Showing posts with label ice cream. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ice cream. Show all posts

Sunday, September 11, 2011

My Sweet Spot: Chai Tea Ice Cream


A rainy day in March off a street in Berlin is a strange place to have first tried an Indian chai tea, but that is how it happened.  I was young traveler in the nineties with a backpack and a eurail pass, bought with pennies saved from waiting tables. Dewey and fresh-faced, I hopped around Europe hoping to collect adventures like postage stamps and come home more interesting and worldly.

Berlin greeted me with lots of rain and some friendly faces in pubs that sold me bratwurst in cumin-laced ketchup.  I had no agenda and no cell phone, a luxury I can not even fathom today.  Still I managed to meet up with fellow dewey and fresh-faced traveler-come-waitress friend on rainy day number three and we explored the city with ducked heads and hunched shoulders.  When the chill got too much for our thin coats, we ducked into an Indian cafe for some warmth and nourishment.  I don't remember what it was called or where we were but we sat by the water streaked window.  My traveling companion ordered us two cups of chai tea.  The tea was warm and rich with cinamon and clove, and I started to thaw like someone had plopped me in front of an open fire and thrown a fuzzy blanket around my shoulders.

Since then I have had many cups of chai tea on a chilly afternoon.  It isn't just the hot liquid but the richness of the sugar, milk and spices that can be such a comfort.  I have made some pretty successful chai tea cupcakes in the past.  This day I made chai tea ice cream, a twist on my earlier post on the the italian affogato.

It has been raining here but it isn't March and I am not ready for tea.  The sun is out again. I think I will savor the fleeting summer a little bit longer.

Chai Tea Ice Cream
Makes one pint:
  • 1 egg
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • 1 chai tea bag
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinamon
On very low heat in a saucepan, heat milk and cream with the tea bag.  Heat until the tea is infused into the milk and cream. Let cool to room temperature. In an electric mixer or using a hand mixer, blend the egg and the sugar.  Add vanilla and cinamon to the egg and sugar and blend.  While the mixer is still going, pour in the milk and cream tea mixture.  Add to your ice cream maker and proceed according to its instruction manual.


Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Sweet Spot: Affogato with Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream


I am a girl of simple tastes.  Believe me.  I sound fancy with my duck confit carbonara, mango chili pops and my trips to fancy food markets but at the end of the day, I am all about vanilla.

I think that Nick and I have agreed that this has been our favorite dessert of the summer.  Affogato literally means drowned in Italian and it is what an Italian does to vanilla ice cream once they have poured espresso over it.  Oh how I adore the poetic language Italians have for food!  Really, I could bore you at a dinner party.  But I digress.  To make an affogato you take a scoop of very good, very cold vanilla ice cream and pour a shot freshly made, very good and very hot espresso over it.  The ice cream melts just slightly so some of it pools with the espresso. If you could buy this at a stand you may never order another Starbucks Frappicino again.  In fact, I hope you don't.  (Sorry Starbucks, I respect the health insurance that you give your workers but not your monopolizing and over sweetening our coffee tastes.)

Home Made Vanilla Ice Cream

A wise cook told me recently that if you are preparing something that involves a kitchen gadget you should look at the recipes that come with gadget along with its manuel.  The manufacturer wants you to be satisfied with their product so they are going to give you the proportions of ingredients that will get you the best results.  This rang true for my ice cream maker.  I use a simple Donvier freezer bowl maker (click here to see types of ice cream makers) one that my mom had when we were kids.  This is the ratio that works best for mine but if you have a different ice cream maker it may vary. 

For one pint:
  • 1 egg
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 3/4 cup milk
  • 3/4 cup cream
  • 1 tsp vanilla
In an electric mixer, beat the eggs and sugar first.  Then add the cream, milk and vanilla.  Then follow the instructions according to your ice cream maker.


Thursday, September 30, 2010

Dinner on the Fly: Entertaining on a Weeknight

I would like to feel like my door is always open to the ones I love.  It sounds really simple, doesn't it?  I am making dinner anyway so what's one more (or two or three)?  Sometimes I would even like that dinner to be a little special.

