Ice Heroine
. . . Because ‘Sorbet Heroine’ somehow doesn’t have quite the right ring to it. Or even ‘Granita Heroine.’ But all of those of you who don’t read comments, look at what arrived last night. And for those of you who do read comments, myself included, I want to read it again. Carefully.
Which I’m going to do right now, leaning back with my feet up, and a bowl of something chilly at hand. It’s been a heavy, sticky day–Connie and I this morning were rolling Sisyphus’ boulder uphill for our lesson, and the hellhounds permitted me to get on with work after only a token post-lunch riot*–and definitely a perfect moment for a dissertation on sorbet.
Anette, the Great Dane |
Dear Robin
This is a bit big for a comment and not on topic anyway, but perhaps you can use it as a blog.
Note: Yes, thank you very much, I will.
NON-DAIRY ICE-CREAM 101
If you freeze a cup of still, pure water, you get a big, hard ice cube, and the purpose of making ice-cream is actually to break that cube into something edible. Flavor is usually added as well, but that is not the main purpose (see Medieval Ice-cream).
In a household kitchen the breaking is normally done by adding fat, sugar, alcohol, fibers, or air. Commercial ice-cream makers have a few extra options, but let us stick to food and leave chemistry out of the kitchen.
Fat in ice-cream usually means cream, but egg yolks can serve the same purpose (see Sabayon Ice-cream). Oils are best used only for greasing any moulds used to shape the ice-cream, and while I have tried making ice-cream involving avocado, the result frankly wasn’t good enough for me to post a recipe. Coconut cream is a possibility, if you like the flavor, but I think it works more because of the fibers than because of the fat (see Coconut Ice-cream with Lime syrup).
Sugar of some kind is added to most ice-creams, but if you have an especially nice honey or maple syrup, it is entirely possible to make a sorbet just with this. The proportions are about 1 part sweet-stuff to 4 or 5 parts water (volume and weight comes out about the same), but taste before adding all the water, and remember that it becomes less sweet when frozen. If you are one of us barbarians, who occasionally add things to wine, then a dollop of Rose-Honey Ice-cream isn’t bad in a glass of slightly sour wine.
Alcohol is very useful in any non-dairy ice-cream not intended for children. Cordials are the obvious choice, and I tend to use them in approximately the same proportions as the sweet-stuff above (see Coffee Ice-cream/Granita and Chocolate Ice-cream). The strong, non-sweet alcohols I tend to use only in the shape of a splash of brandy in a Strawberry Ice-cream or rum in Peach Ice-cream (see Fruit Ice-cream), but Vodka Sorbet works well in both mixed drinks and in cold tomato soup. The once so popular Champagne or Red Wine sorbets have never worked very well for me, but try taking a look at the recipe for Punch Ice.
Fiber in the shape of a fruit pulp makes what is probably the best base for non-dairy ice-cream (see Fruit Ice-cream), and I cannot think of any fruit that would not work. Tofu must be the silk type, and - while I’ve never been quite satisfied with my results - it isn’t bad in the Tiramisu-mousse Ice-cream. Coconut I have already mentioned, but chestnut puree works as well - I just don’t like it very much.
Air is what you add to your ice-cream by churning it while it freezes, and you can enhance the effect by adding stiffly beaten egg whites to your ice-cream mix (see Punch Ice-cream, a.o.). It is, however, also possible to use beaten egg whites to make ice-cream without churning (see Chocolate Chinchilla Ice-cream a.o.).
MEDIEVAL ICE-CREAM:
In a way it’s silly to make so much work out of serving people, what is basically a cup of water, but it does look pretty, and if your guests have various allergies or diets, it’s a fairly useful dessert.
Ice-cold or even frozen whole fruits used to be considered a luxury (the ice-swans filled with fruit on buffets are a remnant of that), and from that there’s only a brief step to re-freeze shaved ice in the shape of fruits.
Ingredients:
Boiled water,
Egg white (optional),
Syrup, essence or cordial.
