The Weekend of Fixed Kitchen Disasters

I have had three major disasters in the kitchen since I started cooking: Crème brûlée, gnocchi, and caramel sauce (I don't even want to talk about that last one...) But this weekend I inadvertently tackled and defeated the first two!

I first attempted to make crème brûlée last spring at St. Mary's. I had Amish cream and organic free-range eggs from the farm, the best of the best as far as ingredients go. I followed the directions in the Joy of Cooking to a "T" and I must say that this is the only time Joy has ever failed me. The recipe said the custard was supposed to be in the oven for half an hour. Two hours later, I still had a liquid in my little mugs/make-shift ramicans (which also served as make-shift wine glasses). I was frustrated and didn't know what I did wrong so I tossed them...Only later to find out that they often need hours in the oven!

A friend I met in Tucson happened to be an expert crème brûlée maker, and so on Saturday we set off to make a successful batch. I don't remeber the exact recipe but it was something resembling the below:

Crème brûlée 4 cups heavy whipping cream 1 vanilla bean, split 6 egg yolks 1/2 C white sugar 1/2 C brown sugar Heat the cream and split vanilla bean in a pot to a light simmer. Mix egg yolks and sugar before slowly mixing in hot cream mixture. Pour custard into ramicans. Place in a boiling water bath in a pan and heat in a 325 degree oven, covered with tin foil for 1 1/2 hours (although I wouldn't trust any time on this, check with a fork after 30-45 minutes. If placed in the custard and comes out clean, it is ready) Then let it chill in the fridge for a few hours. Once chilled, lightly cover the top with qhite sugar and caramelize with a kitchen torch (ours was out of gas, so we put them under the broiler for a minute or two until bubbly). The broiler won't give you a nice brown color, but you will still have the fun little crunch sound!




The crème brûlée was wonderful! It is great topped with berries too :)



Next was th gnocchi. As you may remeber, Rose and I attempted to make gnocchi this past summer. While it ended up delishious, the humidity of DC caused it to take 5 or so extra cups of flour and a few hours of kneading since the dough kept soaking in the moisture from the air! This time I made it in Tucson where the is no humidity and it worked out wonderfully!

Rosemary Gnocchi 4 medium potatoes 1 C flour 1 tsp salt 2 Tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped Boil the potatoes until soft (about 45 minutes). Keep the water for later use. Skin the potatoes and mash while hot. Mix in the salt and flour by hand until it becomes a dough. Kned in the fresh rosemary. Roll the dough out into 3/4" strips and cut 1 inch pieces. Boil the gnocchi in the (above) water until they float to the top, about 2 minutes. Serve with tomato sauce!




All I can say is never try to make gnocchi on the east coast during the summer! While the gnocchis tasted great before they were super-dense because all the extra flour. These were very light, fluffy, and delicious!

This was a very successful cooking-filled weekend. I overcame two of my greatest kitchen fears! Now, if only I will try the caramel sauce again...Unlikely since last time I ended up with 2 boxes of sugar down and 4 hours lost. Maybe sometime!

Chilean Squash Casserole

Sorry for the lack of posts over the past few weeks. Work has been super-busy and I haven't had much time to cook anything special. Work has been going well though. I start interviews this coming week for the document on S. AZ's food system. I will be talking to a teacher in a school garden and a CSA in Tucson this week!

The garden is coming along pretty well. Gardening in the desert is tough work! I recently planted some kale and broccoli that was donated to us by the food bank's garden, and they are doing well. Our strawberries and sweet basil dont look like they will last much longer. The winter squash have been growing like crazy although I'm told they won't fruit since its so late in the season. Winter squash is a misnomer since they needed to be planted a few months ago. Lame.

Last night, we had a friend come over for dinner. I had some squash and corn I wanted to use before they went bad and much to my surprise, I found a delicious sounding recipe that used both of these things in the Moosewood Cookbook, one of my all-time favorites and the best veggie cook book I've ever used! The recipe below is slightly adapted.

Chilean Squash Casserole

4 Cups squash (I used 1 large butternut squash and one acorn squash)
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 C. chopped onion (about half of one large yellow onion)
5 medium cloves garlic, minced
black pepper, to taste
1 tsp. chili powder
2 C. corn
1 C grated cheddar cheese

1) Bake the squash in an oven at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes, or until soft. Mash in a bowl once cooked.
2) Saute the onion over medium heat for about 5 minutes in olive oil. Add salt and corn, saute for 5 more minutes.
3) Add garlic, black pepper, chili powder, and saute for a few more minutes
4) Add the sauted veggies to the squash and mix well. Spread into an ungreased 9-inch baking pan; sprinkle with grated cheddar cheese.
5) Bake uncovered for about 25 minutes, or until bubbly.

