Rhubarb & Ginger Ice Cream Tart

I wanted to make something with rhubarb and ginger, and I was feeling inspired by the DB tian last month. I still had some of the pastry discs leftover (they keep really well), so I decided to make something a bit similar.

I stewed a little rhubarb, and then stacked this with plain ice cream (not vanilla, plain. It's amazing.) stem ginger and one of the pate sablee discs.

Rhubarb & Ginger Ice Cream Tart

It wasn't the prettiest dish, but it was so tasty. I loved the texture of the crispy pastry against the soft the ice cream and rhubarb. The spiciness of the ginger balanced nicely with the ice cream, and the tartness of the rhubarb.

None left

Food Adventures in Florence: Part II

One of the few Italian dishes to which I will admit total love is gelato. Virtually every corner in Florence had a gelato stand. Some were branded, and sold mass produced Carte D'Or, but most advertised themselves as home-made.

The majority displayed their wares in freezer counters, with the ice cream towering high. Some decorated this mini-mountains with items representative of the flavour. Maybe a few nuts, pieces of fruit, or a few shards of coconut. However, I was much more drawn to the old fashioned style places, that kept their gelato in silver buckets.

Grom's Gelato Counter

Grom became a regular stop in Florence, after a particularly over-priced experience near the Ponte Vecchio. Tucked away in back street, prices at Grom were more reasonable, and the flavours more interesting than some of the more touristy places. A large cup of ice cream cost €5 in Grom, and most of the ingredients were sourced using Slow Food pinciples. We tried the lemon and strawberry sorbets, the chocolate fondant, yoghurt, baci, and "crema di Grom", a kind of cookies and cream flavour. If we were lucky we'd snag a seat on the bench in the shop, and I'd strain to overhear a tour group being shown round the back of the shop, but most of the time we'd just stand outside looking slightly shifty.

Strawberry sorbet, baci and yoghurt

We also found a nice gelato shop in Pisa, which didn't seem as well populated with the stuff as Florence was. This had most of the standard flavours, but we couldn't work out what one of them was. So we ordered it to find out - it was a kind of toffee and almond flavour and delicous.

I've been trying to think of a food-based job, and part of me really wants to open a grown up ice cream parlour. There's a couple of Italian places in Edinburgh already, but they don't seem to have the crazy range of flavours we found in Italy. Maybe Scotland just isn't ready for fresh milk flavour...

London Food Adventures Part II

Two places I was quite interested to visit this time were Westfield and Selfridges. I'd never been to Westfield, despite it only being a few stops away by tube, and the Selfridges' food hall has long been one of my favourite places to amble around.

Although I failed miserably in my attempt to find a new pair of jeans, I was impressed by Westfield. Everything was clean and well kept, and the snob in me was pleased that fast food chains had been kept out of the main food area. Instead there was an interesting looking risotto stall, along with a Lebanese bakery, a French rotisserie, Indian tiffin boxes, Mexican wraps and a pho stall. I have heard good things about pho, but the queue was massive. I doubt that it was the most authentic stuff you can find in London, but I thought it was interesting that it had been included in a mainstream food court.

Instead I had a frozen yogurt from the salad bar stand. I totally fell in love with frozen yogurt in Canada last year, and would insist that we got a snack every time we passed a Yogen Fruz. It doesn't seem to have caught on much in the UK, and most places just have vanilla yogurt with some random fruit on top. In Canada, they would have a whole freezer full of fruit, and you could choose your own combination to be blended in to your yogurt. The blender was a specialist piece of kit, that blended, chilled and served the yogurt, with the finished product being neatly piped into a bowl rather than scooped out. If you know of somewhere that does this within 500 miles of Edinburgh I would love to visit!

Frozen Yogurt in Westfield

I also spent some time standing outside Wahaca drooling at the menu. As mentioned in my past London post, I love South American food. If I hadn't just eaten all that frozen yogurt I probably would have been tempted by some churros. If I won the lottery and had an extra stomach that would be great, but until then I have to restrain myself.

I hopped on the central line to Bond Street to check out Selfridges. I always get confused about which is the nearest station, and have to stride along Oxford Street dodging thousands of tourists, but I made it in the end. I wasn't really intending to buy anything, especially not since Le Cafe Anglais ate all my money. I particularly enjoyed the chilled counters, as they had some fantastic looking Middle Eastern food on display, as well as a very well stocked fish counter. The butcher's counter had every cut of meat imaginable, including a pig's head. There was also a "raw food" counter with dehydrated carrot cake, which looked too wholesome to be any fun. I was slightly disappointed by the ambient section, as I was trying to get some orzo for my mum. The pasta section had spaghetti, penne and lasagne, and not much else. Poor show.

As it is Selfridges 100th birthday this year, there were lots of promotional products in the trademark yellow.

