Entries Tagged 'recipe' ↓

I have been in South Africa for six years now. I came here to do my PhD and liked it so much I stayed on to do a post-doc. It really is an amazing country with diverse landscapes and diverse cultures. I could write a ten page testimonial about why it is great here but those of you that have been to SA will already know what I mean and those of you that haven’t should really get on a plane and experience it for yourselves rather than listen to me wax lyrical about how awesome it is. Sadly, next week I will be leaving South Africa and so to make the departure a little bit less sad, I thought I would make some ice-cream (that always cheers me up!).

The flavour I decided to go for is based on a desert I had when I was a kid. I have no idea how old I was but I remember going round to one of my parents friends houses for lunch and having the most amazing lime and blueberry cheesecake. Given that it was probably over 20 years since I ate this fabled desert and I still fantasize about it, I thought I should bite the bullet and try and re-create it with a Triple Motion twist.

Unfortunately the day I decided to crank there was not a lime to be found anywhere in Stellenbosch. This required emergency recipe intervention and so I ended up using preserved lime juice to flavour the mix and then because I found I needed  bit more citrusy zing I added lemon zest. The recipe for the lime and lemon ice-cream was then as follows:

• 8 tbs lime juice
• zest of 1 lemon
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 cups cream
• 2 cups full-fat milk

I though possibly mixing the blueberries in with the citrus combo might homogenize the flavours too much so instead I just softened the blueberries in a pan with a little sugar, crushed them to release the juices and then stirred through the ice-cream after it was cranked and ready to go in the freezer to finish setting.

The cranking its self took a REALY long time (nearly an hour), and it was not even that hot. Not sure why this was but we kept our selves amused by drinking wine and taking in the view so it was not all bad. I was pretty pleased with the end result – good distinction between the clean lemon and lime flavours of the ice-cream and the slightly sticky much sweeter blueberry swirl. I think it still would have been better to go with 100% lime rather than the mix but that is probably just because I am a purist like that!

Howdy folks!

This weekend, we realized that we had never seen Celine and Pierre’s ice cream machine, which was sent a few months ago by Walt. We therefore decided to unite what are probably the only two existing machines in Clermont Ferrand, and to prepare a nice double dessert.

Pierre, driven by enthusiasm and ambition, had chosen nothing less than pistachio, which is considered by some of us as the Holy Grail of ice-cream… I decided to let him undergo this ordeal by himself, and to prepare something that would go well with his attempt. Chocolate seemed the best option…

I did not see Pierre’s preparation, but he described it to me and took a few pictures. He was not aware of the grinding problem, the main issue in this recipe : it seems to me (but correct me if I’m wrong) that Peter and David had tried to soak, peel and blend the pistachio, but that this gave a slightly powderish texture. Pierre, driven by his instinct, bought unroasted pistachios, peeled and ground them with a pestle and a mortar. To get a paste, he added powdered sugar, about the equivalent (in size, not in weight) of the pistachios. The pictures show it produced a nice, wet paste which Pierre chose not to sieve.

The rest of the ingredients is not very clear : about 10cl of cream, a handful of sugar, some milk, and a few seeds of cardamom… This gave about 60/70 cl of liquid, which was not a lot, but I suppose the peeling and grinding were so tedious that Pierre had decided to cut it short… We were afraid the machine wouldn’t work with so little a quantity, but it turned out to be ok…

For my part, I followed the chocolate gelato recipe (to be found on this site), which always proved to be reliable…

It was funny cranking the two machines at the same time. One single person could do it, with a lot of synchronization… The chocolate-filled machine went stiff much quicker than the other one but when we opened the canisters, the pistachio was in fact much firmer than the chocolate. The former just had a little more room in the container…

Results : the chocolate was as expected : rich and smooth. The pistachio had many qualities : the flavour was there, definitely, with a nice hint of cardamome. The texture was a little rough though : bits of nuts gave a little grittiness (which was not necessarily unpleasant…), and it lacked a certain smoothness that more cream could have brought. I think the mortar/pesle technique is an interesting idea and deserves to be investigated. Many thanks to Pierre and his family for showing us a different way on the nut ice cream, and for this pleasant desert!

Gosh, it’s been so long I haven’t posted anything! This is not due to a decrease in the ice-cream making activity, but rather to a lack of pictures, making posts less interesting. Fortunately, I now have a phone with a camera, and will try to post more often.

Anyway, August has been very hot in France, with temperatures exceeding 30°C at night (which, I’ve learnt, is the condition to call the phenomenon a heat wave). I was at my parent’s house these last few days, and one afternoon we were desperately trying to find a way to cool down. My mother had just bought a whole watermelon, and didn’t know what to do with (supermarkets…). Celine suggested a solution to the two problems…

We peeled (I’m not sure it’s the suitable verb, considering the very thick skin…) the watermelon, chopped it down to pieces and carefully removed all the black seeds (tedious but compulsory). Once blended, it represented an amount of approximately 1100mL.

