Jun 2009
Salted butter caramel ice cream ...
June 30, 2009 10:30 Filed in: In the kitchen
... is in the house. That is, what’s left of it. I made it on Sunday, and it is so incredibly delicious (if I humbly say so myself) it might not last long.
I am a chocolate girl, by all accounts. I could (and sometimes do) eat it daily. Whenever dessert is offered, I usually pick chocolate. And sometimes I feel slightly shamed when I am in the presence of friends or family who choose fruit pie, raisin cookies or simple scoops of vanilla ice cream, which always seem more grown-up, respectable and healthy than my slice of chocolate cake, chocolate chip scones, ice cream with chocolate sauce, or chocolate malt.
However, this ice cream, with its toasty caramel flavor, tang of precious fleur de sel and crunchy bits of slightly salty caramel praline, could almost draw me away from the temptation of chocolate. Almost, I say, as I sit here sipping a grande mocha, after having eaten a portion of dark Dove chocolate this afternoon at work. My daily dose.
I don’t remember how I found the recipe for this frozen dreamfood on David Lebovitz’s scrumptious Web site (which is like a culinary field trip through France), but I knew I had to make it and the sooner the better. As usual, I
For the first time in who-knows-how-long I used all the full-fat ingredients that were called for. I did substitute light cream (half-and-half) for heavy cream (the whipping kind). But I used real whole milk, since I could get a two-cup Chug that would leave no leftovers languishing in our fridge. Whole milk is an unknown commodity in our home -- it's skim, 2%, or bust.
I had only three eggs in the house (the recipe calls for four yolks), and was too lazy to go out and get more, so I used three egg yolks and two egg whites. I suspect I could have just thrown the three complete eggs into the mixture and no one would have been the wiser. No need to cheat on the other ingredients, which are as simple as white sugar (carmelized to the brink of a smoking burn), vanilla, and butter -- which melts and bubbles gloriously into the carmelized sugar. Oh the smells in the kitchen! You'll have most of the ingredients on hand already.
This recipe was my excuse to pick up a pricey container of fleur de sel French sea salt.
I’ve wanted to try this fancy stuff ever since I first read about it, so now I have an 8-oz. jar in my cabinet that should last a good long time. If you spill any, don’t bother throwing a pinch over your left shoulder to keep the devil at bay. At $1.50 per ounce, it’s too dear for superstitious rituals!
Ice cream is pretty easy to put together -- it’s like cooking a custard, then freezing it. You mix ingredients, heat them in a heavy saucepan (gotta cook those eggs and thicken things up), cool the mixture, and pour it into your ice cream freezer. David’s recipe calls for measuring the temperature of the cooked custard, straining the mixture through a fine sieve, cooling it in an ice bath, and chilling it for at least 8 hours or overnight before freezing it. I couldn’t wait that long! I wanted it that night, so I skipped the thermometer step, the straining, and the lengthy cooling process. NOTE: I am not an entirely reckless cook -- I usually judge how much I can alter a recipe after I’m completely (or at least pretty darned) sure it won’t negatively affect the outcome. I think, when all is said and done, this ice cream can be made using the same method as other ice creams--omitting the fancier steps--and you’ll still be happy with the results.
After many MANY necessary tastes of the creamy, golden brown caramel custard -- to make sure it had the correct proportions of carmelized sugar to salt -- I poured the cooled mixture into the aluminum freezer can, set it into the maker, nestled ice and rock salt all around, plugged in the machine, and went for a bike ride. I have an old Rival “ice cream and yogurt freezer” that I picked up at Target ages ago. It’s noisy, so I place it in a location where it won’t bother anyone for 45 minutes and let it spin merrily away. I used to stick it in the bathroom and close the door.
You can get a reasonable facsimile
for a decent price. Or if you insist on swank, by all means spend more
.When I came back from my bike ride ... voila! Ice cream. Almost. It is like creamy softserve at that point. I stirred in the salted praline, which I had chopped into small bits, and put it into the freezer until completely firm.
We kept ourselves busy with dinner while it froze, then sat on the porch and tucked into the finished deliciousness while fireflies drifted and glowed around us. Oh my! Heavenly, creamy, toasty, crunchy, divine. Thank you, David! I will definitely make this again.
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Still cooking.
