Kitchen toys
I mean tools. No, I mean toys. I am doing so little cooking any more* that I haven’t bought myself any kitchen toys in a very long time. But I was overcome by the last big kitchen-gear catalogue that fell through my mail-slot with a bang, and bought two. Today they arrived, in a large box mostly full of boring life-support stuff. Ooooh. Christmas in June.
The first is a kitchen scales. Well, but it’s beautiful! It’s a small flat shiny box like something Tiffany would put a necklace in** and soo cool. I do have a scales, inherited from Peter, it’s actually a postage scale, it’s about fifty years old, and it works on a spring, and you have this little screw you turn back and forth to make it start at zero. It’s more an artefact than a scales, I admit, although it goes very well with the Art Deco spring-loaded timer and salt and pepper shakers at the back of the Aga, and I do use it occasionally.*** But I’ve lived in this damned metric country for nearly two decades and I still can’t cope with their recipes without a lot of sweating, complaining, and application either to a piece of paper and a pencil, or my husband. This scales is in both pounds and ounces and braks and dorches or whatever the other system is. I can just put my measuring jug on the scales† and keep piling stuff on till the digital read out matches what it says in the recipe. I don’t even have to understand it. Yaaay.
The second is an ice cream maker. Definitely a toy. And I put the freezer disc thingy in the freezer the minute I got it out of its box.†† I’ve been collecting recipes for sorbets and ices–things without the cream part. At first, when I gave up ice cream, the whole concept of chilly desserts was utterly spoilt, and a subject only of grief and despair. But eventually I recalled that a good lemon sorbet is a fine thing. And a few years ago our local deli carried two wine sorbets–one chardonnay, one cabernet sauvignon–which were gorgeous, and I was going through them like a hellhound through a standing crop†††, and then . . . the company stopped making them. Agony. Well, it’s time to enter into the fray oneself, armed with a freezer disc and a wooden spoon. And a scales. It’s an English ice cream maker, so the recipe booklet is all in braks and dorches. I have in mind a lime sorbet, however, and have forethoughtfully laid in the limes.‡
* * *
* My time just seems to fill up somehow. One of the minor ironies of my life is that here I am, a woman who likes cooking, and is furthermore not at all bad at it, and I’ve spent housetime with two blokes who not only did too, but more or less elbowed me out of the kitchen. In my generation there still seems to be an assumption that if men and women share a roof and the men don’t want to cook, then the women do it, whether they want to either or not. Given that I am about as wifely as a rabid wolverine about most things, Peter is missing not only a trick but one of the few tricks available.
The first time there was a man in my kitchen was maaaaaany years ago, and a housemate rather than a husband or similar, and that kitchen, when we were all young and poverty-stricken and rented accommodations accordingly, as I recall it, is not one I feel deprived for not having cooked in. Peter does 99% of the necessary cooking because it sort of doesn’t occur to him that any other condition could exist, and I recognise an immovable object when I see one and go expend my irresistible force elsewhere. I’m good at this. ^
There are a few drawbacks to this system. One of them is, of course, that I don’t do much cooking, and there are quite a few things I’m good at that Peter doesn’t do at all. It also leads Peter into the error of thinking that I don’t know how to look after myself. On bridge-playing nights he always wants to know what I’m having for supper and tends to send me home with parcels, just in case. I’ve had stuff in my freezer for years, bought for bridge nights, that I’ve never had the opportunity to eat. The bottom line is that I just don’t take food^^ as seriously as Peter does. I like peanut butter sandwiches for dinner, for example.
^ And have I mentioned that I’m having my first riding lesson in five years next Tuesday? I have to buy a hat. I was going to do it today only it was a beautiful day+ and I didn’t want to spend it in a shop, even a horse-oriented shop.
+ How did that happen?
^^ except chocolate
** But probably without the buttons and digital read-out at the bottom
*** Also the timer. The salt and pepper’s rubber bungs had perished long before I bought the set at a garage sale and I somehow have not devoted the necessary concentration on finding replacements. There’s probably a rubber-bung-replacement web site somewhere.
