Vacation Food

Steamed:


Tiny:


Crunchy:


Huge:


Sweet:


Toasty:


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Peach Season

There's a lot of fabulous peach recipes out there.


Blackberry-peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream, for example.


But mostly I just like eating them, preferably standing over the sink. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

A Very Berry Fourth

Happy 4th of July! We celebrated the holiday with family, food, and fireworks--an excellent combination. The dessert above is a lemon cake filled and topped with whipped cream, strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. Patriotic--and so tasty.



We grilled out (chicken sausage and veggie burgers) and also had corn on the cob, green beans and both carrot and potato salads.



And SwimmerGirl made lime snowcones.



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Black Raspberry Chip Ice Cream

Tart, sweet, and creamy, with slivers of semisweet Ghirardelli throughout. The recipe is based on one from ice cream guru David Lebovitz. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Perfecting the Perfect Peach

There are about a thousand (million) recipes out there for peach ice cream. But there are very very few peach ice creams that are actually good. Haagen-Daaz makes a peach sorbet that is great, and even better when paired with raspberry or mango sorbet. Sorbet is fairly straightforward--fruit, sugar, and water. However, of those millions (billions) of peach ice cream recipes I've seen lately, I don't think there are two that are alike. Some have a custard base--with as many as 10 egg yolks--and then some use only heavy cream or heavy cream and whole milk or half-and-half and some other percentage of milk or half-and-half and heavy cream, etc. Are the peaches cooked? And if so, are they roasted or cooked down in a syrup? Vanilla extract or almond? Peach liqueur? Too many decisions. So after considering the billions (trillions) of recipes out there, I decided to go with my new favorite ice cream guy, David Lebovitz, whose cookbook, The Perfect Scoop, is fun to both read and cook from. His recipe combines pureed cooked peaches with sugar, vanilla, sour cream, and heavy cream. I substituted half-and-half for the heavy cream and added a little almond essence in addition to the vanilla. The result? An ice cream that's high in peach flavor--which is hard to do when you're adding all that cream--but it's not quite as creamy and smooth as I was hoping for, quite possibly because of my detour from the recipe. Ahem. It's still peach season, however, and I won't mind testing this recipe again. :-D

Girl Scout Cookie Ice Cream

Today's ice cream experiment was a huge success--not that I was too concerned, given that the base was chocolate and cookies were involved. I combined a rich, custard-style chocolate ice cream from David Lebovitz with crushed Thin Mints that managed to last this long after the Girl Scouts' annual cookie campaign. Making the custard takes a bit longer, but I love the satiny texture that it gives the ice cream. I used half-and-half in place of the heavy cream in this recipe.

Lobstah and More

Fabulously huge, simple, delicious lobster rolls -- no lettuce, no celery, or other fillers. Just lots of lobster and a tiny bit of mayo. It's not hard to do, but many get it wrong. Tubby's lobster rolls are great. And while you're waiting, you can sample their ice cream, in teeny tiny ice cream cones. We also had, um, copious amounts of ice cream from another local ice cream spot. Our two favorite flavors are black raspberry chip -- which is known as Maine black bear -- and coffee chip with slivered almonds and chocolate cookie pieces. Cooking out ... the fire was a bit reluctant to get going, but once it agreed to burn, we had grilled chicken, with local green beans and peaches that we'd brought up with us. They don't have peaches like that in Maine.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream

This is not cookie dough ice cream--rather, it's ice cream made to taste like the actual cookie. The object being not to have the hunks of dough that everyone digs out, leaving a puddle of vanilla ice cream. This recipe uses a browned butter and half-and-half base, which is then tempered with dark brown sugar and egg yolks. I think next time I will take my butter a bit darker, and maybe I'll use a bit more sugar to intensify the flavor. Toasted nuts add a just-out-of-the-oven flavor.

Chocolate-Raspberry Ice Cream

Continuing the ice cream and raspberry themes, tonight we made chocolate-raspberry ice cream. The recipe, from The Perfect Scoop, purees raspberries with the chocolate cream mixture, so the flavors are thoroughly combined. The result is a luscious, smooth dark chocolate ice cream with lots of raspberry flavor. We used half-and-half instead of heavy cream. Chocolate-Raspberry Ice Cream (based on the recipe in The Perfect Scoop) 1.5 c half-and-half 5 heaping Tbs unsweetened cocoa powder 2/3 c sugar 2 c fresh or frozen raspberries In a saucepan, combine the half-and-half, cocoa powder, and sugar, and cook til the mixture comes to a boil. Add the raspberries, cover, and let sit for 10-15 min. Then pour the mixture into the food processor, and blend til smooth. Strain the seeds out and then chill the liquid for several hours. When the liquid is thoroughly cold, pour it into the frozen ice cream maker base and let it run for about 30 min., or until frozen. Scoop the ice cream into a container and freeze so it can get a little harder before serving.