Growing up, even the smallest dinner party was an affair worthy of some serious preparation.  The house was scoured and scrubbed, and food preparations began two days before.  I am not talking about holidays where we hosted thirty relatives.  That was serious.  That might have to be another blog post.  I am talking about smaller dinner parties.  Until the guest (or guests) actually arrived, it seemed like a rather stressful event.  Don't get me wrong, I loved the dinner parties and holidays for that matter.  So I figured out early that if I could make them less of an arduous task then I could probably have them more often.

Sure it's a weeknight. And maybe, just maybe, my apartment isn't perfectly in order.  The floors aren't freshly mopped and the tiles aren't recently scrubbed clean.  That being said, perhaps there also some shortcuts to my gourmet dinner.  This week I did have two friends over for dinner who had not been to my apartment before which means, of course, that they haven't tasted my cooking.  I certainly don't want to disappoint.

It was important to me that I was not busy with food preparations while they were visiting.  As a gracious hostess, I wanted to spend time with my guests.  So I devised a menu where most of the preparations could be done the night before.

Appetizer:  Baked Brie with Fig Jam Wrapped in Puff Pastry






This was all prepared the night before.  So you can pop this in the oven 10 to 20 minutes before your guests arrive.  It will bake about 15 to 20 at 400 degrees.

Sliced apples or pears are a nice pairing with this.
Cut the brie through the center. If you can, use a knife that has a hollow, center blade for cheese.

Add a generous layer of fig jam in the center.








I definitely cheated for this part.  I am hereby apologizing to all the foodie gurus who are reading this but, yes, that is store-bought puff pastry.  If you are a greater home chef than I am you will have your own homemade version in your freezer. So, by all means use that.  I am an imperfect foodie.





Just out of the oven!













Main Course: Coq Au Vin





This is my slow cooker version of the classic. Here you want to do the prep work the night before and then dump your bowl of ingredients in your crock pot before leaving for work.







Start with good quality bacon,







Chop the bacon into pieces and fry it in a skillet with a little butter.  I know, I know... but it probably wouldn't be a french dish if you didn't add butter. (I would say about four thinly sliced bacon strips to a whole chicken.) When the bacon is crispy set aside on a paper towel.  Leave the bacon drippings in the pan.  This is not a light meal after all.
Brown your cut up chicken in the same pan with the bacon fat (make sure you season your chicken with salt and pepper first).  You don't want to cook it through because it is going in the slow cooker.  You just want some good color and to seal in the juices.  Then set the chicken aside, at this point maybe in a large bowl with the bacon. You will end up having all your ingredients in the same bowl. That way you can reach for in the morning when you are ready to put them in the slow cooker.
Now add your aromatics to the same skillet. I used chopped carrots, onion and garlic.  Let that cook until they are soft. Then sprinkle with flour, stir for one more minute.  Add a good red wine and bring to a boil.  I used about three fourths of a bottle of wine.  Once it reaches its boiling point, bring the heat down to a simmer.  How long you want it to simmer depends on how much you want the sauce to reduce.  Essentially, it depends on how thick you want your stew. Then add that to your bowl with the chicken parts and bacon.

Dump your bowl full of cooked ingredients into the crock pot the next morning.  Add chopped button mushrooms, sprigs of thyme and a little extra salt and freshly ground pepper.  Turn your crock pot on low and you're off.


Serve as is or over egg noodles.  I served a very simple salad of pears, red lettuce and almonds, to accompany this dish because it is so rich.

Dessert:  Framboise Lambic Ice Cream Floats

So I learned this cheat trick at a the home of a friend of mine. This dessert is so easy it's pretty self explanatory.  Vanilla ice cream goes in the glass. Pour Framboise Lambic (raspberry, Belgian beer) over it.  Done.  You will be surprised how good this is.


An ice cream float toast to dinners at home with friends!