This recipe was inspired by Wildman Steve Brill, who has a foraged, vegan version in his Wild Vegetarian Cookbook. The Wildman uses cashews for their creamy texture and actual sassafras roots foraged from city parks for their vivid flavor, but our civilized ovo-lacto interpretation can be made with ingredients actually purchased in stores.

It’s clementine season again, and our apartment is never without a big wooden bowl full of clementines in the middle of the dining room table. I get my sassafras extract at New York Cake Supplies, though you can easily order it online or find it in other gourmet food stores.

This ice cream tastes like melted sunlight. (Sunlight qua frozen hot chocolate, perhaps?) It has all those wonderful bright citrus notes – though maybe I’m a bit overexcited, given what a clementine addict I become every winter. And sassafras is one of the key ingredients in root beer, and it tastes like root beer without all the distractions getting in the way.

In other news, we got some press by winning the savory category of the First Annual Brooklyn Pie Bake-Off with our muffin-sized individual saffron duck pot pies. Thank you to everyone who came out to eat and compete!

There was a big crowd with about 40 pies on the table, and we had a great time tasting as many as we could and hanging out with other food bloggers and pie enthusiasts. With such a great start, I’m awfully tempted to compete in more cook-offs from now on!

Archives
2008: Pork & Sundried Tomato Cappelletti with Pomegranate Walnut Sauce
2007: Cubed Radish Kimchi
2006: Kabocha Beef Tagine with Chickpeas and Preserved Lemon


Clementine Sassafras Ice Cream
2 C heavy cream
1 C wholemilk
Juice of 3 clementines
Zest of 6 clementines (just eat the rest!)
6 large egg yolks
3/4 C granulated sugar
1/8 tsp sassafras extract
1/4 c candied clementine rind (optional)
A bit of citric acid to taste (optional)

In a medium saucepan, stir the cream, juice, and zest together with half of the sugar, reserving the other 3/8 C sugar for later.

In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks together with the other 3/8 C sugar until thoroughly combined.

Bring the cream mixture to a simmer, then remove it from the heat and slowly pour it into egg yolks, whisking constantly.

Pour the mix back into the saucepan and bring to 180 degrees F, stirring constantly. When it hits the right temperature, remove it from the heat and strain into medium bowl set in a larger bowl of ice water.

Stir until it cools to 120 degrees F.

Stir in the sassafras extract. Add the candied clementine and citric acid to taste (optional).

Chill and freeze churn according to your cream maker’s instructions.

I’ve been meaning to post this for months! Since a few of you requested it, I may as well start with the backlog here. This was a really fun dish to throw together. The saffron turmeric cake was an adaptation of a chocolate cake recipe, where Dave started by replacing the cocoa powder with turmeric and went on from there. It is intensely flavorful and moist and one of the most perfect cakes we’ve ever developed.

You can see from the photo how vividly red the inside of the cake is. It turns out that turmeric, a bright yellow root most commonly sold as a powder here in the U.S., turns red when it reacts with alkaline substances. In fact, the red dot traditionally worn by many Indian women in the center of the forehead is made by mixing powdered turmeric with lime (not the fruit!).

I can’t remember why we decided to pair it with the thyme brittle and the meyer lemon sorbet (I’m sure it made sense at the time, and it worked really well), but I definitely recall that we added thyme because we had read that meyer lemon contains one of the same flavor compounds as thyme.

Our few sets of our muffin pans are still stained red from making rounds of these cakes, but it was entirely worth it.

Now, what you’ve all been waiting for: the winners of my CIA book giveaway! I used a random number generator to pick winners from the comments. The winners are Sandy, Kathryn, Vicki, Alison, Esme, and Red! Winners, please email me your addresses and I’ll have a book sent out to each of you pronto. Thanks to everyone for playing along!

