Something about inevitability

Back in February I wrote on these pages that "I think I'm on a hiding to nothing trying to make really smooth ice cream at home without an ice cream machine" having just produced some incredibly tasty, but unfortunately icy thyme ice cream.  So, having given away what's going on in this post straight away, a bit of back story.

Having totally missed out on the opportunity in summer, it gradually crept up on me that I really wanted an ice cream machine.  I seemed to have been around numerous kitchen shops and kitchen sections of John Lewis and Bentalls and thought 'oh, I'll just have a look at the ice cream machines out of curiosity' and so the thought must have begun to ingrain itself on my subconscious.  Probably that and more visits to Soho ice cream mecca, Gelupo.  Also, I recently had a birthday.  One of those where you fleetingly notice it a month or so in advance, then remember it again the week before when people are asking you what you want for it, and are you doing anything for it, but you don't have a clue.  The sort where you end up with money to spend and think 'well, now (mid October) is the time to buy an ice cream machine'.  So I did. 

The other part of the back story relates to the incredibly important decision of what flavour to make first.  I don't think it's quite time yet to tackle the Holy Grail of ice creams, pistachio.  But I virtually had my mind made up for me the other weekend when I and Esteemed Blogging Partner Kirsty stumbled into Gelupo after an evening's drinking.  Wandering round the deli whilst other people bought ice cream, I started grabbing things - some of their guanciale (the piece I cured wasn't nearly enough), some nduja, as well as some pretty incredible nougat and some honeycomb, you know, the sorts of things you don't really need, but if you buy enough results in spending enough to get free ice cream.  Which we were already intending on buying.  Anyway, I had almond gelato, which I later realised, wondering what to do with the honeycomb whilst eating slabs of honey almond nougat, was what I should make.  One of those Things Falling Into Place things that I which happened more often so I could blog about them.

For my previous ice cream making I took one of the recipes from The French Laundry Cookbook, which as I seem to remember used a HELL of a lot of egg yolks.  Regular readers of this blog will be well aware of my torment of wanting to cook things which use lots of egg yolks, leaving lots of whites left.  There is actually a recipe in Bocca for some amazing pistachio and hazelnut biscuits which use lots of egg whites, but it matters not as there was only one place I was going to look for a recipe this time, and Kenedy's ice cream recipes don't use any eggs at all.

500ml whole milk, plus a little extra
200g blanched almonds, roasted very dark (not burned)
140ml whipping cream
40g glucose syrup or light runny honey
130g caster sugar
40g skimmed milk powder
3g leaf gelatine (1 large or 2 small leaves), or 4 teaspoons agar-agar
½ teaspoon almond extract

Put the milk and almonds in a pan.  Heat to 80°C, just before a simmer, and steep at this temperature for 45 minutes.  Strain out the almonds, put the milk in a measuring jug and make it back up to 500ml with a little extra milk (the almonds will have absorbed some moisture as they infused).

Return the milk to the pan, adding the cream and glucose or honey.  Heat over a low flame and, when steaming, mix together the sugar and skimmed milk powder and add them in a steady stream.  When the liquid approaches a simmer, remove it from the heat and add either the gelatine (already bloomed for a few minutes in cold water, then stirred into the mix) or the agar-agar (sprinkled on the top of the hot mixture and left for 5 minutes, then stirred in) and the almond extract.  Leave to cool and freeze in an ice-cream machine.

The machine I bought has a built in freezer, so there is no requirement for freezing bowls or anything beforehand, which I guess saves a fair bit of time.  The instruction manual says give it 35-45 minutes for soft ice cream, 45-60 for hard ice cream.  I wanted it soft, so I gave it 45 minutes, and drizzled some of the Gelupo honey into it in the last 5 minutes.  Firstly, the flavour of it is pretty damn good.  When I was adding the almond extract a bit more than the half teaspoon dribbled down the side of the bottle and in, so the flavour is slightly more of that than the infused roasted almonds - there's an almost a marzipan like sweetness to it, although the extra sweetness is partly down to adding the honey.  Also, the agar flakes hadn't completely dissolved, and so the consistency isn't as delightfully smooth as I'd have liked, but they're small foibles that can be sorted out come the next batch.  All in all, from start to finish the whole thing took about 2 and a half hours, and that's taking into account toasting the almonds, 45 minutes of infusing in milk, mixture cooling, and then 45 minutes of freezing/churning time.  And once it's in the machine, it could just be left whilst I sat and watched the football.  Apparently if the mixture gets too thick before your set time expires it stops itself, clever machine.  It's not exactly quiet, but hardly the Destroyer of Peace and Quiet some of the Amazon reviewers made it out to be.

