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July 29, 2006
Booze and Berries Ice Cream
Day before yesterday's paper had a lengthy piece, containing recipes by chef and food stylist, Rori Trovato, on the front page of the Life section entitled:
Turning Up the Temperature on Summer Ice Cream,
which focused on the current trend favored by chefs (and others) of creating adult desserts that blend ice cream and booze. The article (available sadly only to subscribers of the Santa Barbara NewsPress and to my best perusal, not yet picked up elsewhere) includes four ice cream recipes with such tempting names as: Lime and Tequila Ice Cream with Salt-Rimmed Sugar Cones; Dark Chocolate Kahlua Ice Cream; Creamy Vanilla with Champagne-Soaked Peaches; Bananas Foster [Ice Cream] with Bourbon. Mmmmmmm.
I found it particularly amusing to contemplate the idea of creating tipsy ice cream treats, since I'd laughingly said to Mike a while back that my faithful readers were going to think I didn't have anything to say about anything except ice cream and alcohol. And here, in a single treat they both were. My observation , I must hasten to add, preceeded Mike's mother's recently saying, "It sure seems like you guys drink a lot." Which we don't, especially, but enjoy when we do.
Anyway, if I have been stuck in one gear (or two, I guess) this summer, blame it on the heat that seems to beset everybody everywhere this year and keeps my mind on things that keep me cool. To wit: ice cream and alcohol.
Which explains the menu for a little casual backyard dinner we're hosting tonight: Chilled Watermelon and Berry Gazpacho, Dry-Rubbed Baby Back Ribs (cooked outside, of course, since we don't want to heat up the kitchen,) Tomato, Cucumber, and Green Onion Salad, and Home-churned Low-Carb Vanilla Ice Cream with Chambord Soaked Berries for dessert.
The soaked berries are nothing special. Just stem and quarter a couple of pints of fresh organic strawberries and mix them with an equal portion of organic blueberries, douse the whole bunch with about 1/3 cup of raspberry liquer (Chambord or Framboise) give them a good stir, cover and refrigerate for several hours or overnight. Give them a stir occasionally in the interim.
(It's important that the strawberries, especially, be organic, since the non-organic type is heavily heavily sprayed with toxic pesticides that don't wash away completely, see previous blog.)
I've got the vanilla ice cream custard base chilliing in the fridge right now and in a bit I'll churn it to within a few minutes of completion, then add about a cup of the soaked berry mixture and finish the churn, just to incorporate them evenly. Then I'll scoop the ice cream out into a freezer container and let it 'cure' in the freezer for an hour or so to set. To get it to a good dipping consistency for serving, I'll move it from the freezer to the fridge when we sit down to our soup.
For serving, I think I'll drizzle a bit more of the soaked berry mixture on top. Or maybe settle a scoop of ice cream on top of the soaked berries in a bowl and put a sprig of fresh mint on top. It should make a cool and refreshing finish to our meal.
And with that, I vow not to write another blog about either ice cream or booze until at least Labor Day.
Posted by mdeades at 1:50 AM | Comments (0)
July 27, 2006
Melon-picking Magic
Summertime is melon time and it's lucky for us low-carbing crowd that melons, by and large, are on the A-list of carb friendly fruits. With the stalls of our farmers' market groaning with melons this time of year, Mike and I have been indulging our melon Jones.
One of our favorite ways to eat melon--aside from just sprinkling a slice with salt and eating it with our hands--is with proscuitto. I cannot imagine how many orders of proscuitto e melone Mike and I have put away when travelling in Italy, particularly in the north, where the proscuitto reigns supreme. Mamma mia that's good eats.
We love most every imaginable sort of melon, from the everyday cantaloupe, watermelon, or honeydew to some of the slightly less common varieties, such as Cranshaw and Sharlyn.
If you're unfamiliar with this variety, it looks a lot like a mutant cantaloupe, the skin a slightly darker shade of beige to almost green beneath a prominent surface netting, the flesh usually creamy pale green to pale ivory-gold. And the flavor is sweeter and muskier, sort of a cross between a cantaloupe and a honeydew. The slightly exotic sweetness works really well against the salty proscuitto, so it's become a favorite of ours for this purpose.