Archives
2008: Chocolate-Whiskey Pudding Cake
2007: Rum-Drenched Cocoa-Nana Bread
2006: Saffron Dill Cappelletti Stuffed With Leeks

Saffron Turmeric Cake
1 stick (1/2 C) unsalted butter, in 1 inch cubes
1/2 C warm water
2 tbsp turmeric
1 small pinch saffron
1 C sugar
1.7 oz all-purpose flour
0.7 oz whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg
1/4 c sour cream

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Prepare muffin tins with butter and flour, and set aside.

In a large saucepan, steep the saffron in the water. Whisk the flours, salt, and baking soda together, and set aside.

Add the butter and turmeric into the saffron water, then turn on the heat and simmer until the butter melts. Remove from heat.

Whisk in the sugar, but don’t panic if it doesn’t dissolve. Whisk in the flour mixture. Whisk in the egg and then the sour cream, until the color is even.

Fill the prepared muffin tins about 2/3 full.

Bake for 20 minutes. Don’t worry about it setting fully – it will finish setting as it cools.

Makes 10 muffin-sized cakes.

Meyer Lemon Sorbet
470 g meyer lemon juice
80 g glucose syrup
80 g agave nectar
80 g sugar
100 g water
1/2 tsp guar gum (or substitute pectin or a commercial sorbet stabilizer)

Blend together. Freeze in your ice cream churner as per usual.

Argan Oil Whipped Cream
Heavy cream
Sugar
Argan oil

Mix to taste and beat until whipped.

Almond Brittle
Sliced almonds
Water
Sugar
Cream of tartar

Toast sliced almonds in a dry pan on the stove until they start to brown and smell delicious. Set aside.

Heat the water, sugar, and a bit of tartar in a saucepan until it is lightly golden, a bit paler than you eventually want it to be. Stir in the toasted almonds, and spread on a silpat to cool and set.

Quinces are in season, and this year I mean to take advantage of it. Quinces are like apples’ upscale cousins – tarter, rosier, more gussied up and elegant. While the apple is available right here, right now, the quince must be cooked for a long time until its pale flesh turns a ruddy hue and its lush sweetness is fully evoked. The apple wants you without hesitation, but the quince must be seduced.

When picking a quince, choose the yellowest-skinned fruit you can find. The green fuzzy ones aren’t quite ripe yet – not that you could tell by tasting, since even a ripe quince is too tart to eat raw.

To make this sorbet, we had to simmer the quince down with sugar, water, and vanilla for a long while before adding in the cranberry, running it through a food mill, then chilling and churning the resulting puree. It’s a slow process, but it doesn’t require much supervision, and the final product is well worth the wait.

This is a sorbet, a real vegan treat, but when you put it in your mouth, it’s hard to believe that it contains no dairy. The creaminess is astounding.

In fact, this is my entry for Vegan Ventures, where Tasty Palettes is gathering up vegan recipes this month.

(Not being vegan myself, though, I prefer to eat it with a rich, decadent, dairy-laden chocolate sauce drizzled on top.)

I think Dave plans on making a savory, warm version of this as a cranberry quince sauce for Thanksgiving.

Cranberry Quince Sorbet
3 quinces
3/4 C sugar
1 vanilla bean
1 C water
4 oz cranberries
1/4 C Nocino della Cristina walnut liquor (or any other liquor you may prefer)

Peel and core the quince, and cut into chunks. Put it in a small saucepan. Slice the vanilla bean in half lengthwise and scrape the seeds into the pot, then throw the rest of the bean in after them. Add the water and sugar, stir everything together, and simmer until the quinces turn a lovely pink. Add the cranberries, and continue to simmer until they become tender.

Push the whole mess of stuff through a food mill or fine mesh strainer. Chill in your fridge, then stir in the liquor.

Churn according to your ice cream maker’s regular instructions.

This is my new favorite ice cream. I mean that. It is absolutely bursting with flavor, rich nuttiness, cookie crunchiness, and surprising sweet sharpness from the sherry vinegar swirl. God, this is good.

Dave pointed out that when we brainstorm recipes together they always turn out better than the recipes we create separately on our own, and he’s right.

