Cardamom Ice Cream

Ice cream. Cardamom. The final frontier. Well, no, but I still can't get over the fact that I can make ice cream as if it's some super human power that I was bestowed, by none other than my father (as a birthday present). It actually transforms a bowl of milk and sugar into a scoopable solid. Remarkable.

I have an obsession with ice cream. It's unfortunate but I really don't want to try overcoming it...yet. And I don't want to brag or anything, but I'm something of an ice cream connoisseur. The following statements are all subjective truths of course, but take my word for them. The best gelato in the city is at Grom, which has about three locations throughout Manhattan. If you happen to be on Shelter Island for some reason, look up Redding's and try theirs, it's insanely good.

Pinpointing the best ice cream shops in New York is a behemoth task, one that I don't feel entitled to execute. But I'm perfectly fine giving you some of my most frequented venues. Van Leeuwen Artisan ice cream in the East Village (7th Street between 1st and 2nd) and Greenpoint is wonderful and they also have a truck that drives around the city selling flavors like rose water, espresso, cane sugar and earl grey. Finally, Marlow and Sons on Broadway between Wythe and Berry in Williamsburg has flavors like basil and lemon verbena (don't knock the basil before you try it).

I also had amazing cardamom ice cream at the now defunct Puffs and Pastries in Hampden, Baltimore two years ago and ever since I've been trying to find a substitute. When I went back last November, while I was interviewing at JHU, my mouth watering for cardamom ice cream, I discovered that it had turned into a burger joint.

So I took it upon myself to make my own cardamom ice cream using this recipe with minor variations (I increased the amount of cardamom and I didn't add the lemon zest). This turned out to be a two day process, although it is quite possible in one day, don't despair. I began by adding 2 cups of milk and 1 1/2 cups of sugar to a saucepan and stirring in 2 tablespoons of flour. I let this thicken, mixing it occasionally, until there were small bubbles but it wasn't boiling. Simultaneously, I whisked 4 egg yolks in a separate bowl (glass or metal) and poured in 1 cup of my milk/sugar/flour mixture and whisked vigorously so I didn't make scrambled eggs.

I left this to the side and then returned to the saucepan. I added three cups of milk, 1 tsp. vanilla extract and 3 tsp ground cardamom (I wimped out and used already ground spice). Then I added the other bowl to the saucepan and kept it on a medium high heat until it boiled. I covered it with saran wrap and put it in the refrigerator overnight. It has to be really cold, so don't be impatient.

The next morning, I added 3 cups of heavy cream and whisked it all together. My dad assembled the ice cream maker after I gave up in complete frustration (we've now got it down to a science), and I added the mixture (all of it) to the bowl. It's amazing! The bowl has liquid surrounding it that freezes after it sits in your freezer for a minimum of 15 hours. I set the kitchen aid (this is an accessory for it) to stir speed 1 and let it run for 30 minutes. It's only soupy after this, so I put it in the freezer for a few hours and poof there was delicious and simple cardamom ice cream.

There are so many flavors to try and I can't wait to get started. My great aunt Jean had a best friend for a very long time named Olive P. Cummings who would order pints of ice cream from her local creamery and have it delivered to her house every week...until she was 98. That is my goal.

Spring and All

Lemon Tart

 William Carlos Williams' poem depends a great deal upon the contrast between winter and the coming of spring. He writes, "but now the stark dignity of/ entrance-Still, the profound change/ has come upon them: rooted they/grip down and begin to awaken." While the coming of this spring on Tuesday will not offer a break from a bitter winter, since we never really had a winter, its entrance is still marked.

My steps are lighter as I walk west on Houston after school and I can sit with the windows open when I get home. The countless pages of Locke are not as dreary to read and the tedious lines of the Vulgate are easier to translate. I can already smell the season as it dawns on the city, a smell which I have yet to properly describe. It immediately transports me to evenings eating dinner on the stoop, reading on the bench and all in all being a little kid again.

Spring usually brings midterms with it and countless exams as my teachers attempt to give us a grade for our progress reports, but this spring I feel liberated. Perhaps it has something to do with my delicious lemon tart, but more likely it has something to do with the fact that I have time to make one. As summer (and college) grow near, I can feel the excitement growing within me.

I decided to inaugurate spring with a lemon tart from the Rose Bakery cookbook "Breakfast Lunch and Tea", from which I have also made Eccles cakes and the polenta cake. This book marries English and French cooking and has delicious breakfast, dinner and dessert recipes.

To begin, set your oven to 350 F/180 C and start to make the crust. This recipe makes two full pie plates, so you can scale it down depending on your tins/audience. Mix 3 1/3 cups of flour with 2/3 cup of sugar, a pinch of salt and 1 1/2 cups of unsalted butter. Mix this together with your hands until it is all incorporated. Now add 1 egg, 2 egg yolks and 1 tsp vanilla extract and use a fork to incorporate all the bits together.