I picked up a ready-to-eat Sharlyn at the market the other day that we enjoyed two days running, draped with proscuitto di Parma, as an appetizer before dinner one night, then for a light lunch the next day. Once these babies are ripe, they won't hang around long, so you have to make haste when you've got one home.
Or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it!
Picking a good melon can sometimes be a challenge. You thump; you sniff; you weigh hand to hand. And still, sometimes, you reap the disappointment of slicing up what appears to be a cantaloupe and getting an orange-colored sliver of cardboard. A fool's melon: looks like a melon; quacks like a melon; but it ain't no melon.
That's why a little brief in today's LA Times Food section caught my eye: Know your melons, then pick a winner. Written by cookbook author, food critic, and veteran food editor Russ Parsons, I figured it would help demystify the melon pickery magic.
And it did.
According to Mr. Parsons, we need remember that melons come in two types: the netted-skin varieties (cantaloupe, Sharlyn, muskmelon, etc.) and the smooth skinned ones (honeydew, watermelon, etc). If you're looking for ripeness, pick the netted ones by smell and look for raised 'nets' on the surface. Pick the sleek ones (which don't smell, so don't bother) by color and thump.
Once you've selected a winner, take it home, split it, seed it, slice it, salt it (just a little and grind on a little black pepper if you must) and serve it...with our without proscuitto.
Posted by mdeades at 12:08 PM | Comments (1)
July 24, 2006
T3: Tanqueray Ten and Tonic
In Arkansas, where in July and August you can have weeks running of days in the 90s and 100s--that's when it's 90% humidity (or feels like it) and 100 degrees or more--there is absolutely no tall cool libation that hits the spot like an icy cold gin and tonic. Okay, some would argue that an ice cold beer ranks up there, but when this Southern Magnolia wilts in the heat, it's a G&T for li'l ole me. Diet, of course, the tonic, I mean, not the gin...lots of crystal clear ice...big squeeze of lime.
When we lived in Arkansas, we counted the arrival of summer as the first day it seemed warm enough to need a G&T to cool off, whatever the calendar said. Throughout the next few months of heat and humidity, especially in the dog days of August, we downed a prodigious number of them, made traditionally (at our house, anyway) with Bombay Sapphire gin and Canada Dry or Schwepp's Diet Tonic. (Artificial sweetener avoiders take note: diet tonic has always been made with saccharine. For reasons for which I can offer no illumination, diet tonic somehow escaped the rush to aspartame that overtook most of the diet beverage industry and if there's a brand of it out there made with Splenda, I've never seen it.)
When we left Arkansas and moved west to cooler, drier climes, we discovered that a fair amount of the joy in drinking a gin and tonic depends on being where it's blisteringly hot and humid; in Santa Fe, Boulder, or Santa Barbara, we found that we rarely if ever felt moved to drink them anymore.
But this summer, it's been relatively hot up where we live on Lake Tahoe (nothing like some parts of the country, but a bit hotter and more humid than usual) and something about the combination of sun and water has rekindled our taste buds for G&T. Perhaps the association of heat and humidity with gin and tonic runs deep in those of us who possess some degree of British ancestry, since the whole concept of the drink arose to make the quinine tonic, needed to stave off malaria in India and other steamy corners of the erstwhile Empire upon which the sun never set, palatable by adding gin to it.
And make it palatable it does...especially with a wedge of fresh lime squeezed in.
