what did we do? Most of us turned inward, fell back on the kinds of safe comfort foods we've made hundreds of times.

It's only natural, in such unsettling, uncertain times as these, that we'd not just crave but need the safety of familiar comforts. There's nothing wrong with it. Read More 

Last weekend, more than sixty members of my high school class gathered in the cool of a rainy upstate Carolina evening to celebrate the anniversary our graduation into adulthood. It was a welcome refreshment of the spirit, not only in the renewing of old friendships, but in the taste of distinctly autumnal weather afforded those of us who now live away from those hills.

The respite from our lowcountry heat made it easy to get into a fall mindset for the research and development of seasonal stew recipes for my regular newspaper column. But a bonus was that the combinations of flavors that came to the fore inevitably brought me back to a favorite recipe from a favorite kitchen of the past: Beef Soup Monticello. Read More 

I am having to relearn how to cook on an electric range, and the one on which I am learning is working my nerves.

Crowded into the end of our apartment's galley kitchen, the thermostat of its large front burner is defective and will suddenly make it surge to high heat when it's set anywhere between high and medium-low. From medium-low to low, it practically turns itself off and is barely warm.

That can be fixed, but the undercabinet microwave that hovers a mere thirteen inches above the cooking surfaces (five inches less than standard upper cabinet height) cannot. Read More 

When we talk today of "culinary heroes," we all too often forget the real heroes in cooking: the thousands of unassumingly genuine, curious, and clever cooks of the past who first discovered the techniques that we take for granted. It's on the shoulders of these forgotten souls that our modern culinary knowledge has been built.

Among one the greatest of them was the cook who discovered a simple technique that, over just the right amount of heat would—seemingly like magic—make butter melt in a way that kept it suspended in a liquid, creating a thick, sumptuously silky sauce. Read More 

Whether you call them garden, green, sweet, or, as we often do in the South, “English” peas, you probably take the plump, round seeds of the trailing plant pisum sativum for granted. You may even think of them as ordinary and a bit boring. Yet, once upon a time, these little orbs were celebrated as a precious commodity and a rare harbinger of spring.

Thomas Jefferson even carried on a friendly competition with one of his neighbors for the first pea harvest of the season. Read More 

We rarely think of giving leeks in a starring role in cooking. More often than not, this kitchen workhorse is expected to retire into the background, lending its subtle, fresh flavor to the more showy main ingredients of a soup, stew, sauté or occasional casserole.

But leeks are a lovely vegetable and when they’re given the center of the stage (or plate or pan if you will) they really do shine, especially in the spring.  Read More 

Big Christmas parties can be a lot of fun, with their crowds of folks filled with holiday cheer (never mind that it came from a bottle), festive decorations, and endless arrays of rich, fancy party food.

But they do require a certain amount of planning and work. And as we come into the last stretch before Christmas, if you’ve not already planned one, it’s a little late to start now. That does not, however, mean that it’s too late to do anything at all.

There’s no perfect-host rule mandating that the only way to entertain your friends at the holidays is in herds. Read More 

In all of cooking, the one thing that never ceases to fascinate, amaze, and comfort me is the little bit of culinary alchemy that makes an omelet. Using a hot, well-seasoned pan and a very simple technique that even a child can master, anyone with any coordination at all can turn a couple of eggs, a lump of butter, and a little salt and pepper into pure gold. Read More 

If you’re doing a ham for Easter, you’re pretty much home free from here, but if you like to have lamb for the feast, as I do, you can’t cook it ahead unless you just want to have it cold on purpose.

Fortunately, a boned and butterflied leg cooks quickly with a minimum of last minute fuss.  Read More 

The classic French potato gratin with sliced potatoes, cream, and good cheese has been my Easter potato dish for years. The ingredients are simple, its preparation requires almost no skill on the part of the cook, and yet nothing is more elegant or satisfying to eat.

Best of all, it can be made today, and reheats beautifully.  Read More 

My favorite beginning for Easter dinner, or, for that matter, any other spring celebration meal, is with a simple puree of fresh, spring carrots.

