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Tuesday, December 28, 2004

The sherbet looked like this after Penelope ran out of torque. It tastes pretty good. Just as advertised, it delivers the flavors of anise and pineapple. The anise comes from a couple of teaspoons of anise seeds cooked up in the sugar syrup and you’ll never guess where the pineapple comes from. Ha! It comes from this really strange fruit that looks like a hand grenade or maybe a badminton shuttlecock gone bad.   You cut off all the bad parts, which seems like most of it, then you puree the good parts in a Cuisinart. Gourmet says to do it in batches in a blender. What is with them? One of the premiere food magazines and they’re always doing batches in blenders. Have they outsourced their recipe writing to Nike or one of those fireworks factories? Get a food processor and don’t be so cheap! Anyway, there’s a hint f lemon juice and, yes indeedy, some Pernod in the sherbet as well. Is it a sherbet or a sorbet? I don’t know.   Funny thing is, though, there is also Pernod in the oysters Rockefeller. Rock salt and Pernod, beginning and endings, there is definitely something significant here. Is it related to the hidden message Gourmet communicates by insisting on multiple blender processing? I don’t know, I’m just not smart enough to figure out stuff like that. I do know that anise-pineapple is my nomination for flavor combination of the year.    9:03:37 PM    comment []

Making Sherbet In The Sink   I bought this Rival ice cream maker at Wal-Mart a few years ago for 20 bucks. I went on a frozen dessert binge for a few months and then put it away. It was waiting for me as faithfully as Penelope awaited Ulysses, but it did acquire a few dust bunnies. No problem, wipe ‘em off.   Twenty bucks! Yeah, you have to buy a big bag of ice every time you want to make ice cream, but how often does that happen?   It takes a bit of rock salt too, Rock salt, something I had to buy, curiously forms the tent poles of this meal. The oysters Rockefeller in the first course are baked on a bed of rock salt and the pineapple anise sherbet, for dessert, holds up the other end of the meal. There might be some deep philosophical significance to all this, but fortunately I am too ignorant to grasp it and bore you with it.   “Salt of the earth,” maybe that’s it – or “worth its salt.” Maybe it’s from that bluegrass song, “I Wanna Be Your Salty Dog.” The word “salary” came from salt, maybe we’ll all get a raise this year. Like I said, I don’t get it.   That ol’ cheapie ice cream maker cost a fraction of what those fancy ones with container you have to prep in the freezer cost and makes more. It cost an insignificant fraction of the ones that have the freezing system built in. So, for once a year, or every few years, it’s a pretty good deal. Less trouble than the kind you gotta crank and it doesn’t cost that much more. When the ice cream is done, it just stops turning and you better watch for that because the motor keeps trying to run. I suppose you’d eventually burn out the motor if you left it plugged in under that much load. Who cares? Buy another!   Twenty bucks!     8:44:39 PM    comment []

From the The Cook’s Thesaurus (salad green substitutions)   corn salad = mâche = lamb's lettuce = lamb's tongue = field lettuce = field salad = fetticus  Notes: Corn salad has tender leaves and a very mild flavor. Substitutes:  butter lettuce OR Bibb lettuce    The ingredients list for Friday’s meal is not nearly as esoteric as the one for Thanksgiving, but mâche wasn’t at Whole Foods so I need a substitution. Fetticus, man, that one sounds weird, like somebody mispronounced “lettuce” and it caught on in a few, maybe rural, southern counties. I also took called strikes on all three of the wines at A Southern Season. Here are the substitutions in that department:             Roederer Estate Brut Rosé ð      Ca’del Solo Freisa             Marimar Torres Estate Don Miguel Vineyard Pinot Noir ’01 ð      David Bruce 2003 Central Coast Pinot Noir   Silvan Ridge Oregon Early Muscat ‘03  ð      Two Hands “Brilliant Surprise” Moscato Brill   I got everything else on the list except the oysters and the tenderloin. Whole Foods did have fresh oysters and now I’m wishing I’d gotten some for practice shucking. I held off on the tenderloin in hopes some grocery chain will have them on sale starting tomorrow. Local fishmonger Tom Robinson will be open tomorrow and he’s right up the street, so I can get some practice oysters there. I need to stay out of A Southern Season. I bought some Chicago Metallic layer cake pans, which is okay because I’ll need them later today, and Fumet de Poisson Gold, which will keep me from having to scrounge fish head and bones for stock tomorrow. I bought an adjustable layer cake slicer, not one like I ordered from King Arthur Flour, but it looks like it will work. It’s made by Westmark and is called at Tortenbodenteiler on the packaging. I think I’ll call it that from now on, IF I can remember it. I also bought a Gefu spicknadel, a more slender and perhaps more efficient larding needle than the one I used on the rump roast last Sunday. Anyway, now I’m ready to start cooking – it is a mighty cold day to be making ice cream…   2:36:40 PM    comment []