Start by chilling the boiled water, and prepare as many individuals moulds as you want by either greasing them with almond oil or lining them with kitchen film/saran wrap. Be careful to get the film smooth on the mould, so it doesn’t get frozen into the ice. Churn the water in an ice-cream maker, spoon the slush into the moulds, and freeze. If your guests don’t include vegans or people allergic to egg, you can get a softer set by adding a stiffly beaten egg white per pint (2 cups/500 ml) to the water before churning. When serving remove the moulds and drip a few drops or spoonfuls of your chosen flavor to the centre of your ice, from where it’ll spread through the shape and puddle around the base. I’m partial to Cherry Cordial, but Crème de Menthe (Mint Cordial) or Limoncello (Italian Lemon Cordial) are nice too.
SABAYON ICE-CREAM
I don’t know if everybody is familiar with the Italian dessert, Sabayon, which is made by whipping egg yolks, sugar and wine or fortified wine together over a low heat until you have something resembling a very fluffy custard. You can freeze a normal Sabayon to an ice-cream without any churning, but I think the result is better with churning and a few tweaks to the recipe. It’s also less work, because with churning it becomes unnecessary to heat the mix.
Ingredients:
4 egg yolks,
4 tablespoon sugar,
Ca. 150-250 ml (0.5 - 1 cup) marsala (sweet fortified wine), sherry, white wine, rum, etc.
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until they are thick and almost white. Add the liquid, beat again, and taste to see if it needs more, then freeze while churning. This is a fairly small amount of ice-cream, and if you serve it on its own you might want to double the recipe for four persons. It is, however, a very intense ice-cream, and I usually serve it along with fruit. The marsala version is good with grapes in wine jelly, the rum with baked banana, etc.
COCONUT ICE-CREAM WITH LIME SYRUP
Coconut cream/milk varies a lot from brand to brand, and you might want to dilute it with 0.5 - 1 can of water.
Ingredients:
1 can of coconut cream or milk,
Sugar,
Water,
2 limes,
0.5 vanilla pod.
Pour the coconut cream/milk into a bowl, and sweeten it to taste - you need to stir until the sugar is completely dissolved - then freeze while churning.
While the ice-cream is churning grate the zest of the limes, and squeeze out the juice. In a small pot mix the juice and zest with approximately the same amount of water and at least 4 tablespoons of sugar - you might want a lot more sugar - then heat gently while stirring. It should take only a few minutes at a low simmer before this small amount thickens and becomes syrupy.
Serve the Coconut Ice-cream with the Lime Syrup dripped on top and perhaps a sprinkling of chopped chocolate.
ROSE-HONEY ICE-CREAM
Ingredients:
Honey,
Water,
Fresh leaves of fragrant roses or rose water,
A clove or a few whole cardamom pods (optional).
Gently heat the honey with twice its volume in water and the whole spices. Remove from the heat, and dilute with more water until you have the sweetness you want (again remember that freezing “steals” some sweetness). Add the roseleaves (I like the color that dark red ones gives the ice), and let it steep all day or overnight. Sieve and freeze while churning.
I plan to try this with edible gold or silver added after the sieving
VODKA SORBET
Pure vodka doesn’t normally freeze, so you’ll need to dilute it. Water will do the trick, but I find the recipe below more useful.
Ingredients:
1 part vodka,
4 parts 7-up (stirred to remove some of the fizz),
Lemon juice to taste.
Mix and freeze while churning. Serve in a glass and pour over for example orange juice, spicy tomato juice, Blue Curacao, Crème de Cassis, Ginger ale or Dry Martini.
All the ice-cream recipes so far have been of the sorbet/sherbet type, but where sorbets are supposed to be smooth and with ice crystals as fine as possible, a granita consists of coarse crystals of flavored ice and cannot be made in an ice-cream maker.
How to make Granita:
Pour your flavored liquid into a shallow, lidded freezing container and freeze for about one hour. Stir the ice along the sides into the liquid in the middle with a coarse fork and freeze again. Repeat 3 or 4 times until it’s all frozen. The granita is now ready to serve, but if you need to keep it frozen for a while, you can just scrape it up in free crystals again when serving.
COFFEE ICE-CREAM/GRANITA
This is basically just frozen very strong and sweet coffee with - or without - a big splash of coffee cordial, but it’s very good as both sorbet and granita.
Ingredients:
8 tablespoon grinded coffee,
4 tablespoon sugar,
2 pints (4 cups) boiling water,
Coffee cordial to taste.