Finally, mix the dough until it is a homogenous mass and roll it out. You might want to split the dough in half before you roll because it might take over your counter. Put the rolled dough into your tart tins and leave in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. In the meantime, you should begin the lemon curd since it takes a while to make. Note, this recipe calls for two separate lemon bases that will be layered within the tart (the curd on top).

I used "Tea and Sympathy's" lemon curd recipe, which you can find in my Lemon Danish post. This takes approximately 45 minutes plus refrigeration. Once that is cooking, you can begin the second (lower level) lemon filling. Whisk 1 cup of lemon juice with 3/4 cup sugar and then add 8 eggs and 2 egg yolks and continue to whisk. Whisk in 1/3 cup light cream and 1 tbs flour until everything is incorporated.

After thirty minutes has passed you should remove your tart shells from the fridge and glaze them with beaten eggs so they become golden. You are now ready to pre-bake them, also called blind baking. Line the shells with parchment paper and fill them to the brim with dry barley or rice (or pie weights if you're really fancy). Make sure the grains are pressed against all the sides. This is to prevent the crust from rising making it very difficult to add your filling. Bake them for 20 minutes at 350 F.

If there is a large window of time between your pre-baking and the addition of your lemon filling, you should bake the crusts for 5 minutes more before you add the filling. Now, remove the shells from the oven and strain in the lemon mixture. Put them in the oven for around 20-30 minutes (until the filling is set, but not puffy or bubbly). That means you've made quiche instead.

This is a picture of what it should look like after you add the lemon curd on top. Let it cool and then spread your curd onto the surface (about 1/4 inch thick) and smooth it out with a spatula. If you want cool tarts, refrigerate them for a half hour or so, but we ate ours hot and it was delicious.

Of course, you can make these is small tart tins, rather than glass pie plates, but both make for some scrumptious tarts. My great-grandmother, Allessandrina's, birthday would have been tomorrow, so Happy Birthday Nonny, I can taste your cooking. Williams observes that "dazed spring approaches", signified by wind and grass and "wildcarrot leaf." For me, it was my nonny's yellow pansies, perhaps the reason I love all things yellow.

They Say it's Your Birthday

Buttercream Frosting Cake with Bitter Chocolate Drizzled...all over

March 7 was my 18th birthday! The weekend produced loads of delicious food, not all of which I can take credit for, including some very interesting cookies (made by all those at my party) which I should get on this blog soon enough, a buttercream frosting cake with bitter chocolate drizzled over it (which i did solo), and risotto with mushrooms (by my papa). 

We did not have 1 and 8 candles since no one in the family has been 18 or 81 in a while. So, my mathematically inclined party-goers decided that you could add up the five and the four and multiply by two. When I attempted to decipher their logic, I was quickly reprimanded for omitting the parenthesis essential to any successful order of operations. 2*(5+4)=18. Yes, we could all get a out a little more...

Not sure if you can tell, but in the above picture, which happens to be me on my 1st birthday, I am enjoying a slice of this very cake. Of course, my father made it for that party, but he passed on the tradition or weakness to me and so we revisited this wonderful recipe 17 years later.

To begin the cake you need 3 3/4 cups of flour, 2 1/2 tsps of baking soda, and 2 1/4 tsps of baking powder all mixed together. In a mixing bowl cream 1 cup of butter and then add 2 1/2 cups of sugar gradually, and three eggs (preferably separated with the egg whites folded in towards the end). Also add in 2 1/2 tsps of vanilla extract. Add the dry ingredients little by little, and alternate by adding 2 1/2 cups of buttermilk. Make sure the batter is thoroughly mixed with no lumps.

This is a double layer cake so you will need two buttered and floured cake tins (about 9*13 in). Pour the batter into both tins about 3/4 of the way since the cake will rise. Bake at 350 F for 40 minutes or until you can insert and remove a knife without batter on it. Also feel free to add lemon zest to the batter.

In the meantime, you should begin to make the frosting, which is the best part of the cake. I don't have exact measurements for this because it's really obvious when you've done it right: it stops tasting just like butter and it becomes whiter. I used 4 cups of butter (this must ice the entire outside and the middle of the cake so it's not as ridiculous as it sounds) and a box and a half of confectioner's sugar. Cream the butter first and then add the confectioner's sugar little by little, scraping the sides and the bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Towards the end, when the color and taste satisfies you, add about 2ish tablespoons of brandy or grand marnier and beat for one last time.

When your cake is done, let it cool and then very carefully dislodge the cake from it's tin with a pie cutter. Make sure you completely free it otherwise the top will rip off as you lift the tin (as mine did). Once the cake is cool enough, use a rubber spatula to spread the frosting on one of the cakes and then press them together. Finish icing the cake, making sure you reach all the sides (you can always make more frosting if you need to). You should also melt the baking chocolate in a double boiler while the cake is baking. Don't use chocolate with any sugar in it since the cake is fairly sweet on it's own and you really need a flavor to cut it. Finally, refrigerate for as long as you can before you eat it (30 minutes minimum).