It’s somewhat reminiscent of the Almond Cookie Ice Cream you can get at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, which tastes a bit like cold, creamy marzipan. Our Hazelnut Cookie Sherry Vinegar Swirl Ice Cream is better, though, with the crunch and the sharpness added in. I’m just really pleased with myself today, as you can tell. Ice cream success will do that to a person.

A few paragraphs down in this post you will find not only an ice cream recipe, but also a recipe for the hazelnut amaretti that provide the crunch in this ice cream. They’re quite good on their own as well, if you’re into that sort of thing.

This all started with a kitchen full of excess hazelnuts, fresh plums, and fresh sage. What happened to the sage and the plums, you may well ask. Dave vetoed Hazelnut Sage Ice Cream (I can’t imagine why), and after one taste of this splendid ice cream, we completely forgot about the plums.

Dave recommends that you contemplate sage and plums while eating this ice cream, as it may bring you closer to sweet, sweet enlightenment.

Hazelnut Cookie Sherry Vinegar Swirl Ice Cream
(adapted from Emeril’s hazelnut ice cream recipe)
1 C hazelnuts
1/2 C heavy cream
1 C milk
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
6 large egg yolks
1/2 C granulated sugar
1/8 C frangelico (hazelnut liqueur)
8 hazelnut cookies, coarsely chopped (recipe below)
Sherry vinegar syrup to taste, about 1/8-1/4 C (recipe below)

Preheat your oven to 350°.

Spread the hazelnuts on a baking sheet. Bake for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally until the skins are cracked and the nuts are lightly golden (check under the skins for color). Rub the skins off as best you can. Cool to room temperature.

Blend the hazelnuts coarsely with the cream and 1/2 C of the milk. Pour the chunky froth you’ve created into a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Slit the vanilla bean in half the long way and scrape the seeds into the cream, then throw the bean in after them. Bring to a gentle boil over medium heat, then turn off the heat and let it infuse, covered, for about 20 minutes or so.

Bring the cream back up to a simmer.

Whisk the yolks and sugar in a medium bowl. In a slow, steady stream, whisk 1 C of the hot cream mixture into the egg mixture. This tempers the eggs so that they are less likely to curdle. Gradually whisk the egg mixture back into the saucepan. Stir constantly over medium-low heat until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon and reaches 170°F on a candy thermometer. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl.

Stir in the other 1/2 C milk and the frangelico. Cover such that the plastic wrap touches the surface of the cream (this prevents a skin from forming) and stick it in the fridge to cool.

Once it is cold, follow your ice cream machine’s instructions to finish the process. Add the chopped cookies in just before taking the ice cream out of the machine, and gently stir in the sherry vinegar syrup once the ice cream is already out of the machine and in whatever container you plan to freeze it in.

Leave the ice cream in the freezer for a bit to harden further before serving.
 
 
Hazelnut Amaretti
4 oz hazelnuts
4 oz confectioner’s sugar
1 tsp powdered egg white
2 tbsp frangelico
1/2 C granulated sugar
1 tsp powdered egg white
2 tbsp frangelico

Preheat your oven to 375°.

Grind the hazelnuts (skin and all) in a big tough food processor as best you can. Add the confectioner’s sugar and process again, as best you can. Add the granulated sugar, process briefly again. Add one powdered egg white and 2 tbsp frangelico and process further, until it turns into a paste/dough. Add the remaning egg white and frangelico and process briefly. (We use powdered egg whites instead of fresh egg whites so that we can make up the liquid with frangelico instead, thereby seriously boosting the flavor.)

Pipe the dough in 1/2 tbsp blobs about 1″ apart onto a parchment paper covered baking sheet.

Bake until just starting to color (about 15-20 minutes), rotating from top to bottom and from front to back after 8 minutes. Then turn off the oven, open the oven door to let out a bit of the hot air, close the door again, and leave the cookies alone for 5 minutes.

Cool on a cooling rack to room temperature.

This recipe makes about 30 cookies. You’ll only need 8 for the ice cream, so that means plenty of cookies to just nosh on by themselves.
 
