I really like the Wittard Afternoon blend of tea Todd brought back from London once, so when the IMBB theme for this round turned out to be tea, I saw a chance to try it a different way. I'd been thinking about making a panna cotta, but the ice cream maker has been sitting on top of the fridge all summer, forlorn and unloved, so I took it down for these tea-flavored ice cream sandwiches.

I used Alton Brown's recipe for vanilla ice cream and substituted 3 teaspoons of tea leaves for the scraped vanilla bean. It's an OK recipe but I find all the cold fat in it leaves a greasy coating on the spoon. Maybe it's my machine (I have one of the hand-crank ones) or maybe I should use a custard-based recipe next time. The flavor's pretty cool, though.

Bring 2 cups half-and-half, 1 cup heavy cream, 3/4 cup sugar, 3 teaspoons loose black tea and a couple good pinches of salt just below a bubble (the edges will start to bubble a bit), then let it sit for about an hour to steep the tea. Pour through a strainer and chill overnight, then freeze it in an ice cream machine the next day. It gets to the texture of soft serve in the machine, then you transfer it to a lidded container to freeze it more solid.

I made a couple of tea ice cream sandwiches (using shortbread cookies, of course), but most of the cookies were broken when I opened the package so I also just mixed crumbs into the ice cream.

Posted by Kim at 09:28 AM | Permalink

Thursday I made a quick trip into Manhattan just to try Lassi, the Indian snack-food shop, and I found something there worth hauling 31 pounds of stroller and infant up and down subway stairs for. DO NOT order a small lassi, unless you're planning to try one of every flavor. I had the cardamom, and I have to figure out how to make it here at home. How do they make it sweet? I think they use ground-up whole cardamom pods because there were chewy, tiny fibrous pieces at the bottom. I slurped them right up less than a block from the store.

I also had a cauliflower paratha, which was not quite what I was expecting. It was kind of chewy, doughy and moist. But spicy (not hot) and yummy. Thinking back on it I'd like another. It came with a yogurt sauce with what seemed like tiny chickpeas in it.

Posted by Kim at 07:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Despite what I've written about Eddie's traditional sundae flavors (this, chocolate and strawberry), this has a good vanilla flavor. It made me super-excited for the day I get to try the vanilla fudge.

Posted by Kim at 08:56 AM | Permalink

Half a leftover baguette had me looking for an easy baked French toast recipe, and I found one. The brown sugar-butter mixture makes a chewy coating on the underside of the toasts, so you don't need any syrup. We get up so early with the baby that I was able to make this on a Sunday night and we had it for breakfast Monday morning.

Mixed 1/4 cup brown sugar with 1/4 cup butter in the bottom of baking dish, then topped it with 1-inch-thick slices of very stale baguette, then poured over it 3/4 cup milk mixed with 2 eggs, a pinch of salt and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract. Left it in the refrigerator overnight, then baked it for 45 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

Posted by Kim at 08:29 AM | Permalink

As I was eating this I was trying to remember what strawberries taste like. Eddie's strawberry ice cream tastes sweet and pink, if you know what I mean. (Unlike their raspberry, which was nice and tart.) I'm thinking the traditional sundae trio of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla at Eddie's doesn't really punch you in the face with their respective flavors because Eddie's is such a great sundae shop, and you need a milder base for all those great toppings. (I've mentioned the fresh whipped cream, right? In the giant pyrex bowls?) They're all decent on their own, creamy and rich, but not so if you want a deep, dark chocolate fix or the fresh taste of strawberries (I think there's strawberries in there, because I had a few seeds, but no big chunks). So don't be afraid to load the toppings on this one. You won't be missing much.

Posted by Kim at 08:43 AM | Permalink

I ordered one of those Fresh Direct rotisserie chicken meals and am getting quite a lot of mileage out of it, so I wanted to record just how far I'm making it go. My version included sour cream mashed potatoes and broccolini with garlic chips.

The first night of leftovers we ate chicken bratwurst with carmelized onions and mustard over the mashed potatoes. I liked to have my potatoes with a bite of the onions, a nice sweet addition to the tangy but also kind of bland potatoes.

Then lunch the next day. I diced up part of the remaining chicken breast and mixed it with one chopped scallion, salt, pepper, mayonnaise and a ground hot curry mix from Penzey's, and we ate it in top-split hot dog buns with mini carrots on the side. I know it's not exciting cooking, but it was still really tasty.

