 |
| Coffee and tea ice cream with cinnamon sugar cookie |
If bread is my first culinary love, then ice cream is my second. I blame my parents. We didn't go out to eat much when I was a child - just here and there, on special occasions; most frequently to the local 'Chinese' restaurant for 'Chinese chicken and chips' - basically fried chicken and french fries. My mother cooked most of our food at home, and processed foods did not feature very heavily in my diet. Ice cream, however, did make appearances more often than most, and for years it was what I would always order in a restaurant for dessert (and sometimes, I still do). My eyes still light up at the mention of a scoop of Neapolitan ice cream (with layers of strawberry, chocolate and vanilla)...
Ice cream allows for a lot of creative experimentation. The base is relatively straightforward, once you make it a few times, and can be adapted to many flavors. This is one reason why I love to make it so much. It is an outlet for individual expression! And this 'art', you get to eat.
Coffee was one ice cream flavor I made often. I don't drink coffee - I never got into it, and still have no interest - but I love to eat it - that is, to put it into baked goods and desserts. Surely, you ask, what is the difference? I believe that it is the sugar, which I find necessary to balance coffee's astringency, but which I don't care for in drinks. I never used to like drinking tea either, and now think it was for a similar reason - I didn't like sugar in my drink. But I have found that tea (especially higher quality tea) does not need sugar for me to enjoy it. It was when I tried tea black that I started to appreciate it.
I have always thought of coffee and tea together, for obvious reasons, but I had never come across a black tea ice cream. Green tea ice cream I had tried, and made. Why not black tea? So I decided to try it.
It just so happened that I had some coffee ice cream languishing in the freezer at the same time, and so I came up with the idea of a pairing - coffee and tea. This was partly inspired by reading about (the restaurant) The French Laundry, in California, in Grant Achatz's book Life, On The Line. Achatz worked at the French Laundry before opening his own molecular gastronomy restaurant in Chicago, Alinea. At the French Laundry, dishes had whimsical names and were based around themes, such as 'oysters and pearls'.
I needed something to unite the two elements in my 'pairing', so I came up with a cinnamon sugar cookie. Cinnamon is a flavor that works well with coffee and with tea. Cookies also work with both drinks.
It was after putting together this dessert that I realized it was in a way an allegory of my life in the United States. Over the last ten years since I moved here from England, I spent quite some time agonizing over my national identity. At first I felt English, and thus different from the Americans around me. Then as time went on, I became more removed from 'Englishness', and my friends back home described my accent as becoming 'more American". At the same time, Americans usually can tell that I am not from here. This left me feeling stuck in the mid-Atlantic - a man without a country. It took me some time to realize that the country doesn't make the man (or woman), and that nationality is largely a meaningless label. Sure, growing up surrounded by English culture had an effect on who I am today, but much less than I had given it credit for.
Whether or not this consciousness affected my idea for the dish, I am uncertain. But now I see myself as the cookie, between coffee (the US) and tea (the UK)! The title of this post comes from the Sting song Englishman in New York (also the inspiration for the name of my older food blog - An English Cook In America:
I don't drink coffee, I take tea my dear
I like my toast done on one side
And you can hear it in my accent when I talk
I'm an Englishman in New York...
For the following ice cream recipes, it is necessary to have an ice cream machine. This is mine - a simple Cuisinart - it is available for about $40 (USD).
Coffee Ice Cream
To make the base for the coffee ice cream, scald 1.5 cups (12 fl oz, 350 ml) heavy cream in a saucepan. This means to heat it until just before it boils (you'll see tiny bubbles forming around the edge). Once it reaches this point, take the pan off the heat and add 3.5 oz (100g) whole coffee beans. Put a lid on the pan (or plastic wrap), and set it aside to cool for at least 30 minutes, and preferably longer. This allows the beans to 'steep', releasing their flavor into the cream.
Leave the beans to steep for as long as you like. Longer will result in more flavor, but less liquid (as the beans soak up the cream). When you are ready, strain the cream into a measuring jug. Discard the beans. Add enough milk to make the total volume of liquid up to 2 cups (16 fl oz, 475 ml).
Cooking the base
Pour the milk/cream mixture into a heavy-bottomed 2 quart (approx. 2 liter) saucepan. Set up a metal bowl on ice (or in cold water) with a fine strainer over it.
Crack 4 egg yolks into a medium bowl. Add 7 oz (approx. 1 cup, 200g) sugar. Now switch the heat on under the saucepan (with the milk/cream mix in it) to medium. While it is heating up, whisk the sugar into the yolks until they become pale yellow. Have a wooden spoon and ladle on hand.
Keep an eye on the milk/cream mixture. As soon as it scalds (see above), ladle some hot milk/cream onto your yolks, and whisk to incorporate. Then quickly transfer the contents of the bowl back into the saucepan, stirring constantly with the wooden spoon. As soon as the mixture in the pan will coat the back of the spoon (test by drawing a line in it with your finger - if the line holds, it's ready), quickly tip it out of the saucepan, through the strainer into the cold metal bowl. Stir to help it cool down. It is very important not to let the mixture cook beyond the spoon-coating point, as if you allow it to boil, the eggs will curdle (scramble) and your base will be unusable.
Once cooled down, chill your base in the refrigerator. Once chilled, churn it in the ice cream maker, then transfer to the freezer in an airtight container to "ripen".
Tea Ice Cream
This ice cream uses a very similar base. For the tea flavor, I used 1 tbsp black tea leaves that had already been used to make tea. I did this because it reduces the chance of astringent flavors in the ice cream. It also allowed me to drink the tea beforehand! If you don't have loose tea leaves, substitute a once-used tea bag. It doesn't really matter what kind of tea you use, but I would avoid strongly-flavored teas.
