Golf a la Carte

Golf a la Carte

Grade: A

I have a confession to make: I watch the Food Channel. I’m a huge Alton Brown fan, and I enjoy Iron Chef. I love to cook, and when my ship finally comes in, I’m going to buy a house with the biggest kitchen I can find (on a golf course, naturally).

This revelation is merely a prelude to saying that I also like cook books. I’ve got quite a few of them, and the latest addition is a golf-related one: Golf a la Carte. It’s the first volume of series, and focuses on the American Southeast. There are 190 recipes from 94 different clubs, including such famous names as Pinehurst, Kiawah Island, Bay Hill, Reynolds Plantation, Hammock Bay and the Harmony Golf Reserve. Private clubs include Forsyth, Athens, Orchid Island, Steelwood, Croasdaile, Long Cove, Canongate and the Thornblade Club. The recipes include breakfast, appetizers, lunches and salads, sauces and sides, soups, meat entrees, pasta, poultry and seafood dishes, finishing up with desserts.

Many of the recipes are fancy resort type food that I likely wouldn’t try in my 1960s-era kitchen, but two have got me raring to give them a go: the Black Bean and Coconut Soup with Fresh Lime from the Card Sound Country Club in Key Largo, and the Grown Up Mac N Cheese (made with goat, American and Parmesan cheese, bacon, red onion and penne pasta.). There are also a bunch of crab recipes that I ALMOST want to try, but as a Marylander, I’m not sure I want to let good crab meat go into anything other than a Maryland Crab Cake.