Our long-time favorite brand of gin for this purpose, because of its aromatic herbal nose, was Bombay Sapphire. Better than plain Bombay, better than Boodles, better than regular Tanqueray, better than any other gin...or so we thought. A recent article by Eric Felton in the Wall Street Journal (sorry, available online only to WSJ subscribers, but a free trial is ongoing right now) espoused the perfection of a gin and tonic made with Tanqueray 10. Writes Mr. Felton:
What about the gin? As I did with Martinis last year, I tasted a dozen examples, this time to see which made the best Gin and Tonic. I found that the gins that make the best Martinis -- I preferred Hendricks and Plymouth -- aren't the same ones to use when mixing with quinine water. But in all cases, I like gin that is unapologetically gin. Some of the boutique gins to hit the market in the last few years have done their best to resemble the nothingness of vodka. Stick your beezer in a glass of South, a new gin from New Zealand, and you'd be hard-pressed to find the slightest hint of anything gin-like. By contrast, open a bottle of the wonderfully hide-bound British gin Boodles and juniper perfumes the room. South made for a lousy Gin and Tonic; Boodles made for a classic.My favorite gin for mixing with tonic, however, turned out to be Tanqueray No. Ten. I didn't much like Ten when I was stirring Martinis -- the bright taste of citrus peel overpowered the drier flavors. But in a Gin and Tonic, Ten is a triumph: With nothing other than gin, tonic and ice in the glass, you'd think that you had already squeezed half a lime into the mix. But go ahead and squeeze plenty of fresh lime juice in anyway, if you would be so kind, and you've got a drink worthy of anyone from a president to a chimp.
We decided to do our own blind tasting of Tanqueray No. Ten against our fave, the Sapphire, and T10 won...by a nose. Even more importantly, it softens the bitter edge of the tonic water even better than the Sapphire. Who knew?
Tonic water, of course, is sweetened water (with sugar traditionally, probably with high fructose corn syrup nowadays in the 'real' tonic water and saccharine in the 'diet' version) flavored with a small amount (about 83 ppm) of quinine. Quinine, which comes from the bitter bark of the South American cinchona tree, has been used for hundreds of years in more potent medicinal doses to prevent and treat malaria, stop nocturnal leg cramps, and treat a host of other maladies, most recently apparantly even including some measured success with prion (read that Mad Cow) diseases. It can bring fever down, reduce inflammation, and combat some infections. Quite a repertoire.
In lesser doses, it makes a mighty fine addition to a long cool summer drink. And though it might not be malaria we fear in America in this day and age, I'm all about warding off leg cramps, fever, inflammation, any other mosquito born diseases and maybe it will help those, too.
And if not, at the very least, it's refreshing and it tastes REAL good on a hot summer day.
Posted by mreades at 8:20 AM | Comments (7)
July 21, 2006
Muffins Beget Muffin-tops
It's said that the Eskimo have 29 words for snow to be able to convey the nuances needed to describe exactly what kind of precipitation they mean. It stands to reason that they would need such an expressive set of words, since in the frozen winter wonderland, snow of every conceivable type is pretty much all they see.
A recent article in the New York Times gave me pause, because it detailed the emerging new nuances in our own language for fat.
While a few descriptive fat-phrases have been with us for quite some time: turkey wattle (the double chin) and love handles (the fat at the waist) and pones (the fat on the upper outer hip/thigh area) the origin of this newly-emergent shading of the meaning of a pretty straightforward word--fat--derives from the world of liposuction surgery. According to the NY Times piece, apparantly a need has arisen on the part of plastic surgery patients, young women mainly, to specifically describe the particular offending pooch they want a doctor to suck out.
No longer is it sufficient to say "Doc, get rid of this excess fat on my belly or thighs." One now must specify the banana fold (fat roll under the buttocks above the thigh) or the wings (the stuff that pooches out over the bra, under the arm) or the doughnut (pooch of fat around the belly button) as well as a whole list of other descriptors detailed in the article. My favorite, occasioned by the recent trend in wearing crack-exposing, hip-hugger jeans: the muffin-top, which by any measure is, indeed, a perfect description of the fat that bulges out over the low-riding tops of jeans, which, if I were in charge, would only, only, only ever be sported by young women with body fat percentages under 20. All others would be cited and fined--or as I often put it, ticketed and towed.
Of course, I'm not in charge, thus the current state of fashion affairs and the reason I spent an entire otherwise lovely dining experience recently staring at the purple thong, crack, tatoo, and rather large muffin top exposed above the "waist" band (archaic term) of a pair of jeans worn by a young woman who really shouldn't have.
If the Eskimo needed 29 words for what was all around them, what does this spate of ways to describe fat mean for us? Clearly, that we're a nation awash in a landscape of fat, which isn't news.