† Which zeroes itself out as often as you like. What luxury.
†† This catalogue offers you a choice of two ice cream makers. The other one says, this is a revolution in home ice cream making! You no longer have to be imprisoned by the exceptionally demanding business of putting a freezer disc in the freezer!+ This one runs on, um, magic hamster power! Which is continuous!++ You can make ice cream all day long! I’m sitting here thinking, um, why do I want to make ice cream all day long? Also it costs £200. I think I can cope with being trapped by a freezer disc.
+ It is true that you have to remember to have put the freezer disc in the freezer twenty four hours before you’re planning on making ice cream, but my freezer disc is going to live in the freezer, so I am not anticipating an overwhelming problem in logistics. Or memory.
++You add the hamster pellets over here . . .
††† I’m going to have to do a Perils of Off Lead, Part Two, I think.
‡ The limes arrived as part of the organic-delivery order that I may be getting all of again next week, and the week after that, and forever. The limes were supposed to be a one off. I like lime sorbet, but probably not every week forever. Maybe if I added a little chardonnay. . . .
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Toys! Definitely toys!
Ice cream party at Robin’s house!
And we can, um, weigh random things on the fancy new scale. (That DOES sound pretty fancy. I keep thinking I want a postage scale or kitchen scale, but only to weigh yarn and stuff. Because, you know, yarn.)
Dairy-free sorbet party at Robin’s house! :) (A WEEKLY one, to use all the limes . . . )
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One of the smart people out there needs to hurry up and invent reasonably priced teleporters. :D
Oh I SO agree. .. . There’s a foal in the midwest I’m dying to meet before he COMPLETELY finishes growing up. . . .
jmeadows, you are SO right. Now– where are all our sciencey people? –in a singsong voice ” Come out, come out, whereever you are! We have a job for you!” [muahahahahaha.]
If only, right?
Until then… at least we have this.
:)
–Julia
There’s probably a rubber-bung-replacement web site somewhere.
When I needed such things, I found a science supply store online which had corks, stoppers, glass beakers, and all sorts of entertaining bits of things. American Science and Surplus is one. There’s another that caters to the homeschooler market over here, so along with the rubber bungs are books on the fallacy of geologic time… I kind of hate giving them my money, but they had a nice selection. I’m sure there must be something similar on your side of the pond.
Freezer disk? How on earth does that work? My ice cream maker requires salt, and ice, and cranking…
**Why do homeschoolers want rubber bungs.**
Allow me to remark that you know the WEIRDEST things. :)
the freezer disc does what the ice and salt do, and there’s an electric paddle that does the cranking. I finally got rid of my old ice, salt and crank one when we left the old house.
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the home educators over here are a much smaller crowd and motivated very differently – there aren’t nearly as many exciting supply shops as you’ve got in the states.
The government might have gone metric but an awful lot of the rest of us haven’t – don’t blame us for bizarre laws that we didn’t ask for! ;)
Oh, I am SO glad to hear that you are going to be riding again! I hope you have a wonderful time, a delightful horse (although if it has been a while, probably ANY horse will seem delightful), and a first-rate teacher.
Oh, but fresh peach ice cream is truly LOVELY, especially with peaches right off the tree. I suppose you could make peach sorbet though, which, now that I think about it, sounds DIVINE right about now…
The homeschoolers learn chemistry and bio, just like other kids–but their parents have to equip a lab without buying a hundred bunsen burners and glass pipettes at a time. So companies like that one will sell you a single rubber stopper for 30¢, which I much appreciated when I needed one. :)
Ah. Okay. How . . . reasonable. :)
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Good on you, I’m sure you deserved a treat! Probably several!
Oh, I love sorbet! Lemon sorbet is one of the great inventions of the universe.
American Science and Surplus is a wonderful place but kind of like crack – you can’t stop at just one item, everything is either useful or amusing, and there are four of us, so our orders tend to the large and eclectic. If they sold interesting pens and paper we’d really be sunk.