 
Sherry Vinegar Syrup
(adapted from Cloudberry Quark’s balsamic syrup recipe)
2 tbsp butter
3/8 C dark brown sugar
3/8 C sherry vinegar

In a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt the butter and sugar together. Stir in the vinegar. Simmer, stirring, until it thickens. You can test the thickness by drizzling a bit on a cold spoon.

Life has been busy. I’ve been to Portland, Boston, and home again. I won an acquittal in a murder trial, had lunch at the incomparable Love + Butter, foraged for tasty plants with Wild Man Steve Brill, attended the Fancy Food Show, and discovered that I love not only glassblowing, but lampworking glass beads as well. I am working on some interesting cases, developing a new community website, and am about to start writing (about food, of course) for Gothamist.

This is just a pile of excuses for not posting here more often lately, really. Travel, work, and an absurd collection of hobbies will do that to a person. I love you all, but my clients come first.

That said, my fridge is bursting with ingredients, my bookshelves with cookbooks, and my mind with inspiration. More to come, soon!

In the meantime, enjoy this wonderful ice cream, made by following a recipe found in Kate Zuckerman’s The Sweet Life: Desserts from Chanterelle. She’s right, it really does taste like a tart tatine.

Apple Caramel Ice Cream
(from The Sweet Life: Desserts from Chanterelle by Kate Zuckerman)
5 C apple cider
3/4 C granulated sugar
1 1/2 C heavy cream
1 C whole milk
8 egg yolk
1 egg
Pinch of salt

Boil the cider down and reduce it to 1 1/2 C. Be careful, as it can get away from you and burn if you wander away near the end. (Why yes, that is what happened to my first attempt.)

Combine the sugar and water in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and cook until it is pale gold. Remove from heat and let it continue to cook until it is whatever level of brown you think tastiest. Add the reduced cider. The caramel will freeze up. Return it to gentle heat and whisk until smooth. Whisk in the cream and milk.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg, egg yolks, and salt together for a minute. Continue whisking as you pour some of the hot cream into it, then pour the egg mixture back into the rest of the cream, whisking all the while.

Set up a bowl in an ice bath, with a fine mesh strainer on top.

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it coats the back of a spoon. Strain into the bowl in the ice bath. When it cools, chill it in the fridge until quite cold, then follow your ice cream machine’s instructions.

I dipped a spoon into the churning ice cream maker and gave it to my brother to taste.

“This is actually very good,” he said. “What else are you going to put in it?”

“Nothing,” I assured him.

“Good!”

This took place last Sunday, when we all gathered at my parents’ house to pick sour cherries off their tree. I made the base for this Strawberry Tarragon Sorbet at home, and brought it over to finish up using their ice cream machine. A sour cherry sorbet would have been more appropriate, but the greenmarket strawberries have been so lusciously inviting lately that I could not turn them down.

My brothers refused to let me take the remainder of the sorbet home with me when I left that evening.

I’m in Portland, Oregon now, and will be somewhere in the area for the next week, visiting Dave’s aunts. I’m told there will be a trip to a beach house and a mountain cabin, and of course time with a few friends and a visit to Powell’s before the end. Is there anything else I should see or do while I’m here? I won’t have much free time, but I can try, and I can make a list for next time of need be.

Strawberry Tarragon Sorbet
(from The Sweet Life: Desserts from Chanterelle by Kate Zuckerman)
3 pints strawberries
2/3 C granulated sugar
2 tbsp corn syrup
1 oz fresh tarragon

Wash and dry the strawberries. Remove the stems and leaves, and cut each strawberry in half. Toss them together with the sugar.

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the strawberries and sugar with the corn syrup and 1/2 C water. Bring to a boil, then add the tarragon and cook for 1 minute. Remove from heat, cover, and let steep for 5 minutes. Remove the tarragon with a fork. Whisk in the corn syrup.

Blend until smooth, then strain. Chill, then follow your ice cream machine’s instructions to finish it off.