Pictures are below (they aren't the best due to lighting and my continued refusal to use a flash, but it gives you an idea!)



Tonight for dinner I had leftover squash casserole, but I also had an idea. I put the squash in corn tortillas and had Chilean squash tacos. So good!

The casserole (and subsequent tacos) were quite delicious and made me miss autumn terribly! It is still in the mid-90s here in Tucson. We were tricked last week when the temperature dropped to the 60s and 70s, but now its back to the heat...So it was nice to have this autumnal dish to remind me of home, the crisp weather, and the changing leaves.

Avocado Ice Cream!

Starting this past summer, I have been trying to branch out of the traditional ice cream flavor realm and move into more unique and complex flavors. My first experiment would have been the Mexican Chocolate ice cream, which isn't a new flavor by any means, but it definitely pushed the boundaries I had for what constitutes a "good" ice cream flavor. Spicy ice cream?! But it worked oh so well! With this spirit for adventure, I have felt the desire to start trying some more savory flavors. I have read about tomato and basil sorbet, garlic ice cream, and even cheddar cheese ice cream. While I'm sure I will eventually build up the courage to try those, I thought a nice stepping stone would be avocado ice cream!

Avocado is one of my absolute favorite foods. I read of avocado ice cream recipes and was always very hesitant about the idea. Avocado ice cream? Really?! Avocado has a subtle flavor and "dessert" is the last thing that comes to mind when I usually think of avocado. But avocados are relatively dirt cheap here in Arizona (compared to prices on the east coast!) and so I thought there would be no better time to try it out! I found the below recipe from my hero, Alton Brown, so I knew it was trustworthy:

Avocado Ice Cream
Ingredients:

• 12 ounces avocado meat, approximately 3 small to medium
• 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 1/2 cups whole milk
  
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup heavy cream

Directions:

Peel and pit the avocados. Add the avocados, lemon juice, milk, and sugar to a blender and puree. Transfer the mixture to a medium mixing bowl, add the heavy cream and whisk to combine. Place the mixture into the refrigerator and chill until it reaches 40 degrees F or below, approximately 4 to 6 hours.

Process the mixture in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's directions. However, this mixture sets up very fast, so count on it taking only 5 to 10 minutes to process. For soft ice cream, serve immediately. If desired, place in freezer for 3 to 4 hours for firmer texture.

To be honest, when I decided to make avocado ice cream, I thought it would be a fun novelty flavor. Little did I know that it would actually be INCREDIBLE! Even without egg yolks (which regular hungrysprout readers will know I always use 2 egg yolks in all my ice cream!) it is incredibly rich and creamy. Possibly due to the fats naturally in the avocado? And I was also surprised at the use of lemon juice, which I always knew would curdle milk. But much to my surprise, this recipe worked incredibly well. Alton was right in that it churned incredibly fast, taking only 5 minutes for me. I recommend everyone try avocado ice cream sometime in the near future. It will change your life. Or at least...no, it will basically change your life!

Peanut Butter Ice Cream

After a rough day at the the food bank's farm, I wanted to do nothing else besides make some ice cream. I made the sorbet last week, but I haven't made an actual ice cream in weeks and was starting to go through withdrawal. That desire plus my never-ending addiction to peanut butter let to today's creation.

Peanut Butter Ice Cream
2 C heavy whiping cream
1 1/2 C whole milk
2 egg yolks
3/4 C sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 C peanut butter

I started by making the standard ice-cream base custard (read below to the post entitled I Love Ice Cream More Than Words Can Say to get a full description of the custard-making process). While the custard was still hot, I poured it into a bowl and added the 1 cup of peanut butter and stirred until it was totally melted and uniform. I then added the heavy cream and vanilla before chilling it in the fridge and putting it in the ice cream maker.

Anyone that knows me personally knows that I live and die by crunchy peanut butter. I believe you can tell what type of person someone is by the type of peanut butter they eat. But unfortunately I had to suck it up and use creamy peanut butter in this recipe for two reasons: 1) that is all that I had enough of (the people living in this house before us left an unopened jar, whereas my crunchy peanut butter is almost gone, and 2) While I have heard that adding peanuts to the ice cream makes it amazing, I had my concerns about the churning ability of this ice cream if it had crunchy peanut butter as opposed to whole peanuts.

This ice cream is very good! After the fact I thought of the idea of making peanut butter and jelly ice cream, but that must wait until another day. I have extra cream & milk left, so be on the lookout for another ice cream in the next week or so. My inclination right now is to try out avocado ice cream, which has been on my list of flavors to try for some time now. And avocados are so cheap here compared to the east coast that I feel obligated to give it a try!

Prickly Pear Sorbet!

