a rainy day AND a sick day leaves only one option for lunch:

I feel like winter is slipping through my fingers all too fast, and I still have so many soups and oven-dependent recipes I wanted to be making. I keep defaulting to the tried and true, or to sandwiches (?? see below, it's a special kind of sandwich with Patak meat), and I've got to stop.

Though I don't feel like it, in the interests of hopefully, eventually blogging through Artisan Breads Everyday, I will post a picture and say a few words about the hoagie/cheesesteak roll recipe I tried with high expectations lat week. A couple of things went wrong on my end, namely running out of bread flour about halfway through the measuring, and making the mistake of using bleached rather than unbleached all-purpose flour in its place. So I'm not sure how much that had to do with it, but I wasn't a huge fan of the flavor of my custom (ahem) dough. I added the optional barley malt syrup since I keep it on hand for bagels anyway, but it still kind of fell flat. As usual, shaping is going to take some practice. Even so, they're decent rolls and I'd like to give them a try again with the right kind of flour. I'm not sure how much value this little review even has with that rather large variable being off...meh.

This is Patak's Black Forest ham, with plenty of spicy brown mustard and mayo and of course a pickle and cheddar cheese. I think I know why I fall back on sandwiches too much. 

Oh, and speaking of breads, a P.S. on the whole wheat ciabatta mentioned previously. It is too sweet for me. I understand you have to have a little sugar to offset the whole wheat flour's bitterness, but I will make a note to cut it by half next time. Otherwise, it's a nice bread. It looks pretty. But I will still always prefer the ever so unhealthy original white kind. I don't think it'll kill us to alternate between the two. 

Toasted almond and cherry ice cream with stracciatella

Well, the verdict is clear. Look at the picture.

The details:
I was not extremely precise with this ice cream, making a couple substitutions out of necessity or preference: since I used up all my slivered (whole were actually called for) almonds for steeping in the milk, I had to use sliced ones for mixing in! Somehow it all turned out okay. More significantly, I used a melange (1 cup each) of  1% milk, half-and-half, and whipping cream rather than the 1 c. whole milk to 2 c. cream formula given. That's a difference of 5% in the fat percentage of the dairy if my math is right, and let me attest that 5% does not matter here. I also used the stracciatella recipe/method for the first time: simply 4 oz. of dark chocolate melted and drizzled in during the last minute of churning. This not only added the most remarkable foodstuff ever to an already outrageous ice cream, but also gave it a more interesting texture along with the almonds. I will have serious difficulty restraining myself from doing this with any and all future ice creams, now that I know what sort of magic happens when you drizzle chocolate into a freezing mixture.

P.S. Sometimes I like to cost out things I make from scratch to see how they would compare with their storebought/premade counterparts. Ice cream is not one of the things that is much (if any) cheaper to make at home, depending on the quality ($) of your ingredients, so it's not the most satisfying calculation if you are trying to be frugal. For this one the breakdown is:
milk: $0.20
half-and-half: $0.44
cream: $1.25
sugar: let's say negligible
almonds: $2
(frozen) cherries: $2
5 eggs (just yolks but we'll count the whole eggs): $0.83
chocolate: $1
and salt and almond extract are negligible. This means the total comes to about $7.75 for a quart of ice cream, which is definitely on the extravagant side---I choke at paying full price (what, $5?) for a huge container of Breyers.  But I would say this is certainly a worthy occasional indulgence.

The Perfect Scoop: a review

It's been about a year now since I spent some birthday money on a Cuisinart ice cream maker and pastry chef  David Lebovitz's ice cream (and fixings) cookbook The Perfect Scoop. I have not made such a rewarding frivolous purchase since. Though I am still far from having tried even half the recipes in the book, I thought I'd give a run-down of all the things I've made so far. In fact I'm shocked at how little I've actually made. Looking through the book today for something new to make tomorrow, I decided on the toasted almond and cherry ice cream, to which I'll probably add some form of chocolate. I can't imagine how that could possibly let us down, but I'll report back with the details. :) (I also paused for a second at the avocado ice cream recipe, having just finished a delicious salad with a generous amount of perfectly ripe avocado---best vegetable ever---but I just don't think I could be that adventurous.)


Philadelphia-style vanilla ice cream
This stuff is well worth the use of your most extravagant vanilla beans (actually it just uses one!). I often invert the milk-cream ratio (not at all sure what the all-cream option would yield, but I can't bring myself to do it) to be 2 cups milk to 1 cup cream, and it is still decadent, smooth, and creamy. As he suggests, the fudge ripple (see below) layered in as soon as the ice cream is frozen is magical.


Coffee frozen yogurt
M liked this more than I did. The tanginess of the yogurt with the coffee was not my favorite combination.


Vanilla frozen yogurt
Amazing if you use a good yogurt: Dannon is too one-dimensional and flat to me. I like Stonyfield Farms a lot, and they aren't super expensive like some organic brands can be. Brown Cow is also divine but I don't see it around much unless I go to Whole Foods. After the first couple of tries, I cut the sugar to 3/4 cup (from 1) and liked that better, though it does freeze hard.


Cheesecake ice cream
I made this for a friend with the blueberry sauce on p. 182 swirled in, and it was all I could do not to keep it for myself. I really don't like cheesecake that much, strangely, but this was delicious.


