Dress Diet

Not my 20 year high school reunion, nor the impending thud of turning 40 could make me quit eating all of my favorite foods and get up before dawn and run 5 miles up and down hills.  But the threat of a wedding dress, a wedding dress can make me do those things. That’s right, no more butter, no more mayo and any thoughts of bacon or sausage are banned.  In fact for the most part I’ve gone back to being a vegetarian and Jim is forced to come along for the ride.  The 'hungry ride' he's quick to point out.  As it’s referred to in our house ‘the wedding diet’.  ‘I don’t think that’s on the wedding diet.’  is the refrain for telling yourself ‘no’ to all things verbotten, like that very special sandwich ham my friend Lily was selling at the farmer’s market.  Or Jim’s pleas to eat grocery store fried chicken while shopping.  Or ordering what you want off of any menu.  This dress in particular will not allow me to rely on Spanx or even 3 pairs of Spanx alone.  So up the hill, down the hill, around the block, egg whites for breakfast, tomato sandwich for lunch and another page ripped from Yottam Ottolenghi’s vegetable tome for dinner.  

Now the biggest problem with all of this, is I also to break up with ice cream for this dress too. Ice cream is my very best food friend.  I love it, and, yes PeeWee, I would marry it if I could. It was my first job and it would be my last meal. 

Jim knows me as well as I do.  Sometimes he’ll slip a bucket of half sour pickles or a slab of Polish butter into our shopping cart.  He also saves me the majority of squid tentacles when we order calamari.  He knows that bucket of pickles, the pricey butter with the weird wrapper and tentacles are going to make me as happy as flowers.  And I always save him the biggest piece of whatever we are eating.  Similarly, I carry a banana to work everyday.  It’s not for me.  Jim loves bananas but he can’t always remember to take one with him. 

Jim also has a love of ice cream that rivals mine.  Which is why we are skipping the wedding cake when we tie the knot.  Let them eat ice cream.  So before we quit it all in hopes of achieving Ken & Barbie figures I revved up the ice cream maker one more time.

Roasted Banana Chocolate Chip Ice Cream - Serves 8

2 cups of milk

2 cups of cream

1/2 cup of sugar

3 very ripe bananas

8 egg yolks

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (I use Ghiradelli)

1/2 lemon 

Heat the oven to 400. Place the sliced bananas face down on a Silpat lined baking sheet. Roast for about 10 minutes until they are slightly browned and the natural sugar has released and become crispy at the edges. Remove and set aside to cool. Squeeze lemon juice and mush up the bananas and mix lemon in well. Refrigerate if needed for use the next day.  Combine the milk and the cream and 1/2 of the sugar and bring to a boil. Meanwhile whisk together the egg yolks and the remaining sugar until thick.  Temper the eggs with 1/3 the hot milk mixture, whisking until combined. Return the mixture to the milk mixture and continue to heat while stirring until it can coat the back of a wooden spoon, add in vanilla.Remove from the heat and strain the mixture in to a bowl over an ice bath. Let cool and store in the fridge for several hours or overnight.  Add custard and bananas to ice cream maker and precess per the ice cream machine's directions. A few minutes prior to finishing add in the chocolate chips and process until evenly distributed. 

A Little Philanthropy

A little known fact about me is that I went to school in Colorado for two years.  I don’t talk about it much.  And it’s not because it’s a big secret or I’m embarrassed by it.  I just didn’t have a very good time there and therefore I don’t have much to say on the subject.  I didn’t have a very good time in kindergarten and you won’t hear me talking about that place much either.  I will say it was a stunning location for a college, at the base of Pikes Peak, and the campus is lovely too.  I had fantastic teachers, people who inspired me and I got to go do and see things I had never, ever experienced on the East Coast.  The experience made me a better person.  However, I had nothing in common with the other students, which made me feel like an alien. Sort of like wearing someone else’s clothes for two years. 

I was living away from Baltimore for the very first time and suddenly aware that not everyone ate steamed crabs or Mary Sue easter eggs. How odd.  To compensate, I had a large can of Old Bay sent to me from home, which I dutifully carried with me to the dining hall everyday.  You also couldn’t find a bagel to save your life, except for the frozen ones, so I had those shipped in too.

