reconstructed watergate salad

Like I said, I just got an ice cream maker for Christmas, so when Marx Foods announced its latest recipe contest -- It's Easy Being Green, making anything you like using any two of the green ingredients provided -- I naturally started thinking of ice creams.

I'd had congealed salads and other southern salads on my mind - they're in that middle ground, old school enough that your grandmother made them, but her grandmother probably didn't, since they depend on convenience food ingredients developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of them date back that far, and some are much more recent - like Watergate Salad from the early 1970s, which for some reason picked up the name of the political scandal.

Watergate Salad combines pistachio pudding and Cool Whip or whipped cream, studded with orange and pineapple.

Well.

I could find another way to do that.

And I could make it ice cream!

Two of the ingredients lent themselves very well to this profile: bamboo rice, which is a light green color from the bamboo juice with which it's infused, and green cardamom, an extremely fragrant spice that goes well with both fruit and nuts.

But here's this. I wasn't going to use Jello pistachio instant pudding for a cooking contest, nor was I going to spend $20 and shipping for nut butter, especially since a less than perfectly smooth nut butter would make for a very different texture here.

So I brought the nut element in another way.

Creme de noyaux is an old school liqueur made with the kernels of members of the prunus family - the stone fruits: apricots, almonds, peaches, plums, cherries. It's a little like amaretto - real amaretto - with a complex flavor that's sort of floral, sort of nutty, sort of like maraschino liqueur, sort of like New Orleans nectar soda. You're not likely going to find it on the shelf, and if you do, it's probably Hiram Walker or Bols, both of which are probably artificially flavored and dyed red (because of the Pink Squirrel cocktail).

It's easy to make yourself, though. Any time you have a peach, a cherry, a plum, anything in that family, take a hammer and break the pit open. The kernel is inside. Drop it in a jar of vodka, or put it in the freezer until you have enough of them. Let them steep in the vodka for a few weeks, and then add sugar syrup. ("Creme" in French and "cream of" in English both refer to heavily sweetened liqueurs, too sweet to drink on their own.)

A little goes a long way, just like with vanilla extract. So it's a lot of work, sure, but you don't have to do it very often.

Now, if you want to go about this recipe and don't want to take the time to make creme de noyaux, you could also use the kernels themselves - just steep them in the cream with the cardamom, below.

If you don't want to do ANY of that, I would recommend maraschino liqueur rather than amaretto, unless you know of some really excellent amaretto that's escaped my attention.

Onward. For a pint or so of ice cream:

1/4 cup bamboo rice
2 cups half and half
2 teaspoons creme de noyaux, divided
1/4 cup heavy cream
8 cardamom pods
1/2 cup sugar or so
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup diced pineapple (or crushed pineapple)
1 orange's worth of orange segments, supremed (remove all pith, skin, etc)

First infuse the cream with cardamom: bring 8 cardamom pods, 2 cups half and half, and 1/4 cup cream to a simmer, turn off the heat, and let cool. It ought to be good and infused by the time it cools down to room temp. Remove cardamom pods.

Now make a rice pudding: simmer bamboo rice in the infused cream, with a dash of salt and 1 teaspoon creme de noyaux, until rice is very very plump and soft. Add the 1/2 cup sugar and taste for sweetnesss - it should be sweeter than ice cream.

Beat the two egg yolks, add a little hot rice-cream mixture to them to temper them, and add the egg mixture to the pan, stirring constantly over low heat until thickened (a couple minutes, usually).

Remove from heat, stir in the remaining teaspoon of creme de noyaux and the orange and pineapple, and chill in the fridge.

When churning ice cream, it's important to make sure your mixture is fully chilled, not just room temp.

Churn according to manufacturer's directions, and freeze to harden it up if necessary.

The final result is complexly spiced from the creme de noyaux and the cardamom, with nice plump grains of bamboo rice and bits of tart fruit.

Catching up, now that I have my camera back!

The smoker, in the rain, at a barbecue joint in Georgia (we got barbecue beef - shoulder clod, maybe? - and Brunswick stew):



So much soda! Also in Georgia. Not all mine.



My beloved Frisco melt, at Steak and Shake:



The Pat La Frieda lamb burger I had mentioned earlier, with melted cheese and Dijon mustard:

One of my Christmas presents was an ice cream maker from my mother. While I'd used a previous version of the Cuisinart ice cream maker, either I had an old freezer that couldn't get the canister cold enough, or they've made some improvements, because the new one is so much better. You do have to be sure to cool down your mix in the fridge rather than using it at room temp, but that's just mathematical sense - room temperature is 30, 40 degrees warmer than the fridge, which is going to bring up the temperature of the freezing canister too quickly.