Roasted banana ice cream
The first time I made this, the smell of the bananas roasting with the brown sugar and butter set my expectations really high, and I was a little disappointed with the end result---didn't taste as deep and complex as the aromatic byproduct. But M loved it, so I made it again, using mostly half-and-half for the whole milk, and it became a favorite. It's truly remarkable with the fudge sauce (see below) and whipped cream, or you can add some rum before freezing for another take. I use a shortcut for in the summer when turning on the oven is a terrible idea: just sauté the bananas in the butter and sugar over med-low heat until you get the same effect. Faster and cooler.


Lemon ice cream
This was alright: simple and plain. It froze very hard.


Strawberry frozen yogurt
Good, but I prefer vanilla yogurt with a strawberry swirl. 


Cranberry orange sorbet
A pretty tasty way to use up cranberries leftover from the Thanksgiving sales. Simple and quick. Oddly it ends up tasting less like cranberries and more like strawberries to me.


Chocolate tangerine sorbet
This was one of two recipes in this book that just didn't do it for me. I made it in early December and still have some in the freezer. It tastes okay when the mood strikes. I like chocolate and orange; otherwise I wouldn't have made it, so I'm not sure what the deal is. Just odd flavors.


Chocolate sorbet

What words could adequately describe this unassumingly named phenomenon? "Divine, "mind-blowing," etc. cannot come close. I've only made this once (somehow!?), and I believe I used my stand-by, Trader Joe's 72% dark chocolate (it comes in the big $5 Pound Plus bars and if they ever discontinue it I will die, really just die on the spot). It's so easy, and so worth getting the blender out for that perfect texture. Like many sorbets it freezes pretty hard. And it can be hard to wait those 5-10 minutes for it to thaw a bit on the counter.

Blackberry-lime sorbet

My second favorite sorbet from this book so far. It is really tart, so if you don't love sour flavors, you will want to find a way to decrease the amount of lime juice, or just make the plain blackberry sorbet on the same page. But I love it for chasing spicy Mexican food, and it looks pretty, too. 

Classic hot fudge

This is the real deal, and incomparably better than nasty storebought squeeze bottles. I usually halve the recipe even though it keeps for two glorious weeks in the fridge.

Lean chocolate sauce

I personally wouldn't make this again. I think I even made it before the fudge sauce, so it's not that it just didn't measure up to the impossibly good full-fat version; it just sort of fell flat on its own.

Peppermint patties

These were alright. Sad, because I had high expectations of making something possibly better even than York patties (scarcely conceivable), but I would want to try again with peppermint oil, which I understand is more subtle and interesting than peppermint extract (what I have). They were fun to make and pretty easy, at least. I certainly had no problem polishing them off, let's not get the wrong idea. 

Fudge ripple

Absolutely delicious, and so fast and easy. A must with the vanilla ice cream.

Chocolate ice cream sandwich cookies

These had really terrific chocolate flavor, but I have two problems with the recipe: one, these are enormous cookies on their own, but then to think that they are made for sandwiching with ice cream in between---way too much cookie, and I swear I am not afraid of calories. I would make them half the size next time, and there will be a next time soon. Two---and not really the fault of the recipe at all---it's just so hard to tell when really dark cookies are done. I baked mine until they were crispy, so watch that and err on the side of underbaking if you're after fudgy cookies.

Lemon-poppy seed cookie cups

Hate to end on a sour note, if you will, but this was the other of two recipes that simply did not work for me. It was the first thing I tried out of the book so I don't remember exactly what happened, except that they were completely impossible to handle with my thinnest spatula---they just fell apart. I made sure I didn't leave out some flour or almonds or something, but that wasn't the problem. Not sure what was.

I may just keep adding/updating this one post, so I have something of a permanent review page for what has been my favorite dessert cookbook over the past year. 

back to the blog

It's been a while! Now that we're settled in and the holidays have passed (which always makes me feel a little relieved, as much as I anticipate and enjoy them), I'm cooking and baking regularly again. Hopefully this blog will be a little less neglected as well.

I have a batch of 50% whole wheat rustic bread "fermenting" in the fridge, so we'll see tomorrow how that turns out. I recall making it before maybe a year ago, and liking it quite a bit, but then I reverted back to my regular white ciabatta routine and forgot about it.

Today I made cream of leek and potato soup for lunch, halving the original recipe and planning on having it for three lunches, but it turned out being more like two "main" servings. Oh well. It is so easy and fast and absolutely scrumptious.

Cream of leek and potato soup
Serves 2
Adapted from Julia Child
2 medium leeks, white and light green parts thoroughly rinsed and roughly chopped (To get the sand out, you need to halve the leeks lengthwise almost to the root, leaving it intact, and fan them out to expose all the layers under running water.)
1 large russet or baking potato, peeled and roughly chopped
3 cups water
3/4 tsp. sea salt
1/4 c. half-and-half
fresh ground black pepper

Bring the leeks, potatoes, water, and salt to a boil in a medium pot. Simmer, partially covered, 20-30 minutes or until vegetables are tender (depends how large you cut them). Puree, either with an immersion blender if you don't mind little chunks here and there or in a blender for perfect smoothness. Stir in the half-and-half and heat through for a couple minutes if necessary. Grind in pepper to taste and serve.