Strawberry Basil Ice Cream

Hello, everyone. It's hot. Time for ice cream!

Well, gelato, really. I'm still working on having the right ingredients at the right time for spontaneous confectionary cookery.

First up: one litre of Foxhill whole milk. I'm a sucker for glass bottles.

Pour into the pot.

Set the milk aside to warm up for a bit on low heat. Now you have to chop a bunch of stuff. Basil leaves and strawberries, to be exact. Both of which are from Longspell Point Farms. 

Roll up basil leaves and slice thinly. Dice strawberries. Dish these up in separate bowls. Add a tablespoon of granulated sugar to the strawberries and set them in the fridge. 

Turn off the heat under the milk, toss in the greens, cover, and let them steep for at least half an hour, or overnight. 

Off to beat some eggs.

Three eggs to a litre of milk. I was just guessing on amounts, but it worked out. 

Whisked to a pale yellow with about 1/4 cup of granulated sugar. It may have been less - I didn't want it too sweet.

Strain (warm but not boiled) basil-milk into a container, preferably one with a spout. Slowly pour warmed milk into eggs and sugar, whisking constantly.

Once about a third to a half of the milk is mixed in, pop the pot back on the burner and slowly mix the eggs-milk-sugar into the warm milk on medium low, whisking constantly. Add a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice and salt to your preference.

Switch to a wooden spoon when the two mixtures are incorporated. Keep stirring until the custard starts to follow the spoon in thick swirls, or when the custard thickly coats the back of the spoon.

Once the custard thickens, remove the oven from direct heat and cool the custard to room temperature, stirring occasionally so a skin doesn't form on top. Once it's cooled, pop the pot into the freezer and stir with a flexible spatula every twenty minutes for two hours. 

I put the strawberries in here, but next time, I'll do that last. 

After the two hours, let ice cream freeze completely. I needed my oven for another recipe, so I poured the half-frozen stuff into an eight-inch glass baking dish. 

Here is where I needed some help. The ice cream was too flaky, which happens when you don't agitate the custard enough when it's freezing. I decided to use Kitchen Vignettes' method of freezing and blending, which you can read here.

Here's the chunked-up frozen cream in my ant-size food processor whose miniature engine screams like an eight-year old being chased by the Bogeyman himself. Four batches needed, in this case. 

And here's the result! It's pink, but you can still taste the basil. 

The best way to combat 35-40 degree weather. Best enjoyed immediately. Store in an airtight container in the freezer. 

Potato Soup

Hello, everyone! The world has melted here. See below. Also, it's time for soup again!

Potato this time. Smooth, comforting, and a little spicy. We start with the star and co-star of this blog, of course.

The usual suspects plus some unexpected guests. I guess I forgot to show you the potatoes, but you can use your imagination.

Cauliflower, onions, apple, parsnip. Start with chopping the Cauliflower. 

Next, slice the half-apple and onion, and throw them AND the cauliflower into hot olive oil.

Saute this bunch until a bit brown and very wilted.

Chop the potatoes and parsnips into smallish pieces. Hey! Leave the skin on the potatoes; did you know that you could survive on ONLY potatoes "in their jackets" and be nutritionally sound? That's why. The skin is the best part! Anyway...

Throw them on top of the softened veggie/apple mix, and add veggie or chicken broth to just cover

Let simmer for about 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft. Blend in batches in a blender, or use a super awesome immersion blender like I do because my awesome parents gave me one for Christmas.

Add the juice of a lemon, plus salt and pepper to taste, along with a dash of worcestershire sauce. Enjoy, good for a cold day.

Swiss Chard Bread Pudding

Today, I'm taking advantage of the grocery store. The persistent cold weather, pictured below,

is retarding the ability of local farms to produce the beautiful bunches of greens I've come to expect in April. So, off to the grocery store I go.

This bread pudding is based off of this recipe by Kitchen Vignettes. I'm halving it, roughly. We start with beautiful swiss chard. Red stalks, green leaves.

2 to 3 garlic cloves, an onion, and a handful of chopped parsley make up our base and aromatics.

Fry 'em up!

Once the onions turn translucent, chuck in the chopped chard. Cover and steam...

until wilted, like this:

Meanwhile, make the base. About two cups of whole milk go in with two eggs and about a cup of cheese. Some shameless advertising here: Milk from Foxhill Cheese House in Port Williams.

And eggs from Jordan's Natural Acres.