Let water, coffee and sugar simmer together for 30 min, then cool, sieve, add the cordial, and freeze.
TEA ICE-CREAM/GRANITA WITH LIMONCELLO
Just as with the coffee this works equally well as a sorbet and as a granite.
Ingredients:
3 bag of your favorite tea,
1.5 pints (3 cups) boiling water,
0.5 cup sugar,
Limoncello to taste.
Pour the hot water over the tea, and let it steep for 5 min before removing the bags and adding the sugar. Stir until the sugar has dissolved, and let it cool. Add the cordial, and freeze.
If you prefer it, you can use other fruit cordials such as peach or apple instead of the Limoncello or you can just omit it.
LEMON ICE-CREAM/GRANITA
I find this a bit boring on its own, but very nice in a glass of ice-tea.
Ingredients:
150 ml (ca. 0.75 cup) lemon juice,
The grated zest of a lemon,
150 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
250 ml boiling water.
Dissolve the sugar in the water, add the other ingredients, cool, and freeze either as a sorbet or a granite.
FRUIT ICE-CREAM
You can sieve a mush of for example strawberries or passion fruit and make a granita, but fruits still with their fibers are also ideal for sorbet.
Here’s a series of different fruit ice-creams all intended for sorbets:
Peach:
1 can of peaches with liquid.
Blitz in a blender or food processor until smooth, then freeze while churning.
This is the easiest of all ice-creams, and other canned fruits such as apricots and pineapple can be treated the same way.
Passion fruit:
The pulp of 8 or more ripe (wrinkled) passion fruits,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
250 ml (1 cup) cold water.
Mix and stir to dissolve the sugar, and let it steep for 1 hour. Sieve and freeze while churning.
Watermelon:
1.5 pound watermelon meat without pips,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
Juice of half a lemon,
250 ml (1 cup) cold water.
Mix and blitz together in a blender or food processor until smooth. Freeze while churning.
Other ripe melons can be treated the same way, as can pineapple.
Strawberry:
I am so fortunate as to have a very superior old type of strawberries growing in my garden. Most of the crop is eaten fresh and straight from the plants, but in bumper-crop years I sometimes want to preserve some for later as an ice-cream. Commercially grown strawberries are types where things like stiff stalks, high yields, and tough skin are more important than flavor, so I really think you need different recipes for different types of strawberries.
Ingredients I:
1 pound full-flavored strawberries,
2 tablespoons of sugar.
Blitz, taste, sieve, and freeze.
Ingredients II:
1 pound fresh strawberries,
1-2 tablesp. fresh orange or lemon juice,
100-150 g (0.5 cup sugar),
75 ml (0.25 cup) water.
Boil the water and sugar together for a few minutes to dissolve the sugar, and let it cool. Blitz and sieve the strawberries, add the other ingredients, taste, and freeze.
Ingredients III:
1 pound frozen strawberries,
1-2 tablesp. fresh orange or lemon juice,
0.5 split vanilla pod,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
Mix all the ingredients in a pot, and let it stand until the strawberries have thawed and produced some liquid. Boil together at low heat, and let it cool. Blitz, taste, sieve, and freeze.
TIRAMISU- MOUSSE ICE-CREAM
Just replacing mascarpone with tofu in a Tiramisu doesn’t work unless you adjust the other ingredients. Once that is done, it’s actually better frozen, and if you are going to freeze it anyway you don’t really need the tofu to dilute the taste.
Ingredients:
4 egg yolks,
60 g (0.25 cup) sugar,
1 packet silk tofu (that’s 125-150 g (5-6 oz)) (optional),
4 egg whites,
60 g (0.25 cup) sugar,
Instant espresso or coffee powder,
4 tablespoon dark rum,
Good quality dark chocolate.
Beat the egg yolks very thick and pale with the first portion of sugar. Cream the tofu until smooth. Whip the egg whites to a stiff meringue with the second portion of sugar. Dissolve enough coffee in the rum to get a pronounced coffee flavor. Chop the chocolate. If you want to make this in an ice-cream maker, mix everything except the chocolate, which should be sprinkled over after freezing. If you have a very cold freezer, there’s no need for churning, and you just mix everything and freeze it in a container. Serve with cookies, but try finding some more interesting than Lady Fingers. I like Cat Tongues and Florentines.