Since for most of us, liposuction to sculpt these areas is out of the financial question (and should be out of the question on grounds, in my mind at least, of medical appropriateness of therapy, since it is not without sequelae, but that's another blog entirely) perhaps we might be better served to harken back to what it is that makes us develop these unsightly pooches that inspired a legion of new words for fat. Hello out there! It's what we eat!
Never doubt it: Muffins* beget muffin-tops.
*Traditional high-carb muffin, made with lots of flour and sugar, not to be confused with a low-carb Power Muffin, made with almond meal and artificially sweetened, as detailed in The Low Carb CookwoRx Cookbook or found among the recipes on our lowcarbcookworx.com website.
Posted by mreades at 8:20 AM | Comments (2)
July 15, 2006
Nuts About Nuts
It seems like we've been in the car on the road a lot lately. The myriad rules and regs imposed on flying by the TSA and FAA have made it, for us at least, easier to drive to a destination that's within 5 or so hours than it is to fly to it. By the time you get to the airport an hour or more early, so that the TSA can maul your bags properly and the baggage handlers can mistakenly put them on a flight going to Dulles instead of Dallas, a one hour flight becomes a 2 1/2 hour excursion at the minimum...
and that's if the plane departs on schedule. Then, even if you and your bags do arrive on time, you still have to rent the car at the other end. Might as well just drive, then at least you're on your own schedule and won't lose your luggage, suffer through the indignity of being wanded from tip to toe, or have your favorite souvenir corkscrew confiscated as a potential weapon of mass destruction. Or as Mike found out on a recent flight we made, have 4 sleeves of brand new high dollar golf balls plucked from your bag by person or persons unknown.
Besides, we enjoy each other's company and actually get a lot of brain-storming, thought organizing, book/chapter outlining, and even sorting of the contents of the Great Amorphous Pile (the euphamism for Mike's desk) done on road trips. And, it's admittedly hard to brainstorm outloud on the plane; it disturbs the other passengers.
Our recent trip back to Arkansas for my high school class reunion is a perfect case in point: we flew from Santa Barbara to Phoenix to Dallas and then ended up renting a car in Dallas to drive the 5 hours to Little Rock for a few days of catching up with family and old friends. Then we drove on to Hot Springs for the reunion and then back down to visit the grandangels in Dallas, from whence we flew back to Santa Barbara.
When we head out for a road trip, we stock up with quality snacks--maybe some slices of good salami, cubes of organic cheese, whatever fresh produce we might have left in the kitchen, slices of cucumber, some cherry tomatoes, berries, or cherries, the odd peach or apple, perhaps. And usually we throw in a big bag of natural jerky and some nuts, just in case. You've seen what lines the shelves of the quickie marts at gas stations--all carbs, all the time, wrapped in cellophane, with a heapin' helpin' of trans fats and God knows what else tossed in for good measure. We stop in those establishments to buy bottled water, a cup of Joe, and gas, squeegie the windshields, use the facilities, and not much beyond that.
Back in June, when we drove to Prescott, Arizona to look over the contents of our warehouse before it migrated north with our assistant, we had plenty of snacks going, but had to stock up for the trip back. We ducked into a Costco down there to get some fresh fruit and nuts and happened upon a great road snack: Mrs. May's Naturals
These organic nut cluster treats come in a wide variety of nutty flavors--almond, cashew, peanut, and pumpkin seed among them--and are made with just a hint of sweetness. Be forewarned, the sweetness is real (from organic cane sugar, I think) but there's just the merest hint of it. The clusters are cut into small approximately one-inch cube-shaped pieces, each of which has about 1 gram of usable carb. And they're absolutely delicious!
We'd seen and sampled these nut crunches at the Natural Foods Expo West a year or two ago, and I figured sooner or later they'd turn up at our local Lazy Acres or Wild Oats or Whole Foods. I was pleasantly surprised to see them turn up at Costco, available both in the large resealable multi-serving bag and as a tray of maybe a dozen individual small bags in multiple flavors.