As it is, we have to ration our trips to art supply stores – there’s a huge one down in Costa Mesa and a Japanese bookstore ten minutes from there. I keep telling the clerks at Sterling Art that there should be a warning on the door about addictive substances…
Oh, gods, I SO agree about arts supply stores. I used to draw too . . . I am a **hopeless** dilettante, it’s true . . . I still have a minor stockpile of inks and chalks etc. I also collect the sticky-peel-off end of ‘scrapbooking’ because I like to decorate my notebooks, which are mostly homeopathy and general health stuff notes and clippings, but because they’re working notebooks the decorations have to be, you know, *tough.*
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Well I guess I should ask you about where to find interesting inks for pens. I will be writing out somewhere in the region of three hundred jam jar stickers (my mother makes jam for the church bazaar) and wanted something more interesting than black or blue. Any ideas? This can be in the UK, as I will be paying a visit in August.
Just go to a good art supply store–the brand of ink I have is Windsor, but I don’t go get through it anything like fast so some of my bottles are twenty years old. They have EVERY colour–I use a nib pen.
Well, I have a slushie and snow-cone maker that is only used to make daiquiris. That’s what you can do with your weekly shipments of limes. :P
Oooh! Black Bear’s vaguely science-oriented comment somehow reminds me of something! If you will recall, many months ago I told you about an allergy condition I have called Oral Allergy Syndrome (OAS) which makes me allergic to raw fruits, vegetables, and nuts because they cross-react with my pollen allergies, and then later I threatened you with a research paper I was writing about it!
THE TIME HAS COME. But I’ll paraphrase for you: OAS is caused by either pollen-food syndrome or latex-fruit syndrome (in my case, pollen-food syndrome). The allergen (pollen or latex) can cross-react with food proteins through a particular thingie called a Pathogenesis Related Protein (PRP). These are plants’ immune system-antibody-white knight things, which are produced in response to infection, infestation, or damage (from a wind storm, etc.). The reason OAS exists and was non-existent until the late 1970′s is because modern agriculture uses seeds from the most durable plants available—which are, according to the plants’ natural biology, the ones which PRODUCE THE MOST PRP’S. The whole thing is accelerated because of pesticides and growth stimulants used on food plants which don’t APPARENTLY damage the plant, but make it feel threatened enough to produce PRP’s which directly enter the plant’s fruit.
That’s right! Nature hates us! Or me. And to greater or lesser extents, 70 percent of Americans with pollen allergies. And it’s ALL OUR OWN FAULT. What else is new?
Why didn’t my comment come through? It’s back there on the ‘site admin’ side. I said, this is TERRIFICALLY interesting, and is your paper available anywhere?
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Kitchen scales that work electronically and can be tared out whenever – a baker’s dream.
Sorbet maker extraordinaire! Yeah! Toys to play with indeed. We will be investigating our extensive stock of sorbet recipes soon. I myself am coming into an ice-cream maker of the luxe variety, gifted by a friend who has it and doesn’t use it. She is graciously handing it over for regular gifts of ice cream. I think we will both be happy with the exchange.
Have fun with your new toys. The first step if I recall in sorbet is make a large batch of simple syrup which you keep in the refrigerator for use when any sorbet-making whim hits you.
Yes, that’s right. Syrup tomorrow, I hope. After the (*&^!!!! hat.
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I think if you’re making lime sorbet the correct liquor would HAVE to be tequila…
I’ve recently taken up residence with a man who cooks. I think he is also getting the notion that I can’t take care of myself, nevermind I survived on my own for many years before moving in together. I’m older than he is. :P The biggest issue is that I am either a lazy cook or a leftovers-intended cook. With the first, he usually shudders at my suggestions and takes over. The second keeps getting defeated by the enormous appetite living with me. What would last me a week by myself now lasts one or maaaybe two meals. So the kitchen is now his domain. :> I don’t fuss much, since I’m really not that motivated about it, though sometimes I really do fancy waffles for dinner.
The exception to my not cooking is tortillas. He won’t touch my mixer or tortilla maker, but begs and pleads for me to make them. And it is nice to have some of my cooking appreciated.
But when it comes to baking… it’s my domain. And it’s funny how much more motivated I am to try to bake new things now that there’s a motivated cook in the house. My mom is visiting next week and bringing a spare bread machine she has, so I’ll get to try even more things soon. Mmm.