It’s so easy to make: though they were originally pureed by rubbing them through a wire mesh sieve, a process that took no particular skill but a fair amount of elbow-grease, if your kitchen is equipped with a blender, food processor, or that favorite modern chef’s tool, the hand blender, there’s nothing to it.

Best of all for the busy host, it can not only be made ahead, but is actually improved by it,  Read More 

Yesterday, a regular reader asked me to devote one of my newspaper columns to the proper way of cooking a sunny-side-up egg. My first reaction was that it’s a very simple process that even a big mouth like me could not stretch out into an entire newspaper story.

My second reaction was to recall that, like all simple things, a properly fried egg does take a little finesse—and finesse is a virtue that is far too often overlooked in the kitchen, especially when the process is a simple one.

Sunny-side up is actually just another name for the classic American-style fried egg. And the real secret to success with it lies in understanding that “fried,” in this instance, is a misleading moniker.  Read More 

A couple of weeks ago, I revisited one of the loveliest and most misunderstood dishes in all of Southern cooking: pole beans slow-simmered with salt pork. With small new potatoes laid on top to steam during the last part of the simmer, it remains one of my all-time favorite ways of cooking these sturdy beans.

But pole beans are not the only ones that I, and many other Southern cooks, bring to the table. While researching for a lecture on the indomitable Mary Randolph, whose 1824 cookbook was one of the earliest printed records of Southern cooking, I was once again taken by her lucid and careful directions for French beans. Read More 

When “la nouvelle cuisine” swept the culinary world in the latter part of the last century, roux-thickened pan gravy got shoved aside for sauces whose body was derived from reductions, purees, and butter liaisons. (They were really, by the way, nothing more than “la cuisine ancienne” rediscovered, but never mind.)

There was nothing wrong with those sauces—when we have the time to properly execute them and can serve them immediately, but there’s also nothing wrong with well-made pan gravy, especially for home cooks.  Read More 

The acquisition of a handsome antique gravy ladle has made my mind wander to one of the world’s oldest and greatest culinary inventions: pan gravy.

One of the most under-appreciated elements of any cuisine, but of Southern cooking especially, when well-made and carefully seasoned, pan gravy is also the best sauce imaginable. Rich with the browned essence of the food it will accompany, it enhances without smothering, and can partly redeem indifferent or accidentally over-done food.  Read More 

For the last couple of days, I’ve been looking longingly at this beautiful whole leg of lamb that I bought and wishing it could be left that way. I kept rehearsing the impossible: Surely there was some way I could miraculously roast it whole and still have Easter Dinner done shortly after we got home from church. Well, there really isn’t.

This morning, I finally took the thing out, took one last longing look at it, and said “Get over yourself and get this job done.” Read More 

This classic, easy-to-assemble French gratin has been the potato dish for my household’s Easter for years. The ingredients are simple, its preparation requires almost no real skill on the part of the cook, and yet nothing is elegant nor satisfying to eat.

Best of all, it can be made today, and reheats beautifully.  Read More 

Once you have the menu fixed, today or tomorrow shop for the things that will keep: pantry staples, dairy products, the meat, potatoes, onions, and anything that you’ll need for the next make-ahead—in this case the soup.

My own menu: Puree of Spring Carrots, Butterflied Roast Leg of Lamb, Potato Gratin, Asparagus (the jury is still out on the sauce for this), and chocolate pots-de-crème. Read More 

One of the most enduringly popular dishes of fall and winter’s table is Gratinéed French Onion Soup. It’s one dish that we call “French” that actually is; “soupe à l’oignon gratinée” is a standard found in bistros and home kitchens throughout France.

This time of year it begins to turn up on menus throughout our country, too, from New England to South Florida without regard to outside temperatures. Unfortunately, what comes to the table is more often than not as indifferent as it is popular. Read More 

Marcella Hazan’s husband, Victor, recently reminded us that his late wife liked to say, “If I could persuade someone to cook for six months without a single herb or spice, I’d have a chance to make a cook out of her.” Read More 

For many families, Easter dessert must be a fluffy coconut cake topped with seven minute frosting, lots of flaked coconut, and often jelly bean “Easter eggs.” Or it might be trimmed into shapes that are arranged on a platter and decorated to look like an Easter bunny. If that’s your tradition, then have at it.  Read More