June 10, 2009 10:02 Filed in: In the kitchen
As promised last week we opened My French Kitchen
over the weekend and cooked up Warm Tuna and Potato Salad, a very nicoise combination of haricot verts, boiled new potatoes, roasted cherry tomatoes, and tuna tossed with a dijon dressing. The dish is easy, but a wee bit labor intensive -- there’s trimming and boiling the haricot verts (that’s French for “skinny li’l green beans”), cutting up and boiling the potatoes, roasting the cherry tomatoes, mixing up the dijon dressing. None of it is difficult, but we ended up with a kitchen full of pots, pans, and olive oily bowls. (Tip: wipe those bowls clean with slices of good bread!)
The effort was worth it: the resulting warm salad was delicious! And perfect with some toasted pugliese bread. It felt like cold weather comfort food -- much needed because lately all we’ve gotten is RAIN and temps in the 60s.
I love to cook new dishes and try new flavors, but I don’t have the time or patience to drive hither and yon for obscure ingredients, nor do I want to spend a fortune for fancy, organic, imported or otherwise expensive foodstuffs. Instead, I scheme to find inexpensive, lower-fat, easy-to-locate substitutes at my local grocery store. I’ll maybe drive the extra way to Whole Foods, as long as there’s something else I can get at the same time, like my favorite green tea. We also have an excellent “european market” nearby called Treasure Island. Need chestnut pate, tinned duck breast, white truffles, or Italian torrone? They’ve got it.
But I amlazy time conscious, and cheap thrifty, so I try to get everything at Dominick’s. I’ve never seen haricot verts at Dom’s, but luckily there are tons of green beans in their produce department right now. I simply picked out the smallest, slimmest beans and they easily (to the untrained tongue) passed as their sophisticated French cousins. I also plucked up a bag of petite golden potatoes, an 8 oz. carton of grape tomatoes, and a few miniature cans of Genova Italian Tuna. Oddly, our grocery store sells the little 3 oz. cans at a better price per ounce than the 5 oz. cans, so make sure you read those pricing labels!
It is this olive oil-packed tuna that really makes the dish. Once we finally started putting out the extra cash for this imported tuna, we couldn’t go back. There might be better Italian tunas on the market, but if it’s not at my grocery store 3 blocks away, I can’t be bothered. For every day tuna salad with celery and mayo, trusty white (dolphin safe!) tuna is fine, but for a really special tuna flavor, get the Italian sort. Don’t let the fact that it’s swimming in olive oil (or distributed by Chicken of the Sea) put you off -- just drain it good and dive in. You’ll live longer consuming olive and omega 3s anyway, so treat yourself!
The salad was followed by Chocolate Cheesecake for dessert. Not cheesecake as we know it, full of cream cheese, eggs, and baked in a graham cracker crust -- this cheesecake calls for creme fraiche, melted dark and white chocolates, and heavy cream, and it is chilled rather than cooked.
I substituted creme fraiche with sour cream, and heavy cream with a combination of milk and evaporated milk. I used Nestle Toll House Chocolatier dark chocolate, and Ghirardelli white chocolate, both from the baking aisle. The crust is ground up chocolate chip cookies (I used lowfat Chips Ahoy) mixed with melted butter (Lucerne canola oil spread). The crust alone would have suited me just fine! I love just about anything with butter. I wasn’t sure if the mixture would set up properly in the fridge, so I froze it to save time (we wanted to eat dessert as soon as possible). We’ve been eating it in sweet, cold slivers almost like popsicles. It’s truly smooth, chocolatey, and delicious! I am more of a cake/cookie/pastry/straight up chocolate girl, so I probably won’t voluntarily make this cheesecake again. Still, it’s turned out to be a hit with everyone in the house, which is immensely gratifying.
over the weekend and cooked up Warm Tuna and Potato Salad, a very nicoise combination of haricot verts, boiled new potatoes, roasted cherry tomatoes, and tuna tossed with a dijon dressing. The dish is easy, but a wee bit labor intensive -- there’s trimming and boiling the haricot verts (that’s French for “skinny li’l green beans”), cutting up and boiling the potatoes, roasting the cherry tomatoes, mixing up the dijon dressing. None of it is difficult, but we ended up with a kitchen full of pots, pans, and olive oily bowls. (Tip: wipe those bowls clean with slices of good bread!)The effort was worth it: the resulting warm salad was delicious! And perfect with some toasted pugliese bread. It felt like cold weather comfort food -- much needed because lately all we’ve gotten is RAIN and temps in the 60s.
I love to cook new dishes and try new flavors, but I don’t have the time or patience to drive hither and yon for obscure ingredients, nor do I want to spend a fortune for fancy, organic, imported or otherwise expensive foodstuffs. Instead, I scheme to find inexpensive, lower-fat, easy-to-locate substitutes at my local grocery store. I’ll maybe drive the extra way to Whole Foods, as long as there’s something else I can get at the same time, like my favorite green tea. We also have an excellent “european market” nearby called Treasure Island. Need chestnut pate, tinned duck breast, white truffles, or Italian torrone? They’ve got it.