One caveat, though: these snacks are so good that--trust me here--unless you're made of sterner stuff than I am, you'll want to get the little bags for easier portion control. At the very least, portion individual servings of 7 or 8 pieces out of the big bag into zipper snack bags for your own protection. It would be very easy, indeed, when trapped in the car headed down the lonesome highway, to consume a generous portion of the large bag before you could blink. And even at just 1 gram a square, if you gobble down 30 or 40 of those babies at a sitting, the carbs (not to mention the calories) will add up fast. And we all know that when the carbs and calories go up, a whole lot of other things go up, too!
One small bag, tucked into your purse, would work as a great popcorn avoidance maneuver at the movies. They'd also make a nutritious lunch or afterschool snack for kids, even if they're not nuts about nuts. And how else, I ask, would you be able to get them to eat pumpkin seeds?
Posted by mdeades at 11:09 AM | Comments (5)
July 12, 2006
Singin' Poly-woly Dextrose All The Day
Since the Fourth of July, we've been on an ice cream making tear, a fact which probably hasn't escaped the notice of regular readers of this blog. I've heard from some of you who have tried your hand at making low-carb ice cream from the blog recipe and most of you reported that the taste and texture of these low carb creams are pretty darned good. And I agree. Their one deficiency is in what's called 'mouth feel.'
Mouth feel, a sort of ineffible quality of a food, has to do with how it sits in your mouth and how it dissolves and changes. For instance, does it break apart smoothly? Does it seem gritty? Is it gone too fast or does it linger just long enough? Does it leave an oily sensation or a clean one on the tongue when it's gone?
It's in the mouthfeel department that low-carb homemade ice creams, delicious though they are, slightly miss perfection. And the problem stems chiefly from their lack of sugar, which in a traditional ice cream recipe serves functions beyond sweetening the product, an important one of which is to modify the behavior of the fat content.
Something happens to fat when it's blended with sugar; it loses its oily mouth feel. To easily illustrate this effect, think of what it would feel like to chomp down on big spoon of pure butter, to wallow it around in you mouth, and swallow it. What do you get? An oily mouthfeel.
Now, cream that butter with powdered sugar and what do you get? Frosting...and, like magic, no oily mouthfeel. The same thing happens when you chill and churn cream (or half and half or coconut milk) sweetened with sugar to make that frozen concoction that helps us hang on (apologies to Jimmy Buffet.)
But in a low carb version that uses Splenda or Stevia or some other artificial (non-sugar) sweetener, there's no magic transformation and the mouth-waterin' mouthful leaves a decidedly oilier residue lingering on the tongue than we might ideally desire. Not quite like the straight butter example, but not the rich, but clean finish it would have had were sugar in the mix.
That slight imperfection led us to do a little sleuthing, reading, and experimenting, which led us to a handbook on sweetener alternatives and the properties they impart, which led us to try adding some polydextrose powder to the mixture. Afterall, it's what the big boys use, so why not us home folk?
Polydextrose is a long chain of dextrose molecules (call me mistress of the obvious) and dextrose is nothing more than double glucose--ie, two glucose molecules hooked together. Glucose, of course, is blood sugar. That's why dextrose is the sugar used in IV solutions. It's the 'D" that's being called for when the doctor shouts out orders to hang a liter of D5W (5% dextrose water) or D5Normal (5% dextrose in salt water) or to push some D50 (50% dextrose solution) on ER or Gray's Anatomy.
While the human GI tract can easily snap apart a single molecule of dextrose to harvest and absorb the two glucoses, once polymerized into the long polydextrose chains, the tin snips of the digestive process can no longer break the links and so polydextrose behaves as a fiber. Like most soluble fibers it passes intact and unabsorbed through the small intestine, then on down stream to the waiting friendly bacteria (in the colon, mainly) who do have the tools to break it apart and use it or ferment it.
Even though once in the body it doesn't behave like sugar in raising insulin or blood glucose levels, polydextrose still retains many of sugar's food tech properties, imparting a slight sweetness (about 1/10 the sweetness of sugar) and taking sugar's place in recipes by adding bulk to and improving the mouthfeel of the finished product. Like fiber, however, its indigestible nature can cause a little bit of GI rumbling, bloating, and gas if you overdo it. Commercially available polydextrose powder also contains a bit of citric acid and about 10% sorbitol, which probably also contributes to the mild degree of GI agitation that can occur.