While making the sugar syrup , we had the idea of infusing herbs in it, to complexify the rather bland taste of the watermelon, and add some originality to the treat. After hesitating between a few samples (basil, thyme…) we decided to go for fresh mint, that seemed to be the most refreshing herb (gosh we were so hot…). Thus we added a handful of leaves to the syrup, composed of 250g of sugar and the equivalent of water. Once the syrup cooled down, we sieved and simply poured everything into the canister.

The cranking went normally in spite of the temperature, and in less than 30 minutes we had our refreshing snack. It was pleasant, not to sweet, perfectly adapted to the situation. The mint was very mild but perceptible, and the watermelon was…as you could expect it. All in all, I don’t think it was an outstanding sorbet, but everyone enjoyed it.

Back in March I took a trip out to South Africa to visit my sister, and whilst there we cooked up this little adventure.  Soon after arriving we had some beautifully ripe paw-paw for breakfast and decided to see if they’d make good icecream. To add a bit more interest we decided to try making it in the Cederberg national park – a spectacular semi-desert 300 km north of Cape Town.

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Back to business!

It’s been a while since my last post, but the ice-cream frenzy is still on!

Last weekend, my friend Bastien had a few visitors : his brother and his girlfriend, who live in Youngstown, Ohio.  Bastien’s sister and a friend of hers also joined this happy family gathering.

Knowing that Bastien lives about twenty meters far from us, a sunny sunday afternoon was a perfect occasion for a casual, laid-back lunch, involving, of course, ice cream.

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In celebration of Cheryl’s 30th birthday, I hauled my trusty half-gallon White Mountain freezer down to Brighton on the overnight MegaBus (10 hours of sheer pain!). Despite my sore back and neck, we were determined to make the effort worthwhile and decided to crank a simple batch of Maple Syrup Ice Cream. Cheryl’s friend had the great suggestion to add Morgan’s Spiced Rum to the mix, and we were off!

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SANAE IV research station is located on a small nunatak called Vesleskarvet, in Western Dronning Maud Land. Although the building its self is rather impressive, it is but a tiny spec on the immense landscape of the Antarctic.

It is this landscape that I have been privileged enough to be working in for the last few months and where I go, my trusty triple motion crank follows.

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Calisson ice-cream had been on our mind for a while now, since we got offered a tiny ice-cream recipes book with this one featuring.

Calisson is a small delicacy from the south of France. It is aesthetically perfect, a smooth and silky pebble with sharp angles making it as streamlined as an Airstream van. I’ve always been fond of this almondy paste with a sugar icing… although I have to say the taste is not that refined. But calissons benefit from their everlasting reputation of luxury delicacy.

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Close your eyes and think about Antarctica. You will probably think of ice-bergs, pack ice, icy waste lands…generally a whole lot of icy thoughts. This is for good reason as 90% of the world’s ice is found on the continent.

As part of my work a researcher at the University of Stellenbosch, I am privileged enough to visit this icy land periodically to undertake biological surveys. When I got word that I would be heading South this year, naturally, the first thing I packed to take with me to this land of ice was my trusty ice-cream maker.

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I love green tea ice cream. I think the first time I tasted it was with my brother at a Japanese restaurant in New York more than a decade ago. I still think that some of the best green tea ice cream I’ve had is in New York, at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, a must-stop on any New York visit, even in the ice-cold winter.

A number of years ago we tried making green tea ice cream in the way that seemed logical – brewing gunpowder green tea and adding it to the family recipe. We struggled to get a satisfactory result until one trip to Venice about five years ago. I found a fantastic little gelateria with a Jamaican-themed decor and a very friendly gelato-maker who invited me behind the counter to help him shell pistachios for his delicious nut ice creams. He let me taste a range of unique flavours and then brought out his special green tea batch made for a fancy Japanese restaurant elsewhere in Venice. I was duly impressed and insisted he share the secret.

Needless to say, it’s actually quite simple, but the required green tea can sometimes be hard to track down. You need to use Matcha to make green tea ice cream. Matcha is a finely powdered green tea with a very strong unique flavour. It lasts a long time so it’s worth always having a supply in the fridge. The only place in Edinburgh where I could find it was a specialist chocolatier who agreed to sell me a small bag from their kitchen supply. I’m sure you can get it online easily enough.

It had been a while since I made green tea ice cream so when Ben asked me to make it before he left for the Antarctic (he has moved there for the next 18 months!) I was delighted to get out my Matcha.

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