I Scream.

Considering my last post was so negative, I thought I should try to maintain decent food karma with a more positive entry this time...

A few weeks (months?) ago I bought my ice cream maker and it has given me endless frozen creamy joyousness.  The initial experiment with tahini ice cream came out wonderfully, as previously noted, and the continuing results have been just as pleasant.

My sophomore ice cream creation was a batch of Earl Grey with a touch of vanilla bean.  It was, in my not-so-humble opinion, quite fabulous.  It had a nutty flavor reminiscent of coffee ice cream, but lighter, and with that refreshing hint of bergamot.  I simply simmered the tea bags in the sugar-milk mixture for the base custard.  It was very straightforward and very, very yummy.

After that experiment, I made a batch of strawberry jalapeño ice cream at the request of one of my friends.  I sliced up some fresh strawberries and a couple jalapeños and cooked them down with a bit of my vanilla bean simple syrup until they were reduced to a fairly thick consistency.  I made the sweet cream base and added the syrupy mixture approximately halfway through the freezing process.  The results were wonderful.  There was no spicy heat left from the jalapeño, but the distinctive flavor was definitely there and it played off the sticky sweet strawberry quite nicely.  I've had a few people wrinkle their nose at the thought of the combination, but I'm not sure why.  It was somewhat akin to one of my favorite pre-party snacks:  crackers with cream cheese and red pepper jelly.  Both combinations pair the "capsicum" flavor in a sweet syrupy mixture with a heavy, creamy base.  I will, without a doubt, be making that flavor again, although next time, I'll probably up the jalapeño a bit and maybe get a bit more bite from it.

My latest ice cream adventure was a nice traditional pistachio.  This was the most labor-intensive of the flavors, but certainly worthwhile.  First, a word of warning to anyone attempting such an endeavor:  ignore the fact that all recipes call for roasted, UNsalted pistachios.  Apparently, these do not exist.  At least in Alaska.  And if they do, apparently you need to relinquish a kidney as currency.  After much searching and hair-pulling and angsting, I decided to just use the roasted and salted pistachios that you can get in bulk from almost every natural food store in Anchorage.  They worked just fine.  In fact, the touch of additional salt probably helped.  (Anyone that knows me knows that I am addicted to salt and I'm past my stage of denial).  My friend Tony, (the strawberry-jalapeño requester) helped me with the shelling of the pistachios and then I went about trying to remove that papery outer layer so I didn't end up with gritty little flakes in the custard.  The interesting part about this ice cream is that you grind up most of the pistachios into a paste and cook that paste into the custard, simmering then straining it out before freezing it.  The paste manages to impart the pistachio flavor, and then, once the ice cream is mostly frozen, freshly chopped pistachios are added for that cruncy texture.  The resulting color was a bit dreary looking; greenish, but barely, so I cheated and added one drop of green food coloring.  The resulting hue was a perfect cheerful but subtle green and I had a beautifully traditional pistachio ice cream at the end.

Side Note: I was able to use the leftover pistachio/custard paste as a filling for puff pastry.  I added a little dollop of mascarpone cheese for some savoriness and created little turnovers.  If I do it again, I'll probably go the extra step and make a real pastry cheese for it, similar to what you'd find in a cheese danish.

So far I've been really pleased with all of the fruits of my ice cream labors.  There are still a few more combinations I'd like to try out:

Peanut, apricot and sweet red chili (Thai influence, perhaps?)
Black cherry with black pepper
Blueberry and pine nut
Vanilla and basil

Oh!  Speaking of basil... I have a little planter full of fresh herbs hanging on my front porch.  So far, they've survived a full two weeks.  They actually seem to be flourishing (except for the purple basil which I maintain was doomed from the start).  I also have a hanging basket full of nasturtiums which are also surviving, despite a rocky start.  I can't wait to throw together a nice summer salad with herbs and flowers.  Yum.  The Nikon D60 will have fun with that colorful little endeavor.

This week I'll be having a few folks over for a pre-race pasta party.  I'm aiming for quantity with a secondary goal of quality, but it should be relatively easy.  I have quite a bit of meat sauce and pesto that I had previously frozen, and I'm planning to make a marinara with wild mushrooms for an additional meat-free option, as well as a white sauce with parsley, clams and garlic.  There should be about 12 people in all, so I'm hoping to have enough variety for everyone to be happy.  I'll be pairing the dishes with a nice vintage of SmartWater so that we're all properly hydrated for Saturday's race.  Should be fun times!

The Pastabilities Are Endless!

Most Alaskans have a talent for spending lots of money on the activities they love.  Walking into an REI brings on the overwhelming aroma of burning money.  It just incinerates right there in the pocket it's hiding in.  A girl can never have too many pairs of moisture-wicking-you-name-it or too many water-resistant-layers-of-this-or-that.  Or yoga mats.  The same holds true for kitchen appliances.  If you name it, there's a good chance I have it.  If, however, you'd named "pasta machine" or "ice cream maker" you'd have proved me wrong... a week ago.  I recently welcomed these two appliances into the D'Eramo collection and they have not let me down.