You may be able to find polydextrose at your local natural foods grocery store, but if not, you can find it online in reasonable-sized quantities. For a source, click here.
By educated guessing and some trial and error, I arrived at an amount of polydextrose to add to a batch of ice cream that would achieve the desired mouthfeel without causing much in the way of GI side effects.
And the answer is: 1/3 to 1/2 cup per 1 quart batch.
By quart batch, I refer to the Coconut Milk Ice Cream recipe in the previous blog. Obviously, to make the low carb version, opt for the Splenda instead of the dextrose powder and use your choice of cream and/or half and half for the dairy version or the coconut milk plus rice milk for the non-dairy version. Then, modify the instructions there as follows: add about 1/3 cup polydextrose to the 6 beaten egg yolks (as you would normally have added sugar in a traditional recipe) and continue to beat until thick and pale. Then temper them with the sweetened hot cream (or coconut milk) and proceed with the recipe just as written. If you still perceive a slightly oily mouthfeel, next time up the amount of polydextrose to 1/2 cup. (You're walking a fine line here between good mouthfeel and too much of the fiber effect, so see what works best for you.)
Last night, the time came to test the hypothesis. Since we'd had my fresh fruit flavor choice (peach) the other day,it was Mike's turn to choose. For him, the go-to fruit choice for almost anything from savory compotes to cobblers to pastries and most particularly for ice cream is cherry. So bowing to spousal pressures, I cranked up a batch of Cherry Vanilla.
We'd bought a bag of fresh dark sweet cherries at the farmers' market, which I thanklessly halved and pitted, turning my fingernails maroon in the process. After a course chop, I added about 1 cup of the cherries to the cooled ice cream base, then chilled the whole lot properly before churning. It was, indeed, yummy with just the right mouthfeel when it came freshly churned from the machine.
Ben and Jerry got nothin on me! I think I'll call it Poly Woly Cherry.
Posted by mdeades at 10:10 AM | Comments (11)
July 10, 2006
Local Farm Produce Is Just Peachy
Most Saturday mornings, when we're at our place in Santa Barbara, you'll find us at our local farmers' market downtown. We've been avid farm produce shoppers for as long as I can remember and have haunted farmers' markets across the country and even abroad, but I have to say that the Saturday market in downtown Santa Barbara is one of the very best I've ever seen.
Before her passing not so long ago, Julia Child frequented the Saturday market, poking he way along the stalls, her signature lilting voice declaiming about this or that lustrous eggplant or heirloom tomato. Absent her legendary presence, it's still quite a show. Even if we're headed out of town and have absolutely no need of any fresh produce or flowers, we'll sometimes go anyway, just to walk around, see what's there, enjoy the diverse musical offerings on the various aisles, and generally take in the scene.
This past week, however, we were having some friends over for dinner Saturday night, which gave us reason to go. I was in search of some ripe yellow peaches to make a batch of low-carb fresh peach ice cream for dessert. (See recent blog and substitute a cup of chopped, slightly mashed, fresh peaches for 1 cup of liquid in either the coconut milk or the no-holds-barred dairy version of the recipe) . There were half a dozen stalls piled up with peaches and I found some really flavorful ones. That's one of the beauties of shopping at the farmers' market--you get to taste the produce before you buy it and thereby select just the right peach for the purpose. The ice cream was divine, if I do say so myself.
We also picked up a triple basket box of small, very sweet strawberries from a local organic grower. They tasted so good that had my heart not been set on peach for the menu, we'd have surely ended up with fresh strawberry ice cream Saturday night. In my humble opinion, these two summer fruits are hands down the quintessential homemade ice cream add ins. Blueberry is fine; cherry is fine, but give me peach or strawberry any day.