Swimming With the Phishes

In advance of a big swim meet tomorrow, Swimmer Girl and I made chocolate-peanut butter ice cream as a special treat to mark the event. And because tomorrow will be all about swimming, we added chocolate phish from Ben & Jerry's instead of chocolate chips or chunks. The recipe is from a new cookbook, The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz, and it uses half-and-half instead of all heavy cream or heavy cream and milk. The final result didn't have that filmy quality that using all heavy cream can leave, and the flavor was nicely mixed between the chocolate and peanut butter. To balance the phish, we added tiny peanut butter patties, also from Lebovitz's book--a quick and easy addition that can be made while the cream mixture chills.

Summer Is ... Coffee Chip Ice Cream

Coffee chip ice cream is one of the best flavors there is--chocolate chip, done right, being the absolute best. Done right meaning with slivers of shaved or finely chopped dark chocolate. Tonight we made coffee chip ice cream, done right, and it was delicious. The coffee ice cream recipe came straight off the pamphlet that came with the ice cream maker, and we added the chocolate, 3 or 4 oz, in the last few minutes.

Family Dinner

After a quick trip north for the weekend, we had some family over to visit last night. Dinner mid-week isn't always easy, but this menu was fairly easy to put together, giving us plenty of time to chat and catch up. The chicken, which has become a staple around here, marinated while the other things were made, and then it was grilled as we had drinks and snacks. We also had French potato salad, which is full of herbs, mustard and olive oil but no mayonnaise; roasted artichoke hearts with red peppers; a watermelon salad with olives; pineapple; and a big green salad and bread. Not shown is the homemade French vanilla ice cream we had for dessert, topped with warm black raspberry jam. Some added tiny (but rich) chocolate brownies ... yum. Somehow in the midst of all that goodness I forgot to take any pics ... and the ice cream is now long gone, alas.

Black Raspberry Chip Ice Cream

Continuing the berry theme, we made black raspberry chip ice cream tonight--a favorite from summer vacations in Maine. The final product didn't turn out quite as we remembered it, nor as lavender in color, but it was still very good and very raspberry-y. We pureed and strained six cups of berries, and then mixed them with sugar, heavy cream, lemon juice, and chocolate chips.

We followed the directions, but 2.5 c of puree plus a pint of cream adds up to a lot of volume ... maybe a little too much.

Summer Sweets

A brownie sundae is one of the better things in this world. This one has a KAF brownie as a base, three kinds of ice cream (coffee, chocolate-peanut butter, and dark chocolate) on top, and a quick caramel sauce on top of it all.

Vacation Food

(go on, click ... you know you want to) I think seafood is obligatory in New England, if'n you're not a vegetarian, that is. And I'm not. I just returned from a few days in Maine, where we had some of the best lobsta rolls evah. Go to Tubby's, avail yourself of New England's Best Ice Cream, and pick up a large, made-on-the-spot lobster roll that contains no added nothing, just the way it should be. It was so good we had to have another one the next night. Having more time and inclination, we had a little more to go with our dinner that night: lobster rolls, tomatoes with fresh feta, and local green beans. One night I even cooked: shrimp and huge sea scallops with fresh tomatoes, onions, and a little smoked mozzarella, with local green beans on the side. Theme and variation yes, but so good. Happy Birthday to my mom! A belated celebration with lots of yummy cupcakes and fresh raspberries. We ended up quartering them so we could all taste all of them. A quiet celebration on the actual night, with just the two of us but three of Tubby's fabulous flavors: peanut butter (which we both loved), coffee chip, and the requisite black raspberry.

Chocolate Brownie-Peanut Butter Ice Cream Sandwiches

The recipe comes from Martha, but the peanut butter ice cream I made myself. And by made I mean taking vanilla ice cream and swirling it with peanut butter and huge, lightly salted peanuts. I only made half the recipe, and the brownies didn't come out as flat as they were supposed to--but I'm not complaining, because having more brownie is never bad.