PUNCH ICE
It quite possible to make an ice-cream just by freezing ordinary punch (lemon, sugar, rum and water), but this recipe started life as a Jewish version of the Victorian party-dessert Ice-Punch. The texture is supposed to be very slushy, so that you can almost drink it.
Ingredients:
0.5 bottle of champagne or sweet white wine,
Juice and grated zest of 1 lemon and 2 oranges,
75 g (0.33 cup) cane sugar,
4 tablespoon rum,
4 egg whites,
150-200 g (ca. 1.5 cup) powdered/confectioner sugar.
Mix wine, juice, zest, cane sugar and rum, and let it stand until the sugar has dissolved (over-night is fine). Freeze while churning until you have a thick slush. This you can store in the freezer for a few hours, but if you leave it longer, you’ll probably need to break it up with an electric whisk. Shortly before serving beat the egg whites to a meringue with the powdered sugar, and fold this into the slush ice. Serve immediately in glasses or small bowls.
CHOCOLATE ICE-CREAM
It is entirely possible to make a non-dairy chocolate ice-cream. The simplest ways are:
Version 1: Replace the wine in the Sabayon Ice-cream with Cocoa cordial.
Version 2: Replace the vodka in the Vodka Ice-cream with Cocoa cordial and the lemon with vanilla extract.
Version 3: Replace the coffee in the Tiramisu with good pure cocoa (not the sweet instant) powder, but add it to the eggs as it might lump in the cold liquid.
My favorite non-dairy chocolate ice is however something entirely different:
FROZEN CHOCOLATE CHINCHILLA
Now, before anyone start accusing me of covering small animals with chocolate, I better explain that a chinchilla can be both - though not normally at the same time - a small fur-bearing animal and a soft cake made almost entirely of beaten egg whites.
Ingredients:
6 egg whites,
125 g (5 oz) grated dark chocolate or 4 tablespoons pure cocoa and 5 tablespoons sugar,
2 tablespoons chopped nuts,
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon or coffee powder (not instant).
Beat the egg whites very stiff, fold in the other ingredients, and bake (medium heat) or steam for about 1 hour. A chinchilla is normally eaten warm or tepid, but I like to eat it slightly frozen/partly thawed.
Anette, the Great Dane
* Involving plastic rings, tennis balls, tug of war ropes, etc
Five Heroines
So, at last, our Five Heroines of Blog Food:
AJLR
Jmeadows
Maren
Sarah from Boston
Southdowner
In alphabetical order, which is somewhat serendipitous in this case because it was AJLR’s idea, poor woman, and how many times has she looked at herself in the mirror since and said, possibly even aloud, Why? Why? However, we’re all very grateful, perhaps especially us regular recipe posters, because we can look it up if we’ve already posted something or not. Phew. Some of the time I know I’ve already told you a story I’m telling you again, but this is Days in the Life and there are, you know, themes.* But I will try not to repost recipes.
Anyway: hip hip HOORAY! Hip hip HOORAY! Hip hip . . . HOOOOOOORAAAAAAAY!**
And I suggest you open another bottle of champagne to perform this second toast.*** All reasons for champagne are good reasons. Including having another empty bottle to stick a single rose–or, just conceivably, some other flower–in. I don’t quite choose my champagne by the colour of its label and the suitability of its graphic design as a future vase but I will not deny that it crosses my mind. I love having cut flowers in the house but I’m certainly not going to cut my own!!! †, and florists are expensive. One option is to blow three quid or so on One Perfect Rose and stick it in an empty bottle of the Widow or Tattinger. You’ll acquire a tedious reputation for artiness, but it can’t be helped.
Enjoy yourselves. . . .
* * *
* Hellhounds, for example. Who, having tortured me adequately over the question of eating dinner, speaking of food, are now crashed out in the dog bed looking indescribably sweet and innocent and furry and cute. Mmmph. I however can see the faint glitter of very-slightly-open eye. I’m still feeling pretty mouldy, so there’s been more sofa time than usual lately and they want to make sure they don’t miss anything.