One of the nice things about an ice cream maker is how easy it is to make small amounts of ice cream to test out ideas. Since Christmas, I've made pineapple lime longpepper sorbet, carrot-lemon sorbet, carrot-pineapple sherbet, coffee cranberry Campari ice cream, maple pecan ice cream, and the star of the show, huckleberry spruce ice cream:



The basics of making the custard for ice cream are simple - heat milk, cream, and sugar, add to beaten egg yolks to temper them, add back to the pan and stir until thickened. I infused the cream with spruce tips ahead of time, and while it was churning, added a simple huckleberry jam (huckleberries, sugar, citric acid).

So good. Spruce and huckleberry were meant to be together.

best of 2012

The best things I ate this year, in no order:

Lamb burgers from Pat La Frieda. These were a Christmas present from Caitlin. We'd had PLF's regular burgers before, and they're amazing. The remarkable thing about the lamb burgers is that they're exactly what you'd hope they'd be - I mean, they have the same balance of flavor and juiciness and texture as the beef burgers, but they're lamb. I know that sounds obvious, but ... I was prepared for these to just be very good lamb burgers, and instead they're the lamb burgers of my dreams.

Gotta also add the burger at Craigie on Main, and every burger at Flat Patties. And the Frisco Melt at Steak and Shake, for that matter.

Satsumas from Louisiana Lagniappe.

Ice cream! Juniper lemon curd and vinho verde pear wheatgrass from Jeni's, burnt caramel and Vietnamese coffee from Toscanini's.

Gold Rush apples. This was just the best apple I've had in years.

The roast beef and roast lamb sandwiches at Flour, and the roast beef sandwich at Cuttys.

Fried maitake mushrooms. Oh man. One of the best things I got at Wegmans.

Fried soft-shell crab. The other best thing I got at Wegmans!

Montmorency cherries.

Smoked lamb sandwiches with skordalia and red bell pepper sauce.

Boiled custard. The boiled custard I made at the start of the year is just the best I've ever made, for some reason. I made some again in December and it's just not as good.

The shrimp and grits at Classic on Noble, mentioned in my last entry.

My own roasted coffee, especially with Solerno blood orange liqueur. Many amari, especially Campari and Amaro Montenegro. Many whiskeys, notably the cognac-finished Parker Heritage Collection bourbon, Bulleit rye, and the Lagavulin 16.

Double Cola in glass bottles in Georgia.

christmas 2012

Caitlin and I visited her family in Georgia this year for Christmas (escaping some snow which melted before I came back). I left my camera there, but let me tell you what I brought back with me before I finish putting it away:

Cheerwine! It was a ridiculous week for soda finds, in fact. I brought back Cheerwine and Peach Crush (which tastes like peach Jello) but was also able to have Bubble Up, Red Rock cola, Nugrape, Double Cola, and Dr Enuf - and only passed up Sun Drop and RC cola because I can get them up here now.

Also picked up, soda-wise, but not southern per see: Dragonfruit Pepsi, at a gas station. I like it because it's so bizarre - it tastes like Pepsi mixed with a generically tropical Kool Aid. It's not like the "dragonfruit flavor" we're seeing in beverages lately bears any resemblance to real dragonfruit (which is too mild-flavored to make sense as a flavor to add to something like Pepsi - I think real dragonfruit juice added to Pepsi would just taste like weak Pepsi). It must be the name that seems marketable (though for the record, Dragonfruit Pepsi is actually called Pepsi X and has some cross-branding relationship to that ridiculous X Factor show).

Pecan log rolls. Oh man, my favorite candy maybe. Also got almond log rolls which I haven't tried yet.

White barbecue sauce and moonshine taffy, both gifts from Caitlin's mom. (As well as homemade pear preserves, crabapple jelly, and zucchini pickles.)

Frog legs!

Sausage for biscuits and gravy. Can't get much up here except Jimmy Dean.

Duke's mayo. Southern brands of mayonnaise are generally preferred for things like pimento cheese and tomato pie. I usually get Blue Plate because that's what I'm used to from New Orleans, but got Duke's to check it out.

Tony Chachere's, a Louisiana seasoning blend that is a staple for me.

Luzianne tea bags. I use great oolong and pu erh teas for hot tea, but for sweet tea, man, it has to be Luzianne.

Self-rising cornmeal. Just a time-saver, sure, but totally unavailable up here.