Colorado is not known for its regional culinary delights, or perhaps I just can’t think of anything that screams Colorado.  Tex-Mex? Or is it Co-Mex? I met my first chimichanga in Colorado Springs at the gas station and we became fast friends. Maybe chicken fried steak?  The first time I saw a chicken fried steak was in the college cafeteria.  I didn’t understand why you would want to chicken fry a steak and why couldn’t you just call it fried steak or even steak fried steak?  Anyhow, the point was lost on me.  But I have since learned that Texas also lays claim to the invention of the chicken fried steak and may well have rights to that claim.  Someone recently pointed out to me that Rocky Mountain Oysters are uniquely Colorado. I never managed to have one of those.  If that was my regional delicacy I’m not so sure I would brag about it. 

Another great thing about the college, besides the view, was the ice cream.  It was served at every meal.  Yes, every meal.  The campus lore goes like this:  Old Lady Bemis (I believe of the toilet empire) graduated from the college in the 1800s when it was an all women’s college.  She gave the school a large gift and in return, they did what most colleges do; they named a building for her.  Her gift, however, came with a caveat:  ice cream must be served at every meal, even breakfast.  I thanked Old Lady Bemis everyday when I helped myself to those ice cream buckets.  When I finally transferred to another school I was sadly made aware that not every school serves ice cream everyday, in fact, you are lucky to get it once a month.  I checked the Colorado College website to see whether they were still serving ice cream at every meal but it was extremely unclear.  Kids, if you go to CC and you aren’t getting your daily ice cream allowance I’d take it to the top.

So for Old Lady Bemis and her generous gift, I give you grown up cherry ice cream.  I have tried numerous ice cream bases and Thomas Keller’s is hands down the best, and there’s a reason for that.  I have changed it slightly to use 8 egg yolks, because while 8 yolks is obscene the recommended number of 10 is pornographic.

Grown Up Cherry Ice Cream - Serves 6-8

2 cups milk 

2 cups cream

3/4 cup sugar

8 egg yolks

1 teaspoon vanilla

1.5 ounces Cointreau 

2 cups cherries - pitted and roughly chopped

1/2 teaspoon of orange zest

Combine the milk and the cream and 1/2 of the sugar and bring to a boil.  Meanwhile whisk together the egg yolks and the remaining sugar until thick.  Temper the eggs with 1/3 the hot milk mixture, whisking until combined.  Return the mixture to the milk mixture and continue to heat while stirring until it can coat the back of a wooden spoon, add in vanilla.  Remove from the heat and strain the mixture in to a bowl over an ice bath.  Let cool and store in the fridge for several hours or overnight.  Pit 2 cups of cherries and roughly chop them, reserving the residual juices.  When the custard is ready place it, the Cointreau, and the orange zest in an ice cream maker and process per the instructions.  Just prior to finishing, add in the cherries and any juices they produced when chopped, process until blended, place in a container and freeze.

Life Long Love Affair

I love ice cream. I mean, I love it. I was snacking on a box of mint chocolate chip the other day and that thought popped in to my head. I LOVE ice cream. I love ice cream so much I would marry it. If I were on death row I’d want 5 boxes of it for my last meal. Really, it’s probably why I don’t really care for other desserts; how could you when it kind of feels like cheating? Seriously, why go on a date with David Duchovny when you’ve got Dave Grohl at home?

Strawberry and mint chocolate chip have a tie for first place, followed by peach, pistachio, peppermint stick, Cherry Garcia, banana, vanilla and lemon. In spite of my unconditional love I do have rules for ice cream. Ice cream cannot be the flavor chocolate; any flavor chocolate. Ice cream cannot contain any candy unless it is the aforementioned peppermint stick or chocolate chips. Ice cream cannot contain cookies, cakes, pies, fudge, carmel, marshmallow, jelly or any synthetic ooze. It cannot have a name that sounds like something unappetizing you might find accidentally stuck to the bottom of your shoe, Moose Tracks, for instance. The only thing that shall adorn my ice cream shall be jimmies (or the truly shameful, please don’t tell anyone, Magic Shell). And while I’m airing my dirty secrets, really there isn’t anything more decadent (and fun!) than pouring the Magic Shell directly into the box of ice cream and eating your way through layer after layer.

