Kentucky’s Bourbon Cuisine by Ruth Paget
Kentucky is famous for its Kentucky Derby Horse Race, blue grass music, and lush bourbon-based cuisine. Bourbon is a highly alcoholic drink made from corn that is similar to whisky and cognac.
Tasting Kentucky: Favorite Recipes from the Blue Grass State by Maggie Green provides 20 recipes out of its 100 that use bourbon to flavor dishes from breakfast to dessert.
Green begins with a breakfast recipe for buttermilk pancakes made with bourbon-vanilla butter that soaks into the pancakes on the grill for a bracing morning meal.
For cocktail hour, Green suggests a bourbon-candied ginger onion dip to go with cocktails like bourbon slush, garden old fashioned, mint juleps, and village Manhattans.
Mashed potatoes with bourbon seem improbable, yet there is a recipe for them in Green’s cookbook along with salad with oranges and slices of red onion with bourbon-sorghum vinaigrette.
Bourbon shines in main dish offerings such as:
-bourbon trail chili
-beef short ribs with bourbon barrel ale (not bourbon, but ale made with a product of bourbon making)
-pork chops Bourbonnais
-smoked pork shoulder with chili rub and bourbon-peppercorn barbecue sauce
Bars are often noted for their dessert offerings that make use of spirits. Any of the following bourbon-based desserts might find takers on a daily specials menu:
-bourbon ball layer cake
-bourbon pecan pie
-bread pudding with bourbon sauce
-chocolate – bourbon – almond stuffed figs
-chocolate tart with bourbon praline topping -marbled bourbon pound cake
The recipes in Tasty Kentucky: Favorite Recipes from the Bluegrass State by Maggie Green are rather short and have photos of finished products making the cookbook user-friendly and a splendid addition to a kitchen library.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