Oh, and my mom leaves her disc in the freezer all the time, too. :-)
Dooooo please try making bread by hand. It’s just so not difficult and SOOOO satisfying.
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And have I mentioned that I’m having my first riding lesson in five years next Tuesday?
Awesome. Have fun! I just taking lessons again too, after about 4 years of messing about on my own with the young one.
With the no-longer-so-young one? Toward any particular purpose?
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Yep. We’re going to attempt the hunters again. Well, again for me; first time for him. Mostly, though, I just find myself ridiculously happy to be riding regularly again, with some structure to it — and jumping, which I love. I had forgotten how much I need this.
This last week in particular has been quite wonderful. I guess we’re finally getting back into shape. His flatwork has been fantastic — coming through from behind, soft, elastic, stretchy. . . I like to think he’s enjoying himself too.
Yaaay! :)
Yay! for small fun things :)
A riding lesson? Yay! Go Robin!! I’m riding a verrrrry green, newly broke Welshy at the moment and when that head goes down there ain’t nothing there!! LOL
Oh gosh, I remember about that!!!
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Ice Cream makers? On this side of The Pond?
When I first moved to Germany I keep looking for one every time I walked into a ‘kitchen toy’ store. I gave up years ago, guessing that the ice cream parlors were so prolific and high quality here that no one would buy a ice cream maker.
Either I was looking in the wrong place or they are now in stock. I’ve just done a search and found that I can get my ‘eismachine geräte’ for only 50 Euros! Yeah!!!! Sorbet here I come.
:) Thanks
Rebecca WinkleBeam
Have fun. :)
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Dairy-free icecream in my kitchen tend to be just churned-frozen fruit mush (both homemade apple compote and a tin of peaches chopped in a blender works very well), but I also make some based on beaten eggwhites, fruit juice and cordials.
Should I post recipes?
Anette, the Great Dane
Need you ASK?
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Yes, that was a rather silly question.
Well. They are really, really simple. :-)
Is there a way to post an attached file?
Not unless Blogmum knows a way.
Sorbet is nice. I had a little goldilocks experience when first trying out the sorbet recipies for my parents ice cream maker. I think I tried strawberry first, because we had bags of strawberries in the freezer from summer. It turned out far too sweet. Only afterwards did I remember a very important fact: my parents just cannot agree on how much sugar should be used for making jam. My mother considers the amount of sugar that my father insists is the bare minimum to turn the whole thing into marmalade rather than jam. So that summer, as my father was preparing the bags to go into the freezer he pre-sugared them liberally. Next up was lemon sorbet. It is usually very nice, but with the previous experience I didn’t use enough sugar and the sorbet turned out a little too refreshing. So the third try, which of course turned out just right, was kiwi sorbet. And I guess the whole point of this story is not to put anyone off lemon sorbet or strawberry sorbet, but simply to tell anyone that hasn’t tried kiwi sorbet that it is definitely worth a try.
have I mentioned that I’m having my first riding lesson in five years next Tuesday?
No you haven’t – have fun rediscovering muscles you didn’t know you had….
**Yes.** Uh oh.
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I see from ssshunt’s comment in PWYF re Susan from Athens’ ‘Today’s Hummus’ recipe, that limes are a good variation in a hummus recipe. Given your partiality for hummus, that sounds like one enjoyable way of decreasing the lime stockpile?
I have long regarded ice cream machines in a covetous fashion, so now I’m totally jealous. :) Trouble is, if I started making ice cream, we’d eat more of it…
I’ve got a totally OTT recipe for a chocolate dessert/pudding to post soon, as soon as I’ve deciphered my own scrawled amendments to the original recipe. It’s not something I make that often as it’s fiddly, but…(*goes off into happy dream of remembrance*).
Yes, I’ve got a few of those. :)
Oh yes–lime juice in hummous. I remember that . . . had forgotten. Thank you!