I can list the ice cream stores in different states I’ve been to and which flavor I ate. If you come to my house and I actually serve you a dessert that isn’t a glass of wine there’s an 85% chance that dessert will involve ice cream. If I could keep my yap shut on childhood trips Ocean City minimizing the “Are we there yet?”s, I was treated to the ever elusive peppermint stick ice cream at the HoJo. I used to race home from the bus stop to sit on the heater vent in the middle of winter and eat ice cream everyday after middle school. My preferred brand was Bryer’s. My first job was scooping ice cream, of course. I was so devoted I managed to move up from conehead to fountain girl quickly. My sister and I have the same birthday. My step-mom always got us the same exact cake for our birthdays - Baskin Robbins ice cream cake with white cake with chocolate chip ice cream. We had this up until birthdays 30 & 25. I could tell thousands of ice cream stories.

Oddly, I’ve never made my own ice cream. The kids took it upon themselves to rectify that situation and bestowed on me an ice cream maker for my birthday.

Blueberry Lime Zest Ice Cream

1 1/2 cups cream

1 1/2 cups whole milk

1 cup sugar

1 pint blueberries

1 teaspoon vanilla

4 large egg yolks

zest of 3 limes

1 cup water

Combine the water and 1/4 cup sugar in a pot bring to a boil, add lime zest and simmer until the liquid has reduced by half. Strain and reserve the zest. Combine the milk, cream and 1/2 cup sugar and heat on the stove to 175 degrees strain through a fine mesh sieve. Combine egg yolks and remaining 1/4 cup sugar, whisk until thickened. Add milk and cream slowly to the eggs, whisking the entire time. Add the vanilla and return the mixture to the stove and heat to 180 degrees. Strain again. Cool to room temperature then fully cool in refrigerator. When cool add the custard and blueberries to a blender and blend until combined. Finely mince the lime zest. Place the custard in the ice cream maker and run as directed, 3 minutes prior to completion, add in 1.5 teaspoons of the lime zest. Pour in a container and freeze overnight.

Notes: The ice cream recipe comes from food52.com. I added the lime zest based on a recipe for blueberries with lime zest confit and creme fraiche from the Les Halles cookbook.

Girls' Weekend

I have cook book, it’s more like a scrap book really. It’s a standard sketch book and in it I have taped recipes I have used through the years that I like and have proven trustworthy and some recipes I have come up with and refined. There is no ‘organization’ to it. Write something down and move on. Usually it just involves a vague list of inferred ingredients. It also has menus in it, and lists. Lists upon lists. Lists of what we ate with no recipes, vague lists, and lists about things that Jim likes, lists for bridal showers, lists for engagement parties, lists for any and everything. I troll through it often, the totem of food. Recently I was cruising through it and I came across this ‘Raspberry Lambic Float’. This comes from my friend Danny. My friend Danny who hates dessert. Danny eats dessert about once a year, probably on his birthday when he has to choke down the cake someone made for him. This year he is going to have to choke it down twice since he is getting married.

Several years ago we used to have these Iron Chef offs. Four of us would each make two dishes in amuse bouche form. Then we invited two friends to be our Jeffrey Steingartens. They would blind judge and deem someone the winner. I don’t think Danny won for this dish but he should have. It was creative, tasty and it contained booze in dessert form. When I saw it in my ‘cookbook’ I thought to myself - ‘why haven’t I made this?’

I am presently having a girls' weekend with my two giggly adorable godchildren. So I decided the time was right to recreate it. Obviously a non-alcoholic version for the kids. Hamburgers, corn on the cob and ice cream floats! I’m sure it was originally made in a shot glass or a thimble or something tiny, it looked better in a pint glass, but it was way too big for me to finish. I've adjusted the recipe for a more manageable serving.

Raspberry Lambic Float - Serves 1

4 oz. raspberry lambic (or raspberry soda)

1 scoop premium vanilla ice cream (I used Haagen Dazs five and also gave the girls two scoops and 8 oz. soda)

2-3 tablespoons whipped cream (I use 1 cup of whipping cream to 1 teaspoon vanilla whipped to your desired consistency)

5 raspberries

mint for garnish

Pour the beer in to a glass larger than the beer will hold (this is so when the ice cream goes in to the soda/beer the ice cream volcano stays contained in the glass), scoop the ice cream and hang off the side of the glass, top beer/ice cream with whipped cream and garnish with the berries and mint. Serve with a spoon and a straw.