Put your tea leaves or bag into a heavy-bottomed 2 quart saucepan with 2 cups (16 fl oz, 475 ml) half and half, or 1 cup of milk and 1 cup of heavy cream. Scald the half and half (as described under coffee ice cream), and remove from the heat and cover with a lid, allowing it to sit for at least 30 minutes.
Next, cook the base as described above (under coffee ice cream) using 4 egg yolks and 7 oz sugar. The tea leaves can stay in the base until the strainer stage, and can then be discarded. Cool, chill, churn and freeze.
Cinnamon Sugar Cookies
These cookies will be baked at 350 F (175 C), so preheat your oven. The butter also needs to be softened ahead of time - just leave it out at room temperature for an hour or so.
Cream 4 oz (1 stick, 115g) softened butter with 7.5 oz (1 cup, 210g) sugar - that is to say, whisk the ingredients together until "creamy" (if you have a food mixer with a paddle, use it - it will be much easier). Stir in 1 egg and a splash of vanilla extract. Mix together 1 1/3 cups (6.25 oz, 175g) flour - this can be all-purpose (AP) or a blend of AP and whole grain flours - with a pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/8 tsp cinnamon and fold into the butter mixture.
Form into small balls (about 1 tsp of dough) and set on parchment paper lined (or greased) cookie sheets, spaced apart a little. Press the balls so that they flatten into discs. Bake at 350 F, rotating the sheets after 5 minutes, and removing from the oven when the bottoms of the cookies are golden brown. Total baking time should be approximately 10 minutes. Take cookies off sheets and cool on a rack. Once cool, store in an airtight container.
Ice cream science
This technique of making ice cream uses a custard base - it is made up of a milk/cream component, eggs yolks and sugar, that are cooked until the yolks thicken the mixture. The thickening occurs by virtue of the unfolding and interconnection of the egg yolk proteins as they are heated. It is important to temper the eggs (by adding a small amount of hot liquid onto them before adding them to the rest of the liquid) in order to bring their temperature up gently and avoid curdling. Curdling happens when the mixture is heated too far - over 185 F (85 C) - and the protein network begins to break down.
Once the base is made and cooled, the most important factors determining the quality of the ice cream are the size of the ice crystals and the amount of air incorporated into the mix. A small size of ice crystal is desirable, as smaller crystals are less noticeable on the tongue, resulting in smoother ice cream. The crystals can be kept small by freezing the mix quickly - this means that the bowl of your ice cream maker should be as cold as possible. Air in the mix helps to destabilize it a little, and makes it less dense by increasing the overall volume (this effect is called overrun). Overrun is maximized by stirring while freezing - hence the paddle in the ice cream machine.
Another factor that can affect the quality of the finished product is the temperature of your freezer. In order for the churned mix to freeze quickly into smooth ice cream, the freezer temperature must be low enough (ideally no higher than 0 F/-18 C). It is also advisable to freeze your ice cream in an airtight container, which will prevent freezer odors from affecting the flavor, and also hold freezer burn (drying out due to exposure to the air) at bay.
Variations and Related Posts
There is no end to the number of possible flavor combinations you can use in ice cream. You can use fruit, herbs, spices, cheese, even savory ingredients.
The following posts can be found on An English Cook in America.
Vanilla Ice Cream
Milk Chocolate Malt Ice Cream
Butter Pecan Ice Cream
Lavender Honey Ice Cream
Caramel Ice Cream
Coconut Ice Cream
Green Tea Ice Cream
Variations for mint and cinnamon ice creams are listed under the vanilla ice cream post.
I have also tried the following variations:
Chai Tea Ice Cream - made as for the tea ice cream above, but adding the following spices to the half and half right at the beginning (they will be strained out at the end) - a slice of fresh ginger, a few cardamom seeds, a small piece of cinnamon stick, 2-3 cloves, a few black peppercorns and a pinch of fennel seeds.
Basil Ice Cream - Way, way better than it sounds! Take 1 large bunch of basil, pick off the leaves and blanch them in boiling water - meaning, drop them in, let them have about 10 seconds, then immediately transfer them to ice cold water to stop the cooking. Remove from the ice water and squeeze dry. Set aside. Make an ice cream base with 2 cups of half and half, 5 yolks, 7 oz sugar. Cook, strain and cool as described above, then add the basil leaves to the cooled base and blend in - a stand blender is best for this. Chill, churn and freeze.
Sub-lime Ice Cream - My favorite variation so far. Zest 5 limes and add them to 2 cups of half and half with 2 slices of fresh ginger. Scald the mixture (see above), cover the pan and allow to cool, then chill in the fridge overnight. The next day, strain out the ginger and zest and make a base with 5 yolks and 7 oz sugar. Cook, strain and cool as described above, then stir in 1 tsp ground ginger and 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper. Chill, churn, freeze.
Maple Bacon Ice Cream - Cut 2 slices of bacon into small squares (1/4 inch/6mm) and render in a small saute pan (cook gently until all of the fat has melted out and the meat is crispy but not burned). Set aside to cool (remove bacon from the liquid fat while still warm). Make a base with 2 cups of half and half, 5 yolks and 4 oz sugar. Cook and strain as described above, then stir in 5 oz maple syrup and allow to cool. Chill, then churn. Add the bacon pieces as the ice cream solidifies in the machine. Freeze.
References/Further Reading
On Food and Cooking - Harold McGee
No comments:
Post a Comment