They also happen to be two fruits where it's muy importante to spring for the extra bucks, if necessary, to buy organic. Why? I'm not sure, but maybe the pesticides sprayed on commercially grown fruit collect more readily on the fuzzy skins of peaches, strawberries, and raspberries, leaving more toxic chemical residues aboard than even a really good flush can completely wash away. Although maybe not, because topping the list of pesticide-laden fruits and veggies is nectarines and they're slick as a whistle, so it's clearly not just the fuzz. Caveat emptor. For the skinny on just how much of what chemical contaminant remains in non-organic fruits and a good guideline of where it's important to spend your organic produce bucks, click here and here.
If you love, as we do, the pleasures of cooking with the freshest locally grown produce, check out Deborah Madison's fantastic cookbook, Local Flavors, which is all about cooking what's local and seasonal from farmers' markets all over the country. Then if there's one near you, head on down to your local farmers' market and enjoy the show. Pick up some locally grown fruit and churn up a batch of low-carb summer bliss. The farmers and your own health will thank you.
Posted by mdeades at 10:45 AM | Comments (3)
July 7, 2006
Oops! No Dairy in the Coconut Milk Ice Cream
In the recipe I posted on July 5 for the Coconut Milk Ice Cream, an astute reader caught a glaring error: the last ingredient listed in this 'supposedly casein-free' version was (gulp!) heavy cream.
It should have read about 4 ounces original flavor (no sugar added) rice milk. We used the Whole Foods 365 brand, which is our grandson's regular milk substitute. The reason for the "about" is that you're adding enough rice milk to end up with 3 cups of milk-like liquid and the two cans of coconut milk come up a tad shy of 3 cups when combined. In this case, my batch was about 4 ounces shy, which is how much rice milk I used.
That mention of heavy cream was a typo, which, thanks be to the magic of bloggery, I have duly corrected.
How, you may wonder, could one mistake the words 'heavy cream' and 'rice milk'? Well you may ask.
As I mentioned in the blog, we made two batches of ice cream. One no-holds-barred, dairy indulgence for us grown folk, using 2 cups of half and half, 1 cup of heavy cream, sweetened with Splenda. And the other for the grandangels, using the cans of coconut milk and about 1/2 cup of rice milk and dextrose powder. And, of course, in both we had the richness of 6 egg yolks and the flavor of the vanilla extract.
The original typed recipe was for the dairy version and when I transcribed it for the coconut version, I missed the last line...when typing it in, not when making it. I simply needed to delete that last line for the coconut version.
It would have, even as it was written, made a fine ice cream with good fats from both coconut and dairy, but it would not have been the dairy-free treat I concocted for the grandangels.
Posted by mdeades at 2:50 PM | Comments (2)
July 5, 2006
Parfait Report Card
Okay, the Coconut Milk Ice Cream I made for the grandangels was a hit. At least with the older one, who is who really needed to like it. Grandangel #2, who loves to help Granny cook, assisted in the making, but declared "Granny, this ice cream we made tastes a little wierd!" By which he meant that it didn't taste like his normal "white" ice cream. Grandangel #1 scarfed his down straight away and I can attest, having done the taste test on it myself, that it's yummy. Not to mention filled with really good fats.
Here's the recipe for those who want to make it:
1 (14-ounce) can premium coconut milk
1 (5 ounce) can premium coconut milk
4 ounces original (non sweetened) rice milk (or half and half for the dairy tolerant)
1 cup dextrose powder (or 2/3 cup sugar or granular Splenda)
6 egg yolks
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1. Carefully read your manufacturer's instructions for the ice cream freezer you intend to use. If necessary, properly pre-chill the churn container and have the machine ready to go.
2. In a saucepan, combine the two cans of coconut milk and the rice milk (or half and half) and stirring occasionally over low heat, slowly bring toward a simmer, until the first tendrils of steam begin to rise from the surface.
3. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks with the dextrose, sugar, or Splenda until light yellow.
4. When the coconut milk mixture sends up a little steam, temper the egg yolks by slowly dribbling about 1/3 cup of the hot coconut milk into the beaten egg mixture, whisking all the while. Add another 1/3 to 2/3 cups of the hot coconut milk mixture, whisking constantly. Then add the egg mixture back into the coconut milk pot, whisking, and heat all until the mixture reaches 170 to 175 degrees (or begins to thicken slightly and coats the back of a wooden spoon).