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OK, one OTT chocolate recipe –
Chocolate Box
(adapted from the recipe in ‘Chocolate’, 1984, Jennie Reekie)
This dessert (or pudding, if you prefer) is basically a box made of chocolate and filled with chocolate mousse. The decoration used in the above publication is of halved strawberries, glazed with warmed strawberry jam that has a little Kirsch added. I have used that type of decoration sometimes, while on other occasions I’ve just added a fairly thick layer of chocolate shavings, dark and white. Both are good and I’ve no doubt other toppings can be imagined. This dish is EXTREMELY rich – the recipe says 8 portions and I would seriously doubt the ability to rest comfortably even after a few hours if one ate more than, say, two portions…
For the box:
10 oz good dark chocolate (60% is fine), in pieces
½ – ¾ oz unsalted butter
Line a 6” square, deep, cake tin (or a 7” one that’s at least 2” deep) all over with a double layer of kitchen foil cut and folded to fit as smoothly and exactly as possible, particularly into the corners. Melt the chocolate and butter together, gently, in a largish bowl above simmering water. When all is melted together, pour two thirds of it into the lined tin and tilt round gently to give an even coating over the sides and base. Allow to set at least 10 minutes, then repeat with the remaining third of the chocolate so that you have all thin places filled in. Leave to set at least 30 minutes or until hard. Remove from the tin by pulling gently on the foil, then very gently peel the foil away from the chocolate box. (Do not bother to wash the bowl you melted the chocolate in – it will be needed again for the same purpose. For the same reason, don’t let anyone stick fingers or tongues in there to ‘clean’ it for you!)
For the filling:
8oz good dark chocolate, in pieces
4 medium-sized free-range eggs, separated (and at room temperature when you start)
1 generous T of Grand Marnier, or Cointreau, or perhaps your favourite coffee liqueur, or just strong dark coffee.
Melt the chocolate in the bowl above gently simmering water. Be very careful this time (as there’s no butter) not to overheat it or stir more than once or twice, or the chocolate will ‘cook’ into an unusable lump. Meanwhile, separate the eggs and whisk the whites until they are at the ‘soft peak’ stage. In a separate bowl, beat the yolks gently with a fork until well mixed and add in your choice of liqueur. Take the bowl of melted chocolate (away from any heat) and add in the mixed egg yolk mixture. Then gently fold in the whisked egg whites. Place the chocolate box very carefully on the totally flat-bottomed dish you will be serving it from and then pour the mousse mixture into the box. Set aside in a cool place (warmest shelf of a fridge is fine) for at least an hour (two is safer).
For the top decoration:
Either – 2 oz each dark and white chocolate, in shavings, scattered artistically over the surface of the mousse
Or – 8 oz fresh strawberries, hulled, halved, and glazed with a little warmed jam to which has been added a tsp of Kirsch
Or – add your own idea of a topping (remembering to keep it light – you don’t want it to sink into the mousse!)..
The original recipe also calls for a small quantity of chocolate ganache to be made and piped round the edge of the mousse before the final decoration. I have done this – if I have time after all the above – but one has to be pretty dedicated. One can also make the mousse with only two eggs but adding a half pint (10 fl oz) of half-and-half single and double (heavy and light?) cream, whipped till there’s a noticeable trail left on the surface and folded gently into the chocolate mixture after the egg yolks and before the whisked whites.
NB As this has raw eggs in the mousse, be sure they’re from a reliable source and keep the final dish chilled. If (!) there is any left after serving, keep chilled and make sure it’s eaten within 24 hours. I know this doesn’t sound like a problem but you may be surprised how ambivalent you feel about more chocolate for a couple of days…
Very quick ‘cheat’ dessert also available if wished? (I know, why am I asking…) :)
OH MY. :)
(Yes, why are you asking? :))
What an excellent husband Peter is. I think it’s so incredibly thoughtful of him to send you packages for bridge nights and such.
I’d never thought of the complications of cooking somewhere metric-y.
Oh, good! on the horse-riding! Tell us how it goes, what you ride, whay you did when the horse went (Mwah-ha-ha, no way am I going to go over there in compliance with your wishes!). And everything!