Deep-fried peanuts

Country ham

Souse (a form of head cheese, though I'm expecting it's seasoned differently from the Cajun head cheese I'm used to)

I'm undoubtedly forgetting stuff - my luggage was heavvvy. And this isn't counting what we ate there, of course - which I would put off until I'm less worn out from just getting back, but I have a busy week coming up and then boom it's the new year, so, highlights:

Vera and Jerry took us out to Classic on Noble in Alabama, where the shrimp and grits has been called "one of the 100 dishes in Alabama to try before you die." Man, that's underselling it. Oh, everything else was good too - fried oysters, coconut pie - but for once, Caitlin and I both got the same thing, even though there was a crab cake with fried soft-shells on the menu. It was just so good you wouldn't want anything else - not just the best shrimp and grits I've had, the best grits I've had, period.

These amazing greens made by a co-worker of Caitlin's stepfather - poke sallet, collards, and turnip greens, I think he said. I have to up my greens game and my grits game.

Doughnuts and fried pies (cherry, coconut, peach, and sweet potato, in my order of preference) from Vogelsberg Bakery in Carrollton, GA. Good God. I almost didn't get doughnuts, but thank God I did - absolutely the best doughnut I've had in my life. Yeast-raised doughnut, glazed - your basic non-cake doughnut, you know? But so good. So amazingly good. And usually I far prefer filled doughnuts!

Barbecue!  Pulled brisket, which I kept putting on pimento cheese sandwiches. The barbecue sauce was very peppery, as in black pepper - which I love, since that's what I'm used to from Rudy's in Texas.

And the chains - none of which I'd been to in years: Cracker Barrel, which gets a bad rap (as all chains do and as most deserve) but is comfort food regardless; Steak and Shake, where I got a Frisco melt for the first time since moving out of Indiana six and a half years ago, and which still absolutely serves the best chain hamburgers; and Sonic, which I hadn't been to in even longer. (The creamslushes at Sonic - a mix of "slush" and soft-serve ice cream - are a lot like the freezes - half soft serve, half snowball - I loved in New Orleans.)

Unsurprisingly, once I came home to an empty fridge, I started cooking - Coca-Cola salad, pimento cheese with Duke's, Coca-Cola cake, pork stock still cooking away as we speak for greens.

I'm sure I'm forgetting things.  It was a good week!

Some post-Thanksgiving cooking:

The obligatory Thanksgiving sandwich, with turkey, stuffing, sage-and-garlic gravy, Dijon mustard, and cranberry sauce (subsequent versions were made with truffle butter instead of mustard and cranberry, a Caitlin innovation):



Turduckconfit - turkey skin wrapped around turkey breast wrapped around duck breast wrapped around Jimmy Dean sage sausage, each layer bonded with transglutaminase, slow-cooked in duck fat:



Chicken-fried steak, pre-cooked - strips of steak bonded to chicken skin, eventually buttermilk-battered and fried.



The cranberry-pecan bread didn't quite work - I substitute fresh-squeezed unsweetened cranberry juice for the water in a regular baguette recipe, but the acidity must have wreaked havoc - the dough didn't stretch so much as tear, and the final product was dense and looked like whole-grain bread. We're going to try it as pain perdu tomorrow.

The colcannon twice-baked potatoes were pretty great, though. Caitlin's idea, my execution:

First make creamed greens - blanch kale and turnip greens, squeeze every drop of liquid you can out, and chop finely.

Meanwhile cook chopped garlic, chopped fennel, and cream together until the cream gets very thick and is about to break. Blend the cream, garlic, and fennel together along with salt, fennel seed, and if you have them, a tablespoon or so of cooked nettles, to make everything bright green.

Return the sauce to the pan, add the greens, cook until very thick.

Bake your potatoes, split them in half, scoop out the innards, and mash them with the creamed greens. Add a little butter or a little more salt if needed.

Fill potato shells with the colcannon; bake 15-20 minutes before eating.

thanksgiving 2012

I'll update with photos of anything interesting, but - the things I am making for Thanksgiving or as part of Thanksgiving weekend:

Cranberry-pecan bread (yeast bread, not baking soda) and pain perdu with the leftovers

Turduckconfit: turkey skin wrapped around turkey breast wrapped around duck breast wrapped around sage sausage, all bonded with transglutaminase, slow-cooked in duck fat.

Colcannon twice-baked potatoes

Carrot and celery root gratin

Maple-coffee pecan pie

Cranberry-lime pie