Supper last night was the leftover broccolini with pasta. I warmed some oil with some chili flakes in a skillet, then when the pasta was about halfway cooked I added the broccolini to the oil. Tossed it until warm, then added the nearly cooked pasta and a little of the water. Bubbled that a bit, then served the pasta with copious amounts of grated grana padano. I think I'm cooking the leftover pasta and broccolini (leftover leftovers!) in a frittata for lunch, but I have to figure out what to cook it in that's small enough for one serving.

Posted by Kim at 08:31 AM | Permalink

I've been looking for a reason to use my new stick blender, so when some friends came over for lunch and cheap blueberries started showing up everywhere I decided to make a dessert soup. As a jumping off point I used Rachael Ray's recipe for blackberries in star anise syrup over lemon sorbet, but I did a lot different.

I boiled 1/4 cup sugar in 3/4 cup water with a couple pieces of broken star anise, then added a pint of blueberries and cooked for a little while longer, about a minute, until some of the blueberries had burst. Let that sit to cool, removed the star anise, then blended it all up with my immersion blender. It tasted really flat at this point and I didn't have any lemon juice so I drizzled in some balsamic vinegar and added a couple pinches of salt. Stuck it in the fridge until we were ready for it, then served it with a dollop of lemon sorbet.

Posted by Kim at 03:10 PM | Permalink

It seems like these days I either have time to cook something good or write about it (which would you choose if you were me?). But I made a couple of easy, versatile things this week that were worth mentioning.

The first was a small batch of crumble topping so I could make individual crumbles for myself while Todd was out of town. I used as a base the recipe from Once Upon a Tart and added some almond paste I had left over from some other baking. Also quartered the recipe so I didn't have too much: 2 tablespoons each flour, brown sugar, walnuts and almond paste, and 1 tablespoon each oats and cold butter cut small. I mixed it all together with my fingers, mushing up the butter and almond paste until they were just small pieces. Used some of it to make an individual peach crumble by cutting up a ripe peach, tossing it with a bit of sugar and flour, then putting that in a ramekin and topping it with some of the topping mixture. Baked at 375, I think, for about half an hour. I have more topping in the fridge for the next time I want one. I think next time I may substitute almonds for the walnuts.

Also bought some golden beets that I cleaned off, trimmed and put in a baking dish with about a cup of water (as recommended in my Chez Panisse Cooking cookbook). Covered it with foil and baked for an hour (they were medium sized) in a 350 degree oven (I think). Let them cool a bit, then peeled and sliced. I tossed some with some mesclun and mustard vinaigrette, then topped it all with some fresh goat cheese. Also marinated some in vinaigrette for dinner tonight. Think they'd be good in a goat-cheese sandwich, too.

I also had a couple of fantastic sandwiches on the parbaked ciabatta I got from Fresh Direct: Smoked turkey, Cheddar and mango chutney with mesclun, a toasted sandwich with melted chocolate, and one with goat cheese, marinated sundried tomatoes and mesclun.

Posted by Kim at 12:40 PM | Permalink

I know, I've got to stop complaining about all the great places Todd gets to go, but this time it was London and the free time he had was totally wasted on him. He still picks up my treats at the airport, which has worked out great for me so far, but I need to start researching things for him to bring me from London. (Any ideas?)

He always goes for the cool packaging. This time it was so-so chocolate-covered hazelnuts but really fantastic candied orange slices dipped in dark chocolate. Also a dark chocolate bar with orange and cardamom that I haven't tried yet, all from a Glasgow shop (with a London satellite) that specializes in Belgian chocolate, Kshocolat.

Posted by Kim at 12:17 PM | Permalink

Todd's been doing a lot of client-entertaining lately, which means he gets to go out to eat at all the places I'm missing out on. It was particularly depressing last Monday, when August first came down with an ailment that I'm only willing to talk to other new parents about. Todd took his clients to Stella, which is just a block away from where I used to work and one of those places that gives you a thousand little treats with your drinks. (Sob.)

But he brought home a little dessert just for me, a fruit tart with so-so strawberries but the best blackberries I've tasted. Sitting on the floor in the living room, watching my baby boy hold his unsteady balance over his activity table and enjoying my treat, I felt lucky again. But I think there should be a law that spouses who get to go out for great meals for business while their beloveds sit at home should get a little something for them. It could be a new restaraunt trend -- they could provide something that will make the trip home intact and be cozy as a midnight snack or maybe even taste better warmed up the next day. (I know a few restaurants were doing this, but it certainly needs to become more widespread.)

Posted by Kim at 03:06 PM | Permalink

Mixed into scrambled eggs, with fresh torn basil and mozzarella cubes. I scrambled two eggs in some of the garlic oil, then added the other ingredients off the heat and let the carryover heat in the eggs warm them a bit.