Cheese (old cheddar, but add grated swiss and parmesan too!) goes in

This is all whisked together with a teaspoon of salt and a half-teaspoon of pepper. Now the bread. Cut up whatever leftover loaves you have to make about three cups of bread cubes. If you want a dense pudding, use dense bread. If you want it lighter, with pockets of filling interspersed throughout, use airy bread. I opted for dense. Below are halves of two rye loaves.

This works fine for gluten-free breads, too. You may end up with a less chunky, smoother bread "puree" after the bread soaks up the milk and eggs, but if you want to avoid that, add the bread to the mix just before putting the pudding in the oven. 

Cut them into cubes, like this:

Now dump the wilted chard/onion mix into the milk and eggs and cheese. Stir.

Throw in the bread cubes and stir until it looks like this! 

If you're working with really stale bread, let this sit for 15 - 30 minutes, adding more liquid as necessary, until the bread cubes are soaked through.

I put this in the oven for an hour at 350, but I think slightly less time at 375 would be good as well. If all else fails, wait till the top is golden-brown before taking it out.

Cinnamon Rolls

Hello, everyone!

Have you heard of Gypsophilia? I hadn't until very recently. Last night, I attended a barn dance at which Oro! Orkestra, a band very near and dear to my heart played before Gypsophilia. I danced my feet off. If you've never in your life had a night or day or hour in which you threw your various limbs in every direction at once because of the rhythm and energy of the music you were listening to, I highly recommend it.

Gypsophilia! And barn decorations!

These cinnamon rolls are brought to you by the calorie-burning dancing, clapping, jumping, twisting, and leaping with which I exhausted myself yesterday.

None of those people are me, obviously, but the center of that floor is where I was.

In this recipe, we return to the counsel of Joy the Baker. This lovely lady recently made cinnamon rolls with a level of pizzazz that I simply can't recreate, so I'm using the base of this recipe, cut in half, minus the pistachios, dark chocolate, and orange peel. Basic cinnamon-sugar is what I need today. 

First, we start by washing the pot.

Then we make the dough. You'll just have to trust me when I say I followed the recipe, because there's something about the distraction of making cinnamon rolls that makes me forget the presence of my camera. Oops. I'm totally rocking this blogging thing.

Anyway, I added to the recipe a little bit. Joy, the wonderful kitchen enchantress, bakes her rolls in a greased pan, but I wanted mine gooey. Goo is the best part of cinnamon rolls, depending on my mood, so I made some caramel in the bottom of the pot. Really the only thing you need is sugar and water, but I jazzed it up a bit.

Caramel:

pat of butter (2 tbsp-ish)

1/4 cup sugar (I like brown sugar, but that's up to you)

dash of honey or maple syrup or any simple syrup

pinch salt

Simmer all of these together on the stove at medium heat, reduce when the mixture starts to bubble. When the caramel turns a nice light orange, take the pot off the heat, because it'll cook some more in the oven. (I overdid the cooking, so it was more like an umber... not good, as you'll see later.)

Place as many cinnamon rolls as possible on top of this caramel and pop them in the oven. Still following the JoytheBaker recipe here, so no need for a second rise.

They come out like this!

Oh, you want a better look? Here:

Wanna see the underside???

LOOK AT THAT GOO! (I should have taken the caramel off the heat earlier, but burnt sugar has some redeeming qualities.)

And there you have a cinnamon pull-apart treat. This was gone in approximately 24 hrs, so it may behoove you to hide half of it, or make two batches. Enjoy folks!

Stew-Quiche

I have a roommate. Actually I have two, but I'm only talking about one today. She is sensitive and fair and kind, as well as ridiculously outgoing and gentle and willing to listen and commiserate. She also loves to make stew.

Only this last part is in any way a problem. The problem is, every time she makes stew, she makes enough to feed a small army. This is, perhaps, appropriate since she is actually a member of the Canadian Reserves, but it doesn't work so well when she only lives with two people. So we have a lot of stew. The below recipe is how I attempt to use up the leftovers of said delicious stew.

Here it is, in all it's glory.

Quiche is a food that has all the advantages of breakfast food as well as a potential for clearing out old food from the fridge. Anything can go in it, so long as that anything is followed by eggs, milk, and cheese. At least, that's what I think I proved with this dish.

I happened to make this before I remembered that I was supposed to blog about it, so I took some pictures after the fact and I hope that's good enough.

Ta daaaa!