Having said I missed out on summer ice cream making (not that it should ever be a summer only past-time), I've always felt winter was a good time for making ice cream.  I think that may stem from the first time I ever made ice cream at Christmas one year, and so in a way this may well have been the most appropriate time of year for it.  Added to which I'm harbouring intentions at the moment to make more salami for Christmas, and there's plenty of old ice cream tubs lying around.  Given how long that first lot lasted, I may well find myself making ice cream at every given opportunity.

(More) About (pig) face

This post has been delayed more than any other, and it'll be a bit brief as a result, but here we go anyway.  So my last post was all about curing pig's cheek, guanciale.  This is the 'what does one do with it now?' Part Two to that post.

The cheek I had actually had a seemingly higher meat to fat ratio that you'd probably expect to get, although it was still over 50% fat.  Which is a good thing.  It was firm but not hard, and upon slicing you could see the fat glisten and shine, surrounding the layer of meat running through the middle.  Frying turns it almost completely translucent for a while before browning and crisping up, whilst remaining soft inside where the fat will burst out when eaten.  And the flavour is richer and more intense than say, a cured pork belly, almost headily.

As I mentioned in the curing post, I discovered guanciale in Jacob Kenedy's The Geometry of Pasta in a recipe for Bucatini Carbonara.  I rarely make carbonara, it's the sort of dish where all the ingredients really have to be good quality, and subsequently if they aren't it can be not much cop.  There's not much room for alchemy where mixing crap eggs and grated crap cheese is concerned.  Besides, there's usually other things I'm more keen on making.  Anyway, in this instance the meat was home cured, the cheese was an excellent slab of pecorino which wasn't too over powering, the pasta homemade.  The eggs used for the sauce were the same deep-coloured yolk variety I always use for pasta, which gave an even more intense colour to the final dish.  But I was always planning on making this with my guanciale - things like pancetta are often used to bulk up flavour in dishes, rather than stand out themselves.  Having spent the best part of two months curing there was no way I was just going to hide it away in something else.  Especially as what I did cure wasn't actually that much.  You'll find all manner of carbonara recipes everywhere, far too many of which will say to use cream.  This one is as basic as it needs to be.

1 guanciale
1 quantity fresh spaghetti (same recipe as always)
2 whole, large free range eggs
2 large free range egg yolks
100g pecorino, grated (from a block, not pre-grated)
lots of ground black pepper
1 tbsp olive oil

Make the pasta in advance and set aside.  Set a large pan of well salted water boiling (around 4 litres per 250g of pasta).  If you're using fresh pasta it will take literally no more than two minutes to cook, dried will take around ten minutes or so, so if you're using dried, get that on first.

Whisk together the eggs and yolks with the grated pecorino and more than enough ground black pepper.  If you think you've added enough pepper, add some more.  If it looks a bit too thick, loosen it with a tablespoonful or so of the pasta water.

Heat the oil in a frying pan.  Slice the guanciale into sticks, about 5mm thick.   Add to the pan and fry until browned.  Take off the heat. 

Drain the pasta and add to the guanciale pan, tossing to coat it in the pork fat.  Add the eggs and cheese mixture and stir it in quickly to fully coat the pasta but without cooking the eggs.  Serve with more grated pecorino and more black pepper.

I didn't make quite enough cheese and egg mixture to sufficiently coat all the pasta - it was all coated, just that some were more like they'd been brushed with it, rather than thickly covered.  But the pasta was very good, as it needs to be.  If I was being anal (which, to be fair isn't something rarely leveled at me) I think it would be much better with rounded spaghetti, rather than the sort of squared-off sort that my (and I suspect most) pasta machine attachments make.  Minor details.  It tasted damn good.