** “hip hip hooray - ‘three cheers’ - originally in common use as ‘hip hip hurrah’; derived from the middle ages Crusades battle-cry ‘Hieroslyma est perdita’ (Jerusalem is fallen), and subsequently shortened by Germanic tribes when fighting Jews to ‘hep hep’, and used in conjunction with ‘hu-raj’ (a Slavic term meaning ‘to paradise’), so that the whole phrase meant ‘Jerusalem is fallen and we are on the way to paradise’.”
http://www.businessballs.com/clichesorigins.htm
Okay, do we believe this one? I feel a strong downward pressure on one of my legs, myself. Pull the other one, it’s got bells on. ‘Hieroslyma est perdita’?!? Well, maybe it sounded different in the 12th century. And hands up anyone who didn’t start saying ‘My bad’ as a result of watching Buffy? These people take Buffy as a cultural phenomenon waay too lightly. Of course it’s true I haven’t been a teenager in many decades and I don’t get out much, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? People like me say ‘my bad’ too.
*** If it was really good champagne, you have a really good stopper, and you didn’t drink much the other night, it might still be good tonight. Champagne, like most other desirable substances, including people, roses and hellhounds, is funny stuff. You can have firmly and carefully stoppered^ up your expensive bottle immediately after pouring out your one glass each for the two of you, and it can be totally yesterdayish tomorrow evening. And golly doesn’t that hurt. Ow ow ow ow ow. That thin, needle-like penetrative sound is your credit card screaming. And then on another occasion you’ll have had two glasses each two nights in a row and there’ll be maybe one glass left, and because you’re like this you put the stopper back in anyway even though you know it’s no use, but pouring champagne down the sink is just too wildly painful.^^ And the next night you’ll thriftily try it, bracing yourself for the worst and . . . it’s all fizzy and lively like it was when you first opened it and cheers you right up. Not least at the prospect of not pouring it down the sink. This happened just last night so it’s on my mind. The ordinary world is full of universal-law-breaking anomalies. I’m sure black holes and quarks come into it somewhere.
Although here’s a universal law for you: drink your quarter-bottles of champagne fast. They don’t last –unopened!–worth a stale canapé. Peter says it’s something to do with volume and surface area. Ah, I say wisely. Like why a cow goes splat when a mouse bounces.^^^
^ Hannah gave us a silver champagne stopper for a wedding present. Well, the only other possibility was a silver chocolate salver and I think she made the right choice.
^^ It usually goes in the next batch of soup really, which isn’t quite so brutal.
^^^ As you will have realised by now, my grasp of all things scientific is a trifle . . . undependable. So I went to google and typed in ‘volume surface area gravity how hard something falls’ and after almost being lost forever in some serious science chat I fetched up at this rather enigmatic site–who are these people? Do they just compose and hang basic educational science essays for fun?–whose article on size and scale is very interesting and expressed in nice straightforward non-scary language but it would nonetheless have done a lot more for me if they or their proofreader knew the difference between ‘its’ and ‘it’s’. However I will repress my inner third-grade grammar teacher and say that they were going on about house flies and geckos and things, and how while I know about claws and sticky suction cups, I still think walking on the ceiling is magic–I might accept ceiling-walking in house flies but geckos are too big–which is perhaps on the list of Why I Write Fantasy. . . . And about the way water striders walk on water. But I didn’t know this:
“If by chance the water strider did break the water tension and take a plunge, it would not be able to dry off with a bug-size towel. At this size, surface adhesion forces would keep the towel stuck to it. . . . It would also be impossible for the bug to read a book by the pool, since once the pages were scaled down to bug-size, surface adhesion would keep the pages stuck together.”
http://invsee.asu.edu/nmodules/sizescalemod/unit4.htm
Cool. All right, I amuse easily, and I never got past basic biology and basic chemistry in high school.+ And if I get this entry done before I sag forward and fall asleep with my head resting on my keyboard, I’m going to go read What’s That in Your Dog Dish? and biofilms. Biofilms?
+ I managed to take Environmental Science my final year of high school–yes, we did have Environmental Science back then, although only just barely–which involved falling in rivers, being charged by moose, etc.
† No, really. Can’t bear to. They live longer on the plant! I think the one occasion I ever seriously raided the garden at the old house was when Peter’s elder son was getting married and they had the night-before party there. And now . . . feh. Although Mme Gregoire is going to be pretty amazing in about a week.