Posts Categorized: Food & Recipes

This hearty pub pie is made with beef tenderloin, enhanced with Guinness stout and thickened with sharp white cheddar cheese. The vegetables included are optional and can be varied based on seasonal availability: for example, I use frozen peas instead of beans in the winter/spring months. Just take the amount of cooking time each vegetable…

I lucked out at the Holland Farmers Market Wednesday and found some pie cherries. While sweet cherries are plentiful and available many places, consider yourself fortunate when you see these, at least in West Michigan. The season for pie cherries, also called “sour” or “tart” cherries, is short-just a few weeks. Most of the crop…

We take our cues from the local seasonality for this excellent dessert. Here in our corner of West Michigan we are in that special time when the rhubarb is winding down and the strawberries are just beginning. The combination of rhubarb’s tart, almost astringent, flavor with the natural sweetness of strawberries is magical. Especially when…

We make sourdough bread multiple times per week here at Castle in the Country from a starter that began life on April 15, 2005. It is used here for french toast, croutons, picnic baskets, dinners, breadcrumbs…very little goes to waste. I like the simplicity of ingredients: Flour, water, salt. I like the complexity of the…

There seems to be an increasing use of bacon in sweet dessert items like chocolate brownies. The combination of smokey, salty bacon with sweet, rich chocolate is better than it may sound at first. So, we thought it would be fun to try this pairing as part of our in room dinner . Pretty easy…

Most traditional scone recipes use both butter and milk or half&half. Here we skip the butter and a few of the mixing steps by using only heavy cream. This simplifies and shortens the preparation process, and the end result yields a crispy, more glazed crust with a moist interior. Any dried fruit such as cherries,…

Focaccia, normally a savory flatbread steeped in herbed olive oil, becomes a sweet pastry by using light oil, dried fruit, and a topping of sugar. We make it in a smaller pan, which results in a taller, softer bread. The retarded rise (placing in the refrigerator overnight) allows better bread flavor development. Time is always…

Comments: It may seem unnecessary to go through all this for just onions, but the end result is truly worth the time. The vinegar adds an acidic punch, the sugar makes these sweeter than they naturally would become, and the Vermouth adds complexity. I use this recipe to prepare a large batch that I then…