Beef stew. With parsnips, carrots, onions, and potatoes. I added more potatoes on top. There is goat cheese mixed in with the eggs, and cheddar on top of the potatoes. Put all of the aforementioned things in a bowl and stir. Add into a waiting pie crust (recipe below) and throw the potato slices on top, along with more cheese (cheddar here). Bake at 350 F for about 40 minutes, or until cheese has melted and browned, and juices have begun to leak from the top. Yum.

The pie crust recipe is a lot easier than most butter + flour + water recipes, mostly because it doesn't require a whole lot of kneading.

1 Pie crust... which means one side. Double this if you want a top AND bottom crust.

1/2 cup vegetable oil 

1/4 cup milk

2 cups flour 

1/2 tsp. salt

Mix together dry ingredients, then wet. Combine wet and dry all at once and stir quickly, stopping when just combined. Knead with your hands until there are no crumbs left, and then roll out immediately. BAM, pie crust. Enjoy!

Carrot Soup with Pumpkinseed Pesto

Remember how I said that I might make soup? Ages ago, yes. Well, I finally made good on that vague commitment. This is the story of Carrot Soup on a cold day.

It's beginning to warm up here in Nova Scotia, but there's still snow on the ground and a sheen of deadly, near-invisible black ice on the sidewalks. This is all enough to justify soup, so here goes.

Onions. As always. Diced and popped into hot olive oil, sautéed until translucent. 

At this point, I should add that if you notice any incredibly beautiful wooden soup spoons or spatulas or cutting boards in my photos, they are the woodwork of my dad, whose professional life involves explaining the complexities of Linux and open-source to non-computer whizzes (me, among others), and whose art involves creating beautiful, gorgeous wooden cookware. A small sample of his work can be found here. Shameless advertising, done.

A tablespoon of garlic and a teaspoon of salt follows the now-translucent and starting to brown onions. Swish around until the garlic is fragrant, and then add chopped carrots:

this is about four large carrots' worth, or four heaping cups.

I realize this looks like I bought pre-sliced carrots. This is patently not the case - that's a re-purposed granola container, which I was using for volume-visualization, thank you very much.

These carrots cook for about 10 minutes. They should be beginning to soften around the edges, but shouldn't be fully cooked. Stir occasionally.

After the carrots have been partially cooked, add liquid. I went ahead and put in chicken broth, but you can also preface this by adding a cup of white wine or cider or other liquid, and stirring until it has been mostly absorbed. This adds another layer of flavour to the carrots.

I went a different route, however. This is about three cups of homemade chicken broth, plus one more cup of water.  I also added a tablespoon of chopped thyme, and a teaspoon of lemon zest.

Oh, and how could I forget... two tablespoons of maple syrup as well. 

Cover and simmer until a fork goes through the carrots easily, about 15 more minutes.

Soup by itself is all very well. However, I had some cilantro just on the edge of going bad, and some pumpkin seeds. To me, that looks like pesto. 

Pesto can be made out of absolutely anything green. My mom, pesto-maker extraordinaire, has the components down pat: 

• seeds or nuts: pine nuts work best, but macadamia nuts, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, and almonds are the best. I always toast this additive, but fresh is fine and probably better for you.
• something green: seriously, anything. Broccoli, parsely, basil, cilantro, kale... brilliantly flexible.
• oil: typically olive, but open to veggie, grapeseed, sunflower, and others that don't have a strong, distinctive flavour.
• seasoning: salt, pepper, cumin, cloves, garlic, whatever. Go wild. I like to keep mine to a minimum to focus on the bright green flavours. 
• acid: lemon, lime, vinegar... something to brighten and intensify the flavours already present.

This time, my combination was a cup of cilantro, half a cup of olive oil, salt, pepper, a clove of garlic, a squeeze of lemon, and toasted pumpkin seeds.

Throw all of these in a blender or food processor, and blend until smooth, adding more oil as necessary, and tasting for seasoning. 

At this point, once you've stopped cursing at your food pulverizer of choice and the pesto is actually smooth, the soup should be ready. 

Looks lovely. 

I always add lemon juice at the end of a soup to bring out softer flavours, like that thyme. 

I blended my soup, but that's completely up to you. I have an immersion blender, so that makes it pretty easy, but if you don't want to go through the hassle of blending hot soup in batches in a blender, I've been there; I get it. 

Here's the finished product for the night, with the suggested pairing:

I think if any trained chef saw this garnishing job, they'd spit their pinot gris all over the screen. I gotta work on that, but hey, it tasted pretty great! Hope you enjoy!