But I am
It is this olive oil-packed tuna that really makes the dish. Once we finally started putting out the extra cash for this imported tuna, we couldn’t go back. There might be better Italian tunas on the market, but if it’s not at my grocery store 3 blocks away, I can’t be bothered. For every day tuna salad with celery and mayo, trusty white (dolphin safe!) tuna is fine, but for a really special tuna flavor, get the Italian sort. Don’t let the fact that it’s swimming in olive oil (or distributed by Chicken of the Sea) put you off -- just drain it good and dive in. You’ll live longer consuming olive and omega 3s anyway, so treat yourself!
The salad was followed by Chocolate Cheesecake for dessert. Not cheesecake as we know it, full of cream cheese, eggs, and baked in a graham cracker crust -- this cheesecake calls for creme fraiche, melted dark and white chocolates, and heavy cream, and it is chilled rather than cooked.
I substituted creme fraiche with sour cream, and heavy cream with a combination of milk and evaporated milk. I used Nestle Toll House Chocolatier dark chocolate, and Ghirardelli white chocolate, both from the baking aisle. The crust is ground up chocolate chip cookies (I used lowfat Chips Ahoy) mixed with melted butter (Lucerne canola oil spread). The crust alone would have suited me just fine! I love just about anything with butter. I wasn’t sure if the mixture would set up properly in the fridge, so I froze it to save time (we wanted to eat dessert as soon as possible). We’ve been eating it in sweet, cold slivers almost like popsicles. It’s truly smooth, chocolatey, and delicious! I am more of a cake/cookie/pastry/straight up chocolate girl, so I probably won’t voluntarily make this cheesecake again. Still, it’s turned out to be a hit with everyone in the house, which is immensely gratifying.
Roasted Tomato Tart.
June 04, 2009 09:38 Filed in: In the kitchen
How about some Roasted Tomato Tart from My French Kitchen:
Sliced tomatoes on a base of dijon mustard and creme fraiche, topped with fresh oregano and marjoram, goat cheese and a wee sprinkling of fresh parmesan, baked until the tomatoes bubble and the goat cheese turns slightly golden. With white wine to sip and a simple green salad, it was heavenly! And so easy.
My French Kitchen is a charming cookbook with dreamy photos of French food, gardens, marketplaces, cobblestone streets, bicycles, balconies, baguettes, colorful signage, seasides, and Citroen Deux Chevaux that make me feel like I'm stepping directly into my very romantic fantasy of French life and cooking. It was co-written by Joanne Harris, who wrote the book that was made into one of my all-time favorite movies, Chocolat
. That is a movie I can watch again and again. Juliette Binoche is perfectly beautiful in those ultra feminine skirts and body hugging cardigans, and she makes tempering chocolate look absolutely sexy and breezy. Last winter I listened to the unabridged audiobook version of the original novel (which I got free from the library and ripped into my iPod), and after that I checked out every chocolate cookbook I could lay my hands on -- determined to quit my job and open a chocolaterie. I have yet to teach myself to temper chocolate (but I will!), so instead I'm escaping to the French countryside through this cookbook as often as possible.
Tonight we're opening My French Kitchen again so we can make Warm Tuna and Potato Salad that will be followed by Chocolate Cheesecake (actually a swirl of coffee flavored chocolate and white chocolate creams on a crushed chocolate chip crust) for dessert. DROOL. Bon apetit!
:Sliced tomatoes on a base of dijon mustard and creme fraiche, topped with fresh oregano and marjoram, goat cheese and a wee sprinkling of fresh parmesan, baked until the tomatoes bubble and the goat cheese turns slightly golden. With white wine to sip and a simple green salad, it was heavenly! And so easy.