Plantains, o platanos, which I fell in love with in the form of sweet fried maduros years ago. Plantains, which look like large bananas, but hide a secretly unsweetened center until they blacken and transform into something marvelous. From the black, squishy, grotesque exterior of a fully ripe plantain emerges an ingredient you cannot find unless you wait until that moment to bring it to life.

Emerson wrote that there are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat. Plantains transform over their lives from one ingredient to another, each entirely different from the last, but I am only interested in them in that one perfect moment just before they mold and rot in the end.

The problem with serving hot dishes with cold ice cream or gelato, of course, is that the gelato tends to melt away so quickly, until it is nothing more than a wisp of cinnamon cream and drizzled honey coating the plate.

Baked Rummy Plantains
Butter or oil for the pan
3 plantains (black, soft, ripe!)
1/2 C granulated sugar
2 tbsp dark brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon (or more to taste)
2 tbsp dark rum
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp unsalted butter (cut into small pieces)

Preheat your oven to 375º.

Butter (or oil) an 8″x8″ baking dish. Peel the plantains and slice them at an angle into about 1/2″ thick slices. Layer the slices into the baking dish. Sprinkle on all the other ingredients.

Bake until tender, golden, and done. This should take about 30-40 minutes. If your plantains are not ripe enough to begin with, it will never quite work out, so do be patient while waiting for them to ripen before bothering to make this dish.

Cinnamon Gelato
1 1/2 C whole milk
1 1/2 C evaporated milk
1/2 C granulated sugar
1/8 C rum
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 large egg yolks
pinch salt
2 tbsp cinnamon (or to taste)

Prepare an ice water bath and a metal bowl that can fit into it.

Bring the milk, evaporated milk, rum, vanilla extract, and about half of sugar to a simmer in a heavy saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved.

Beat the yolks, remaining sugar, salt, and cinnamon together until thick and pale. Add the milk mixture in slowly while whisking or beating. Return the entire mixture to the saucepan and cook over medium low heat, stirring constantly, until it reaches about 160°.

Pour the mix through a sieve into the metal bowl in the ice water bath. Once it reaches room temperature, transfer it to the fridge to cool further. Then send it through your ice cream machine as usual.

While I am still on my Hungarian cooking kick, I offer you two desserts: one traditional, the other, not so much.

This my entry for Sugar High Friday 23: Surprise Inside, which is run this month by Alanna of A Veggie Venture. Finding cabbage inside a dessert strudel is not surprising to Hungarians or their descendants, who are used to the strange versatility and fabulous flavor range of that particular leafy green, but it sure seems to surprise everybody else. Paprika ice cream, well, that surprised even me.

Paprika Ice Cream
1 1/2 C heavy cream
1 C milk
1/2 C sugar
1 vanilla bean
1/4 C sweet Hungarian paprika

Pour the heavy cream into a saucepan. Slice the vanilla bean in half, the long way, and scrape the seeds out into the heavy cream, then throw the rest of the bean in after them. Add the paprika and sugar and bring almost to a boil, then let steep, covered, until the flavor is strong enough for you. Chill, then whisk in the milk and put through your ice cream maker as per its instructions.

Cabbage Strudel
Phyllo dough
1 medium cabbage
3 tbsp sugar (or more to taste)
2 tsp cinnamon (or more to taste)
olive oil
salt
black pepper

The cabbage is prepared much the same way as it was for my cabbage-stuffed peppers, but with more cinnamon and sugar, and more focus on caramelizing the cabbage when sauteing it.

Pull off the most wretched outer leaves of the cabbage, and rinse the rest. Chop it up into chunks that your food processor can handle, but remember to remove and toss out the core. Grind pretty finely in your food processor.

Mix the ground cabbage with plenty of salt and leave covered in your fridge for at least two hours. The point here is to allow the salt to draw some water out of the cabbage. Once that’s done, you rinse off the salt and squeeze as much water as you can out of the cabbage.

Saute the cabbage in a saucepan with some olive oil, along with the sugar, cinnamon, and salt and black pepper to taste. You are basically trying here to caramelize the cabbage. Be patient, it will all work out.