                                         

My friends enjoyed licking the whisks and scraping the sides of the icing bowl, which I was happy to provide and I will admit that I had a slice of it for breakfast the Monday after my birthday weekend. I'll pay for that one day, but on that morning it was exactly what I needed. Until next time.

                                                     

Polenta, Rice, Lemon and Orange Cake

Whenever a drama teacher decided to do improvisational games with the class or a group of friends gathered to play charades, I froze. Given a monologue from "A Midsummer Night's Dream", I would give the character all I had, but the moment I am told to improvise I tighten up. I would much rather write down a scene on the spot than stand awkwardly in front of a partner trying to summon up clever bits and revealing retorts.

Cooking disguises itself as a cold reading, hard but manageable and even entertaining if you stick to what's written. It's edgy and raw and is clearly your own interpretation of classical text. Inevitably, it won't turn out the way you expected it to, but that's what gives it style.

The other night I had an inexplicable urge to bake a Polenta, Rice and Lemon Cake from my Rose Bakery cookbook. I was preparing for my cold reading by setting my stage: I heated my oven and picked out my ingredients from the cupboard, when I realized that I had no white sugar, no almonds, and two few lemons, all of which were required for the recipe, I knew it was time for improvisation.

I thought briefly about a story I had when I was little, a parody of "The Three Little Pigs,"by A. Wolf (Jon Scieszka) called "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs." In this version, the wolf's version, "way back in Once Upon a Time time, [he] was making a birthday cake for [his] dear old granny. [He] had a terrible sneezing cold. [He] ran out of sugar." I thought about knocking on a neighbor's door and pleading for two and 1/4 cups of sugar, two lemons and 5 1/2 cups of almonds, but then I thought of the ending to the story.

"So I walked down the street to ask my neighbor for a cup of sugar. Now this neighbor was a pig. And he wasn't too bright either. He had built his whole house out of straw. Can you believe it? I mean who in his right mind would build a house of straw? So of course the minute I knocked on the door, it fell right in. I didn't want to just walk into someone else's house." 

Of course you know the ending, but what you don't know is that the pigs were rather rude and said some rather distasteful comments about the wolf's granny. In short, I decided to improvise rather than borrow. 

First improvisation: brown sugar instead of white sugar. Result: moister, darker, molasses- ëer. Second improvisation: two lemons a dash of lemon extract and half of one orange instead of four lemons. Result: tastes a bit more like orange than lemon, although the lemon is still noticeable. I actually misread the original recipe which calls for the juice of one lemon and the zest of four, but this worked as well. Third improvisation: 1 1/2 cups of ground walnuts and 1 cup of ground pignoli nuts instead of 5 1/2 cups of almonds. Result: Moister cake (less dry ingredients), tastes like walnuts and pignoli nuts. Foreseeable conclusion. 

I also had to lengthen the baking time from 40 min to 50 min and raise the oven temperature from 325 F to 375 F. To begin the cake (I will give both scripted and improvised ingredients and methods, do with them what you will), mix 2 1/4 cups white sugar or 2 cups of brown sugar with the juice and zest of four lemons or two lemons and 1/2 an orange. Feel free to add either 1/2 tsp of vanilla or lemon extract as well. Mix the sugar and juice with 2 1/4 cups of butter.

Gradually add in 6 eggs and continue mixing. In a separate bowl combine 1/2 cup rice flour (amazingly enough I had this) and 2 cups of polenta, plus 2 tsps of baking powder. Mix together with your choice of nuts. Fold this into the wet batter until it is all combined. My recipe told me to bake in small, rectangular bread tins because this cake is known to sink in the middle.

Of course I had no small rectangular bread tins so I used a pie tin and used my culinary expertise to ensure a successful outcome, which consisted of crossing my fingers and wishing really really hard. I also frantically checked the consistency of the middle with a knife every few minutes. Granted it was soft for a longer time than I've ever experienced, but hey, I rolled with it, because that's what improvisation is all about.

I also sprinkled confectioner's sugar on the top and spread it around with a rubber spatula. This cake was an experiment, and one with great potential to explode or deflate or do whatever else it is that ad libbed experiments do, but it was a success. The polenta gave it a wonderfully grainy texture that rivaled the subtle flavor of the rice flour and the citrus fruits.  I accompanied the cake with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, which I labored over for ten minutes, and downed both before school.

All of my drama teachers and summer stock directors would be proud of my improvisational skills. And unlike the wolf's eventual framing for the three little pigs incident, my adventure turned out to be quite enjoyable and delicious. "That's it, the real story."-A. Wolf