My French Kitchen is a charming cookbook with dreamy photos of French food, gardens, marketplaces, cobblestone streets, bicycles, balconies, baguettes, colorful signage, seasides, and Citroen Deux Chevaux that make me feel like I'm stepping directly into my very romantic fantasy of French life and cooking. It was co-written by Joanne Harris, who wrote the book that was made into one of my all-time favorite movies, Chocolat
. That is a movie I can watch again and again. Juliette Binoche is perfectly beautiful in those ultra feminine skirts and body hugging cardigans, and she makes tempering chocolate look absolutely sexy and breezy. Last winter I listened to the unabridged audiobook version of the original novel (which I got free from the library and ripped into my iPod), and after that I checked out every chocolate cookbook I could lay my hands on -- determined to quit my job and open a chocolaterie. I have yet to teach myself to temper chocolate (but I will!), so instead I'm escaping to the French countryside through this cookbook as often as possible.Tonight we're opening My French Kitchen again so we can make Warm Tuna and Potato Salad that will be followed by Chocolate Cheesecake (actually a swirl of coffee flavored chocolate and white chocolate creams on a crushed chocolate chip crust) for dessert. DROOL. Bon apetit!
Critters and sirens.
June 02, 2009 02:55 Filed in: This and that | A bit of history
I’m home today with a VERY stiff, sore neck and shoulder. I’m not sure what caused it besides “sleeping funny.” Only it isn’t funny, it really aches. I think I made it worse this morning while trying to gently stretch the muscles. Now I can barely look left or right without wincing, so I’m heading off to a local massage therapist to see if she can work out this unpleasant kink.
Being home makes me the lucky center of attention from all our critters. Mr. Sass, who normally insists on sleeping squarely on a lap, makes do when there is a laptop on said lap by snuggling as closely as he can.
I tried getting a picture of Piper sleeping a mere 12 inches from Mr. Sass on the couch, but alas she hopped off the couch and followed me into the family room when I tried sneaking in there to get the camera. Here she is instead posing next to my partially finished Corsage in Bloom. I just completed the aqua ruffled flower and am ready to proceed to a minty blue rosette.
Molly visits occasionally, sitting on the coffee table in the warm spot left by my laptop.
And Lilly lounges nearby on Kenny's easy chair.
I could get used to this working-at-home thing!
Because I was home, I got to take Piper for a walk right around mid-morning. In fact, the clocks must have struck 10:00 precisely on this first Tuesday of the month because suddenly the eerie wooOOOOing of civil defense sirens arose all around us. It was a bit chilling to hear them live, so many sirens all layered in varying ominous tones, fading in and fading out. After years of hearing them somewhat muffled from within the walls of my school or the buildings where I work, I felt for the first time the sense of urgency those loud sirens evoke. For a few moments I tried to imagine being in World War II London during The Blitz where they sounded nightly for months to warn of German bomb attacks. What an awful time that was -- such terror and destruction, resulting in the deaths of 43,000 civilians all over England.
I can’t imagine trying to cope on a day-to-day basis if our city was being bombed at night, and by day we still had to work, shop, get the kids to school, etc.
I hope we never find ourselves hearing those sirens in earnest, or sleeping in shelters or subway stations to stay safe until danger passes. May the worst reason they ring, at least here in Evanston, is to alert us that it’s time to relocate our cars to make way for snow plows.
Remember snow?
Being home makes me the lucky center of attention from all our critters. Mr. Sass, who normally insists on sleeping squarely on a lap, makes do when there is a laptop on said lap by snuggling as closely as he can.
I tried getting a picture of Piper sleeping a mere 12 inches from Mr. Sass on the couch, but alas she hopped off the couch and followed me into the family room when I tried sneaking in there to get the camera. Here she is instead posing next to my partially finished Corsage in Bloom. I just completed the aqua ruffled flower and am ready to proceed to a minty blue rosette.
Molly visits occasionally, sitting on the coffee table in the warm spot left by my laptop.
And Lilly lounges nearby on Kenny's easy chair.
I could get used to this working-at-home thing!
Because I was home, I got to take Piper for a walk right around mid-morning. In fact, the clocks must have struck 10:00 precisely on this first Tuesday of the month because suddenly the eerie wooOOOOing of civil defense sirens arose all around us. It was a bit chilling to hear them live, so many sirens all layered in varying ominous tones, fading in and fading out. After years of hearing them somewhat muffled from within the walls of my school or the buildings where I work, I felt for the first time the sense of urgency those loud sirens evoke. For a few moments I tried to imagine being in World War II London during The Blitz where they sounded nightly for months to warn of German bomb attacks. What an awful time that was -- such terror and destruction, resulting in the deaths of 43,000 civilians all over England.
I can’t imagine trying to cope on a day-to-day basis if our city was being bombed at night, and by day we still had to work, shop, get the kids to school, etc.
I hope we never find ourselves hearing those sirens in earnest, or sleeping in shelters or subway stations to stay safe until danger passes. May the worst reason they ring, at least here in Evanston, is to alert us that it’s time to relocate our cars to make way for snow plows.
Remember snow?