Internet has been installed in my house and I am back in business! Thanks for your patience, friends.

When I found out that I was moving to Tucson for my fellowship placement, one of the first things I thought of was how awesome it would be to make prickly pear sorbet. I shipped my ice cream maker all the way across the country with this idea in mind. When I landed last week and asked where I could find prickly pear cactus fruit, I was informed that most of the cacti around stopped producing fruit the week before. My dreams quickly came crashing down on me inside an hour of landing! I kept my eye out for some prickly pear fruits but none could be found.

Last week, Raquel (my field site partner) and I went to our Mennonite Volunteer Service (MVS) friend's house for dinner. They told me that their prickly pear cactus had fruit left, but when I went out to check they had all been harvested earlier in the day. Again, my plan had been foiled! So I asked if they knew of anywhere that still had some fruit growing and I was informed that the gas station by my house had tons left.

So I left the MVS house complete with a bucket and tongs in hand (the fruit has tiny thorns on its skin so you can't pick them with your bare hands) in the middle of the night (actually more like 8:30, but it was dark out and I was still on east coast time). And much to my delight, there were hundreds if not thousands of prickly pear fruits growing all over the cacti in the gas station parking lot! And we harvested those fruits like crazy...almost an entire bucket full!


Now to make the sorbet. I had to run each fruit under cold water and wipe the thorns off while wearing a rubber glove and then again into a dish towel. Once that was done, I cut a half inch slit into the skin length wise on one side and peeled the rest of the skin away.



The fruit was then thrown into the blender and then the seeds and flesh were strained out, leaving only the juice. I took a half cup of the juice and put it in a pot with 1 cup of sugar and heated it for about 10 minutes to make a simple syrup. The syrup was then mixed back in with the rest of the juice with a splash of orange juice (since I didn't have lemon juice which is usually added to sorbets to help with the flavor), chilled, and then went to freeze in the mixer.

The sorbet has a a very unique taste. The fruit itself has very little flavor so the sugar and orange juice helped a lot. Te taste really can't be compared to anything I have ever had. It is sweet and tart. The only bad thing is that it leaves a funky aftertaste in your mouth. But it is such a gorgeous color!



On another note, the garden we planted is coming along well. Much was added since my post last week. We now have three types of basil (sweet, lemon, and thai), rosemary,sage, two strawberry plants, a habanero pepper, and 5 green bell pepper plants. Our onion seeds started sprouting today, which is so exciting, along with some mesclun and winter squash. There are also carrot, cilantro, parsley, chives, spinach, kale, sugar snap peas, and a few other seeds we are waiting to sprout.

My field placement for the fellowship is at the Community Food Bank here in Tucson. This food bank is so amazing and incredibly progressive in the field! They don't only pass out emergency food boxes, but they have their own farm which grows for their own farmers markets, garden classes, home garden instruction, and little grocery store, and so much more. I am working in the Community Food Security Center and most of my work will involve promoting all of the amazing work of the Center and creating a publication about the southern Arizona food system to show people how their food choices have a large impact on the community around them. Before starting on my project, though, I have been working all around the food bank to get a better understanding of how all their programs work. I am also working with Raquel on a project to show people just how much food can be bought with a $10 voucher at the food store and recipes they can use with those food lists.

So overall, things are amazing here in Tucson. I miss my family and friends so much, but I have never felt like I am in the right place as much as I do now. I know that I will be doing work that will help the Commuity Food Security Center, the food bank, and the community around me while giving me such invaluable experience. I know that I have learned an unbelievable amount during the week and a half of training and my week here in Tucson. I am looking forward to seeing what else I will learn over the next 5 months!

So, does anybody have any ice cream flavor ideas? Let me know in the comments!!

Thanks for reading and thanks for your patience while I was training/moving/getting settled/getting internet!

-Eric

Pictures of my Tucson House

There hasn't been any time for cooking yet, but I was able to upload a few pictures of my new house. They can be viewed from the link below:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tyrannyofdistance/sets/72157607306017688/

My favorite part is the huge kitchen! (compared to any previous kitchen I've cooked in before). Raquel, my housemate & fellow fellow, and I also planted a little herb garden this morning complete with thai basil, lemon basil, sage, and rosemary. The soil is so dry here, but we will water them tons and hope they survive!

Be back again soon!

-eric

Alive & in Tucson

Hello friends! I am alive and well. Fellowship training was intense but amazing and I made it safely to Tucson, AZ yesterday afternoon. My house does not have internet (although it has a HUGE amazing kitchen) so posts will continue to be infrequent until I get that fixed. I am currently using the free wi-fi at Safeway, which is not the ideal place to get work done on the internet...but alas.

What have people been cooking themselves Post recipes!

I shall return ASAP.