It was great to have this condiment around. I just replaced my uncorrected proof of the Once Upon a Tart cookbook with the real thing (because there are at least three recipes I've tried in there that are keepers) and I want to make a couple of condiments in there, so I always have something fresh and interesting to punch up my loner meals.

Posted by Kim at 03:00 PM | Permalink

I had a friend who always said what an old man he was, and this was his favorite kind of ice cream. For me it occupies the same space as butter pecan, although I order rum raisin from time to time and I never like butter pecan. I think it's the booze-soaked raisins that keep it from being cloyingly sweet.

Because I'm pretty sure Eddie's doesn't use a basic vanilla as their base for this. It's sweeter than vanilla and doesn't have the vanilla flavor. Maybe it's a brown-sugar or caramel ice cream. Something richer, less fresh, than vanilla. Maybe it's simply those boozy raisins adding to the flavor just from sitting in the ice cream. You wouldn't think squishy little dried fruits would work, texture-wise, in ice cream, but they do. (Unless you ask my friend Julie, whose aversion to rum raisin is so strong that she wouldn't go with me to get it.)

Posted by Kim at 04:56 PM | Permalink

My mom was not afraid to help Mother Nature along a bit in the fruit department: salted canteloupe slices, sugar on berries or stone fruit. Today as I sprinkled my somewhat-tart peach slices with a little bit of sugar and topped them with some ricotta I remembered the peach slices we used to eat as children, sprinkled with sugar and swimming in whole milk or cream. The milk would get sweet with the sugar and peach juices, somewhat similar to drinking the chocolate milk left after cocoa puffs, only much better. I've decided that it's because of my mom's tendancy to do this that I have a sweet tooth, something for which I'd like to seriously and without any irony whatsoever thank her. Why wish that one of my great pleasures in life be taken away?

Posted by Kim at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Todd and I ate this for dinner on Sunday night with spaghettini and seared scallops, and today I had it in a roll with melty fresh mozzarella and basil (a terrific combo of crunchy bread, chewy tomatoes and smooth cheese). It's from Bistro Cooking at Home.

First you make the garlic oil: put 10 peeled garlic cloves in your smallest saucepan and add olive oil to cover, then simmer for 10 minutes until the garlic is soft. Mine was browing by this time, so I pulled them out of the oil immediately. Allow the oil and garlic to cool, then add 1/3 cup of the oil and the garlic to 1/2 cup chopped sundried tomatoes, 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil, 1/4 cup chopped kalamata olives and a splash of balsamic vinegar. The leftover oil is good to cook other things in, like fried rice or sauteed vegetables. Anything, really. (Anything you want to add a garlic flavor to.)

Posted by Kim at 01:29 PM | Permalink

I like this one. Kind of tart, strong raspberry flavor. It's refreshing, but creamy.

Posted by Kim at 01:18 AM | Permalink

I've had a lot of time to think about this flavor and I still don't get it. It sounds kind of tropical, maybe if it had macadamias instead of pistachios. Green ice cream with flecks of darker green pineapple in it, but I never detected a strong flavor of either one. Of course it's Eddie's ice cream, so it tastes good, but the combo doesn't add anything to it.

Posted by Kim at 12:15 PM | Permalink

Fried rice is one of those kitchen-sink type dishes to me, like pasta, sandwiches, frittatas or soup, a way to use up ingredients in my fridge. This was a particularly nice combo, especially since the sugar snaps were so plump, fresh and sweet.

I sauteed half a small, diced onion, then added some minced garlic and ginger. Stirred in the snap peas and cooked for a minute or two, then added diced pork from dinner the night before and some red pepper flakes for heat. Last I mixed in the cooked rice (I use jasmine rice for everything because the smell of it cooking is so heavenly, but I'm sure that offends someone somewhere), some soy sauce and a drizzle of sesame oil.

Posted by Kim at 07:23 AM | Permalink

I like Eddie's coffee ice cream a lot. This is the coffee ice cream with those mini, brittle chocolate chips in it, which I don't like so much. To me there's no reason to order this when you can get the coffee ice cream plain. Or with a load of whipped cream on top, like having a latte.

Posted by Kim at 08:13 AM | Permalink

I bought some sour cherries at the farmers market last week and made a compote with it this weekend. We ate it over ice cream yesterday, and I think I'll mix it with some ricotta for a snack when I get hungry later this morning.

Pitted the cherries over a saucepan to catch the juices, then mixed 3 tablespoons of sugar with 1/2 tablespoon cornstarch and whisked that into the juices with a little bit of water. Boiled that for five minutes, then added the cherries and cooked them for another couple of minutes. Poured into a bowl and chilled it.

Posted by Kim at 06:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)