Selfridges' Centenary Coca Cola

Another culinary first on this trip was dim sum. I am not majorly in to Chinese food, and I've always been a bit scared by the lack of description, especially when in comes to dim sum. I am less wimpy these days, and more likely to order something without knowing what it is, but I still found dim sum a bit too much of an unknown. My friend E, who I have known since primary school, decided we should visit Ping Pong for dinner. As an introduction to the world of dim sum, I thought this was the gentlest route! Again, while the authenticity of some of the dishes must be compromised, I thought it was great that a fairly niche cuisine could be popular enough to form a local chain. I quite enjoyed the dinner, and I especially enjoyed trying some of the more unusual items such as the steamed buns. I have heard there are a couple of decent dim sum places in Edinburgh, so I'll have to give them a go now I have a bit more confidence!

Lastly, here are the Laduree pictures I promised you last time. Sorry for the rubbishness, my camera is 5 years old with 4 megapixels, so the pictures are not the best quality. It was so snazzy when I got it, and now it just looks lame compared to modern cameras!

Jess and I ordered a box of 8 to share. I got lemon, praline, salted caramel and bergamot, Jess got the salted caramel too. (Annoyingly, I can't remember what other flavours she got, I was too absorbed in the macaron goodness!) We ate the first ones nearby, sitting on the base of a statue of Beau Brummell, while the others got saved for a sunny spot in Soho Square.

Macaron Tower

Lemon is still my favourite, although praline is now a contender. The bergamot was too subtle, and just tasted of almonds. I was looking forward to the salted caramel, so much so that I saved it until the end. However it was over-caramelised in my opinion, tasting a little burnt and bitter. I might try to make some macarons at home soon, as the recipe looks hard but not impossible.

Laduree macarons, and my reflection

Ice Cream

A late Christmas present turned up last month, and it was the Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream and Dessert Book. It's a bit of a tricky one, as as well as having American measurements, it has lots of American ingredients. I had to google what a Heath Bar was.

I made ice cream once before (apple crumble flavour) and I made it with a custard base. I had the impression that good ice cream was made with a custard base, but none of the Ben & Jerry's recipes follow this. A quick look in Leiths revealed there were three methods: custard base, mousse base, and all in one. The Ben & Jerry's recipes seem to mostly all in one, but there are a few mousse ones too. I decided to see how a custard base stood up to an all in one base, and whether there would be any difference in taste.

Before starting, the only difference between the recipes seemed to be that B&J used whole eggs, whereas Leiths only used the yolks. Leiths didn't have a custard-based vanilla recipe, so I went for a hybrid version of a coffee ice-cream and creme-anglais recipe. B&J also wanted me to use extract, but I wanted to use vanilla beans, so I adapted that recipe a bit too.

Ben & Jerry's

I made this using the Sweet Cream Base that appears frequently throughout the book. I infused the double cream with a split vanilla pod, and used vanilla sugar instead of plain. After whipping the eggs and the sugar, I added whole milk and the cream. The mixture was very runny, and produced a much larger amount than I expected. I put half in the freezer and half in the fridge to use as a base for another flavour.

When I went back 30 minutes later to whisk out any ice crystals, it had already frozen quite well. I was a little worried when the lumps didn't seem to whisk out as easily as I'd hoped, but when I tasted one, it was smooth, not icy.

Leiths

I began by infusing scalded milk with a vanilla pod, and then whisked an egg yolk with a small amount of vanilla sugar. Once the milk had infused, I added in the egg mixture and stirred for a full 25 minutes before the custard thickened. I actually managed to get twinges in my tendons from the intense stirring!

Then I mixed in a little double cream to loosen the custard, and froze it. Again it was quite lumpy after the first couple of whiskings, but when I tasted the lumps they were obviously icy unlike the B&J mixture. After a few whiskings, it was less icy.


As you can see from the picture, the ice cream looked very similar, although the custard based one was frozen harder than the Ben & Jerry, which was almost soft scoop.

I prefer a firmer ice cream, so I was instantly more excited about trying the custard base. Tasting the mixes before and during the freezing process, I had preferred the custard base as it was richer and creamier.

However, when faced with a whole scoop rather than a teaspoon-full, the Ben and Jerry mix won over. The custard base was too rich to eat lots of, and had a slightly unpleasantly "eggy" taste that didn't seem right. Also, the vanilla flavour was very intense, almost chemical. The Ben & Jerry's was still rich, but the vanilla taste was more subtle. Both had small ice crystals, but I suspect this was due to me going out for a few hours instead of staying home and churning them as I should have!

I suspect that either of these ice creams would go well with a dessert, but the B&J is more suitable for eating on its own than the custard one. I think it would be very difficult to tell the difference between the two methods if you tasted the ice creams separately. It was only tasting them back to back that the differences became clear.

The left-over B&J base is going to become rhubarb and custard flavour over the weekend, and now that I am sure that I can produce a decent all-in-one ice cream without a churning machine, I can't wait to try some of the other recipes in the book!

EDIT: Custard base went very well with the Breadwinner Banana Tatins.