This past weekend, I decided to break out the new additions.  The plan was to make some fresh pasta with my white whole wheat flour, and some tahini ice cream.  That's pretty much as far as I had gotten in the planning process before jumping right in.  My friend Tony helped me kneed the dough and roll it out.  We attempted two methods.  For half the dough, I used a food processor with a dough blade to combine the flour, eggs, oil and salt.  The other half I combined the old-fashioned way, creating a little egg volcano in the pile of flour.  This latter method proved to be significantly more difficult.  I broke the barrier of flour and ended up with a nice little lava flow of raw egg, headed straight for the edge of the cutting board.  I found myself asking Tony questions like, "This does not look right, does it?" "How much flour do you think they mean when they say 'not all of it'?" "Hmmmm, is it supposed to do that?"  Poor Tony just shrugged, and then Googled a YouTube video for me to watch, which ended up being somewhat helpful.  I will say that the traditional method could be more appropriate for moderating how much flour is added to the dough.  With the processor, it's pretty much an all-or-nothing.  At least the egg-volcano method provides more freedom to gradually increase the flour.  In the end, I don't think the two sets of dough really behaved differently.  Letting the dough rest after it's been kneaded seems to be pretty important.  It definitely relaxed quite a bit.  We struggled with the first batch and it started to tighten up on us from overworking it.  Giving it 30 minutes to re-relax made all the difference in the world.

Rolling the dough out was tons of fun.  It was just like playing with Playdough.  I think that I could eventually do it by myself, but it was certainly helpful to have two people to help guide the dough through and catch it on the other end.  We went down to the thinnest layer for the first sheet and decided it was too thin for fettuccine, so we kept the subsequent layers at a level 2.  After rolling and cutting both batches of dough, we hung the pasta on racks and let it dry while we moved on to the ice cream festivities.  

The ice cream turned out to be a bit tricky.  It basically requires a cooked egg custard as the base.  I let myself get distracted while making the first batch and it boiled, creating a tapioca-looking goo.  I tossed it and tried again.  The second time around the custard came out well, and immediately after taking it off the burner I added the tahini to it and beat it in.  The mixture had to cool completely before being added to the ice cream maker.  An ice cream maker, by the way, is an incredibly simply thing, (unless you get the super-uber-fancy kind).  Basically, you pour this custard into a pre-frozen container and that container does the "freezing" of the ice cream.  The machine itself just insulates the process and turns a mixing apparatus to break up the ice crystals as they form.  It's surprisingly noisy.  All this being said, the ice cream that came out of that little machine was pretty fantastic.

While all this ice cream business was churning in the background, I started thinking about what to put on this potentially fantastic pasta.  I hadn't thought as far as sauce.  After rummaging around a bit, I decided that some hand-crushed canned tomatoes would work.  I rinsed them off to get the seeds and goo off, crushed them by hand, strained them, and tossed them in a deep pan with a little olive oil.  I found some of the leftover cooked Italian sausage I had from earlier in the week and I added that in.  I made a little well in the center of the mixture and sauteed some crushed garlic.  I bloomed some saffron in warm water and added that in, as well as a splash of white wine.  I let that all simmer for a while, reducing the liquid, and then I added the remaining 1/4 cup of the mascarpone cheese I had from Easter brunch.  I served that over the pasta and topped it all with some Romano cheese, served with a bottle of Alta Vista 2007 Atemporal Blend.  The result was pretty much heavenly and the wine paired perfectly.  I'm going to hold on to that little "recipe" in my head, but I doubt I'd ever be able to replicate the magic.  The pasta was extremely easy to cook and very tasty.  I think that if I make it again with the white whole wheat flour, I'll set the machine to the thinnest setting.  I thought the pasta was a bit dense. Everyone else seemed to prefer the thicker pasta, but as the chef, my preference rules.  

Everyone loved the main course and the dessert was a hit as well.  The ice cream was a bit nutty and very creamy and rich.  It was a bit reminiscent of halva, which is a favorite sesame-based treat of mine.  I'm looking forward to all the fun of combinations.  Chile pepper, gorgonzola and blueberry?  Black pepper and cherry?  Rooibus tea and vanilla?  Avocado?  Mmmmmm.  The possibilities are endless!  

Oh, and the shameless title of this post?  I'm going to blame that one on a co-worker of mine who had a bit of elevator-induced inspiration on our way out today.  Thanks Sam!

This weekend I'm attending The Chemistry of Wine which is a wine tasting benefit for the museum.  It's supposed to be about the science behind wine tasting, complete with wine and food.  Right up my geeky wine alley.  More to come on that...