Gourmandia

Well this is a lovely food site because it features almost everything about food such as vegetables, soups, appetizers, desserts, etc. and also the best chefs that cooks, it also has the best video recipes online.

Well i'ts simple and responsive to say the least. The recipes are well documented (even though some don't have any descriptions in them) but I can leave with that cause lots of foodsites nowadays don't have it. Another bonus for this site is that some recipes have there own cooking video which is convenient I might find.

This site amazingly offers a wide variety of cooking learnings and recipes which ranges from the most basic dishes to more challenging ones. I could also get some useful tips about basic cooking but I could also venture into more substantial contents like information about chicken cutlets, scallops and shrimp scampi. The visual step by step process/videos are also useful and leads you to have a "feel" on how it is done before trying it out. All in all, it's really helpful most especially to starters like me.

Just 10 minutes into this site and my eyes got tired from looking at all those clustered links everywhere. This can be a good site; it just needs a full layout overhaul. I will not be visiting this site anytime soon unless it gets a total makeover.

Well organized contents but I'm having a hard time on reading its contents.i mean, the text is too small , its just like reading from a pocket dictionary.

This site takes cooking to a whole new level. They offer not just recipes but useful information such as history , holiday planning and ideas, and just plain fun. They are active on Facebook as well. I recommend you visit gourmandia.com and have a look around.

This site showcases cooking videos, tips and recipes that are easy to follow. Just a month of nurturing these videos and following its recipes, I may consider myself of becoming a competently humble chef.

116. Very well done site鈥︹€?I really like the ways the recipes have been categorized and presented in a very easy to follow manner. My mom had a great time going through your content. She prefers Gourmandia.com to any other cooking website.

This is a warning as much as a review, because although this is merely a cookery site, I've read that it is awash with pop-up and pop-under advertizing to the point that users have complained about how irritating it all is. And I know from my own experience that it advertises itself in odd places, plus it has a reputation for spamming as well.

All of which is a pity, but if you want to visit the site without these distractions I can recommend using Firefox with Adblock Plus and Flashblock installed and enabled. That appears to fix it. If you have the WOT extension also installed, you'll get a warning about the site but it's nothing more serious than I've described above.
Note that there are many videos on the site, all of which are presented using Flash, so you will need to select the ones you want to see, individually, while you have Flashblock enabled. It just means an extra click, no big nuisance.

So, on to the content, when you get there. This is a site mainly dedicated to quality French cooking, though there is a world cuisine section too. The recipes are generally impressive and often exotic, and it is assumed that you understand some fairly esoteric cooking terms because they aren't explained. If you don't know how to flambe a chicken for example, or you have no idea what a peduncle is, don't bother asking. The problem is probably insignificant compared to finding exactly 8.8lbs of alimentary clay, rolled out to 0.6 inches thick, to cook the chicken in later on. You might also balk at the cost of truffles, foie gras and chanterelle mushrooms, all in the same recipe, but if you do, you're in the wrong place anyway.

The word "gourmand" has the modern meaning of a person who loves food and drink, though the earlier meaning of the word implied excessive love of food, i.e. obesity and early death, something very familiar to modern Americans, or at least most of those in my part of the States. Overeating, though, is unlikely to be an issue at any parties where the menus originate here, unless the hosts have money to burn.
This is as opposed to "gourmet" which implies a person who not only enjoys food, but only enjoys the finest of it, and not to excess. The site definitely leans heavily toward the latter, even though it's named after the former; one gets the distinct impression that no riff-raff are allowed here.

The range of ingredients required to put even relatively simple concoctions together can be unexpected and confusing. Goose Liver Escallops on Toasted Gingerbread, for example, requires the addition of three khakis, which I had to go research for myself, only to find that they'd spelled the word incorrectly and it should have read "kakis". Still clueless? Can't say I blame you, but you might recognize "persimmon", the more common name, much more easily. Somehow, I feel the more obscure and misspelled term was one of those little tricks to keep peasants out. But the dish itself, Goose Liver Escallops on Toasted Gingerbread, who would have thought of that one? Only a French chef.

If you aspire to greatness in the field of French cookery, you could do a lot worse than take some ideas from here. These are not recipes you want to take on as a first attempt at cookery, but on the other hand if you are fortunate to be able to afford and assemble all the ingredients, they aren't all terribly difficult either. Patience, an attention to detail, and a love of presentation will take you a long way in this style of cuisine. It's a pity the site has acquired a bad reputation, because a lot of the content is fascinating even if you just admire the names of the recipes. Goose Liver Escallops on Toasted Gingerbread. Wow.

When I started the review, I described this as "merely a cookery site" and I think I should qualify that, out of deference to the standard of recipes here. It's not "merely" cookery, it's something a bit special.