Literal ‘LOL’ here! Yes! All those creaky old instincts/learnt responses! We’ll see. This is a very *nice* mare . . .
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I want to know about the riding lesson, with hat. Horseback? English? I love horses and riding and all that. Go Big Brown, Triple Crown!!
I’m sure you’ll hear about the riding lesson. I was thinking after I arranged it ‘oh good! More stuff to BLOG about!’ I can bore for England on the subject of horses. :)
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My first recipe suggestion! I should note I got it from someone else, who translated it off a website in french…
Lime-basil sorbet
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups water
- 3/4 cup sugar
- Juice of 8 to 10 limes, about 1/2 cup of juice (I feel like limes have more juice then this, but maybe that’s just my limes)
- A huge bunch of green basil, about 30 to 40 leaves… or more.
- 12 “lime-basil” leaves
- 2 purple basil leaves, or to taste. (I like more purple basil, and I’ve never included the “lime-basil”)
Directions
- Wash and dry the basil. Keep the lime-basil and purple basil separate.
- In a pot, bring the water and sugar to a boil. Remove from the heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Add the green basil leaves and let it sit until the syrup water tastes of basil. This time varies depending on how fresh your basil is, the season, etc, so you will have to taste it every now and then to see if it is ready. (Generally I steep the basil for 60 minutes)
- When it tastes good, strain out the leaves. Add the lime juice, and then chill the syrup until it is cold.
- Put the syrup in your ice cream maker. While it is freezing, cut your other leaves into thin strips. (I have a hand crank, so I have to get help or cut the leaves ahead of time)
- When the sorbet is almost ready add the basil leaf strips.
- Remove the sorbet when it is ready and transfer it to a container for the freezer, and then freeze it to finish hardening.
I hate that fresh ice cream gets harder when it sits in the freezer for awhile but it’s a good thing for sorbet!
Gods, this is TOTALLY brilliant. (I agree about the amount of lime juice.) And I adore basil. Thank you so much! :)
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If you really miss the creamy part of ice cream, you could try to make it with soy milk. There are recipies available.
Soy milk–yuuuuuuuck. They’d have to be recipes that made it IMPOSSIBLE to recognise the soy. I’m someone who loathed yogurtia or what you call it, ice cream made of yogurt, when I still ate dairy. I’m kind of one track minded.
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You will LOVE your ice cream maker. I bought one a couple of years ago and make all my own stuff. My freezer bowl lives in the freezer, too, inside a plastic bag, and is always ready. I haven’t made sorbets–my husband is diabetic, and they are so full of sugar–but I make seriously-reduced-sugar ice cream that is ice cream, not frozen custard (i.e., no eggs, so nothing to cook up before freezing). Needless to say, I don’t eat a lot of this (although I *could*, especially cinnamon or peppermint). If we get a strawberry crop after this year’s very wet spring, I will make fresh strawberry, yum.
If you can tolerate butter, could you tolerate the cream from which the butter is made?
I don’t know how it works–I keep wanting to try clotted cream (and sheep and goat cheese)–it is supposed to be the milk PROTEINS, and where do they go when you make butter?? INto the whey? Is it whey that is left over? (I actually made butter a few times for laughs, but that was, uh, thirty years ago or something and I don’t remember. Also I was eating dairy in those days.) What?
I think you can make low-sugar ices, too, by using egg white as binder? I don’t know.
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Well, he’s really an ice cream person, and I get an organic heavy cream that’s like the heavy cream of 30 years ago and isn’t ultra-pasteurized, so can’t let a resource like that go unused!
I can’t guess about the milk proteins. But I have known lactose-intolerant people who couldn’t tolerate milk but were OK with cream. ???
I am now DEFINITELY confused. . . .
Do you have recipes for low-sugar icecream? They sound, sigh, *just* like what I need.
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I’m sure I’ve seen them. I’ll try and remember where.
I’ve found that unless you have a REALLY sweet tooth, you can just cut back on the sugar on a regular recipe and it comes out fine. The recipe book that came with my machine uses 3 cups of liquid to 3/4 cups sugar plus flavorings to make a quart and a half (6 cups) of finished product. I always cut that back to 1/2 cup sugar, which isn’t too bad for a quart and a half of ice cream. I might cut the sugar back some more if I were using a sweet flavoring. The plus about the ice cream maker is that you can experiment until you find what you like.