5. Remove from heat, add the vanilla and stir to combine.
6. Quick chill by pouring the ice cream base into a gallon zip bag, sealing, and immersing in a pan of ice water until cool enough to put into refrigerator. Refrigerate for up to a day or use after quick chill to make ice cream. When ready to make, follow the manufacturer's instructions for your ice cream freezer.
The taste is only faintly coconut-y, very rich, and quite yummy. We had made a batch of purely dairy (half and half and heavy cream instead of coconut milk) vanilla ice cream with Splenda and although it was yummy, I'll have to say, the grandangels' batch was just as yummy and had all those great coconut milk lauric acid benefits.
I have to say that the Flag Wavin' Parfaits were scrumptious either way! Give it a try. Throw a little protein powder in it and you could make some dandy Protein Power shakes out of leftovers...or even feel good about dessert again!
Posted by mreades at 10:04 PM | Comments (3)
July 3, 2006
Flag Wavin' Parfait
To me Fourth of July tradition demands a barbecue lunch topped off with real strawberry shortcake, made the old-fashioned way. That means flavorful, fresh berries, just swimming in their syrupy sweetened juices, poured over homemade honest-to-Pete shortbread biscuits--none of those little sponge cake cups they sell at the store for this Southern girl--with a big fat dollop of freshly whipped cream on top.
Back when I was growing up, my mother or grandmother would slice up the berries the night before, douse them good with a lot of sugar, cover them up and let them sit in the refrigerator overnight to draw the juices, making a thick, sweet, strawberry syrup that would properly soak the split shortbread biscuit when you poured it on. The shortbread, itself, Momma made with flour, butter, cream, baking powder, a pinch of salt and just a bit of sugar the next morning, so it would be good and fresh. I did likewise in my own kitchen, at least for a few years.
Once we had our brain transplants about 20 years ago, however, the realization of what 40 to 60 grams of quickly absorbable carb could do to a person robbed me of some of the joy of eating shortcake made the traditional way. So I created a carb-friendlier version that we could enjoy with less trauma to both metabolism and psyche. (If you're interested, that recipe is published in the companion book to our PBS tv show, the Low Carb CookwoRx Cookbook and available from the show's website, from Amazon and from book retailers nationwide.)
Despite longstanding tradition, however, this year, I may try something new to top off our barbecue feast. We'll be in Dallas for the Fourth, visiting the grandangels, one of whom can't eat wheat or dairy, making a traditionally "shortened" biscuit, even one made with part almond flour, a no go. Granted, I could substitute rice flour for the small amount of wheat flour and ghee for the butter and coconut cream for the dairy cream--the kinds of substitutions I've done to make special treats for him for years--but instead, I think I'll forge a different trail.
He loves ice cream, which since his sensitivity to dairy came to light has meant a commercial product made with either rice or soy milk, neither of which is particularly delicious and at least one of which--soy--science suggests is not especially beneficial for growing boys to eat very often. So my plan is to make a vanilla custard-style ice cream using premium coconut milk in lieu of cream and freezing it as per manufacturer's instructions in their electric ice cream maker. I'll have to make two batches (one sweetened with dextrose powder, which is just glucose, for the boys and one sweetened artificially for the carb-sensitive grown folk).
I then plan to make Flag Wavin' Parfaits by layering strawberries, ice cream, chopped pecans, blueberries, ice cream, chopped pecans, and finally more strawberries. And for the dairy tolerant, a flourish of whipped cream and a sprinkling of chopped pecans. At least that's what I'll do for the adult crowd. The grandangels will both just want the ice cream, plain, and in their favorite flavor...which the younger of the two will tell you without hesitation is not vanilla, but "white." And he means white, so don't be putting any of those little brown specs of vanilla bean in it.
Then, I think we'll stick a sparkler into each one, light them up, and sing "Happy Birthday, dear America" since everybody (even the grandangels) knows the tune and all the words to that one.
So from our family to yours, Mike and I wish all of you a happy, healthy, and safe Fourth of July!
Posted by mdeades at 8:50 AM | Comments (1)