Lay out a few sheets of phyllo, brushing melted butter on each before laying the next on. Spread a line of the cabbage on it, the long way, and roll up as in the first method described here.

Bake at 400º for about 30 minutes or until done.

Sugar High Friday, SHF, SHF23

I came across this recipe for basil or mint sorbet by Sara Kate over at Apartment Therapy: the kitchen, and of course had to give it a try. I followed Sara Kate’s recipe almost exactly, except that I used apple lambic instead of apple juice, and added it when I added the basil, because I thought the texture of the sorbet would be improved if I made sure not to cook the alcohol away.

I really disliked the sorbet when I first tasted it. It was too uncompromisingly tart for me, actually. The green apples seemed to intensify the basil flavor rather than mellowing it, to the point where I really wasn’t up to taking a second bite. I can’t blame that on the original recipe, though – it was dramatically representative of the fruit and herbs involved, which I would say made it a complete success. I just couldn’t handle it.

Then I remembered the lemon olive oil we recently picked up at O & Co.

We were there to taste olive oils on Dave’s birthday, and the lady handed me a tiny spoon of this lemon oil with just a dot of their balsamic vinegar in the center of it. It blew me away. I haven’t been paid or offered anything to make a product placement, and I intend to try to find a less expensive lemon olive oil in the future, but this stuff was still worth every cent we paid for it. The first thing we did when we got home was drizzle a bit of it on some chocolate sorbet, and oh, my, that was gorgeous. Pure, perfect lemon flavor, but smooth as can be, without any of the acidity.

So, I poured a tiny drop of lemon olive oil onto a spoonful of basil sorbet, and dared to taste it again. It wasn’t just better. It was good. Really, really good.

No recipe this time. Just links to follow, and my sheer glee at the usefulness of this latest addition to our pantry.

(This is also my entry for Sugar High Friday #21: Ice Ice Baby. And though I posted about them before the SHF theme was announced, I also want to enter my sour cherry almond milk sorbet and chocolate cassis sorbet. Consider this post a gateway sorbet to the rest, perhaps.)

Sugar High Friday, SHF

Whenever I see blueberries, I think of my mother. She loves blueberries so much that even when she was pregnant with one of my brothers, Josh, and eating them made her feel nauseous, she just couldn’t stop. Pregnant and sick and miserable, she ate blueberries until she vomited purple.

She has told me repeatedly that that was when she truly understood just how much my father loves her – when she was pregnant and ate too many blueberries, the day he cleaned up her purple vomit for her.

Not the most appetizing story, I know. But blueberries are love, and after seeing the way they have been overflowing the farmer’s markets in the area lately, I had to make this blueberry oatmeal crisp. It may look like purple vomit, but it tastes much, much better. It is warm and gooey and crunchy and good, and it would tempt my mother even were she pregnant and sick again. I’m sure my father would gripe, but take care of her in the end.

Blueberry Oatmeal Crisp
For the gooey bottom
3 C fresh blueberries
1 tbsp flour
2 tbsp plus 1/4 C (packed) dark brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
Lime juice to taste
For the crisp top
1/2 C rolled oats
1/4 C almond meal
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Rinse the blueberries, but do not pat completely dry. Pour them into a buttered small-ish baking dish. Add the other gooey bottom ingredients, and stir to mix. Leave it be while you prepare the top so the sugar has a chance to dissolve.

Mix in all the dry ingredients for the top, then rub in the butter with your fingers until the texture is somewhat clumpier. Sprinkle the crumblies over the blueberries.

Bake for about 35 minutes, or until the berries are bubbling and the top looks golden and done. Allow it to sit and cool to merely warm before serving.

Lime Ice Cream
2 C heavy cream
1 C milk
1/2 C sugar
Juice and zest from 2 limes

Whisk all ingredients together. Chill. Put through your ice cream maker as usual. I know it sounds terrifying, and you may fear that the citric acid will curdle the milk and cream, but I assure you that it will not. All is well.