You could use the lime juice for salsa. Or you could make extra lime sorbet and ship it to me. *
You’re lucky in Peter, even if you don’t get to cook much. Mr. Lissar, bless him, is almost completely uninterested in food, and resists cooking with the energy and enthusiasm of a cat being put in a cat carrier. Which is, in my experience, rather like folding a large spring into a small can.
He can make grilled cheese, now. After five years of trying to teach him.^ Also he can identify a granola bar at fifty paces, and open bags of trail mix.
*I wonder what it would cost to ship sorbet from England to Canada and have it arrive in decent, still-frozen, condition.
^Of course, I resist doing tai chi or any other martial art with the same enthusiasm. We both have areas of stark lack-of-interest.
If it’s a good lime sorbet, you can drop in the next time you’re in England. I’ll save you some. :)
Which is, in my experience, rather like folding a large spring into a small can.
***** LOL!
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If you look online you might be able to get a spare freezer disk, so that you could *always* have one in the freezer ready to go.
Hey, I’m Menopause No Calorie Burn Woman. I don’t WANT to make ice cream every day!!!!!
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WINE sorbet? Now that I know such delicacies exist, I refuse to spend another week without trying this!
You find a good recipe, you POST it, y’hear??
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In celebration I thought you might like two ice / sorbet recipes garnered long ago (i.e. Christmas 2000) from the Vogue Australian Entertaining and Travel and suitably altered for use by me. This publication has a great variety of recipes on ices, including alcoholic ones, unfortunately they are always published out of season for us. Luckily for me, I always keep my food mags for way too long (currently in a drive to comb through a few years worth and pass on to worthy recipients).
Melon Ice
1kg piece of melon
250g caster sugar
150ml water
juice of 1-2 limes, to taste
2 teaspoons orange flower water
Heat the sugar and water in a saucepan, stirring until the sugar dissolves, then bring to the boil. Remove from heat and set aside to cool. Discard the melon rind and seeds. Put the flesh into a food processor and process to a puree. Stir in the lime juice and orange flower water into the syrup you have made and combine with the melon puree. (Here you can use your ice-cream maker, otherwise:) Refrigerate until chilled, then pour into a shallow container and freeze overnight.
To serve, cut the frozen mixture into small chunks, process until just broken up and serve at once spooned into (preferably frozen) glasses. You can sprinkle with a chiffonade of spearmint leaves or ginger (Serves 6).
The following recipe started life as for use with tangelos, which I personally dislike. You can substitute very happily with oranges, or grapefruit and lime (in the latter case delete the rosewater) (The original recipe from damm fine food catering and event management, Melbourne in From Australian Vogue Entertaining + Travel Christmas 2000)
Orange, Cardamom and Rosewater Sorbet
(Makes about 1 Litre)
750ml orangejuice
zest from 3 oranges
200 gr caster sugar
a pinch of (hopefully freshly) ground cardamom
1 tablespoon rosewater (or orange flower water) or else 1 rose geranium leaf
To serve: rose petals (optional)
Place the tangelo juice and zest, sugar and cardamom in a non-reactive saucepan and bring slowly to the boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves (If you are using the rose geranium leaf add here for one minute – no more and remove). Allow to cool and add the rosewater. Refrigerate until chilled, then churn in an ice-cream maker, according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Store in a freezer in a covered container until ready to serve.
No dairy in sight and lots of fruit – even limes: life is good.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH. You are a wonderful human being. :)
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Always glad to be of service when I am not being sarcastic or mutinous ;)
Feeding your obsessions…
http://www.leevalley.com
http://www.lehmans.com/
They’re overseas from you, but oh-so-drool-worthy.
(someday, I, too, will own my own ice cream maker. oh, yes. I will)
I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW IF THEY SHIP OVERSEAS.
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That is ENORMOUSLY interesting. Is your entire paper available?