Pistachio Ice Cream

My ice cream maker has been sitting in the pantry, patiently waiting to be used. It's been a few years since I've made any kind of ice cream or sorbet, so I was excited to try it out again.

It seems like everyone around me has a taste for pistachio. I get an occasional taste for it, mostly because my Dad loves them. Although when I was a kid, I remember the shells being pink and your fingers getting pink from cracking too many open. I reminisced with a friend about this, and they pointed me to an article about pistachios on Wikipedia that stated that the coloring was in place to hide stains that may have occurred during picking. Did you know that?

Anyhow, I picked up a bag of pistachios from Costco...meaning somewhere in the vicinity of 4 lbs worth. Unfortunately, they are roasted and salted, so that became an extra step in order to use them in the ice cream recipe.

I found a recipe for Pistachio Ice Cream by Emeril, read some user comments to make sure it was a decent recipe, and then started cracking. Literally. I think cracking about one cup of pistachios has incremented my carpal tunnel counter. My thoughts during this? This ice cream better taste like angels.





After shelling a cup of pistachios, I threw them in a pot of boiling water for a few minutes to get the salt off. Strained them in a colander only to find that there was another layer to peel off!





Peeled the pistachios and then put them on a baking sheet to dry out in the oven. First I started off at 200F, and realized this was going nowhere fast. After about 20 minutes at 200F, I bumped up the temp to 350F and baked them for about 13 minutes more. Took them out, and let them sit for a few hours to cool off. Now it was break time! (Wine and cheese with friends :D)





When I came home, I was happy to find the pistachios were dry and unsalted. Phase two was ready to begin...making the custard. Standard fare, boil milks, beat eggs with sugar and combine. Then heat until it gets custardy. Mix the pistachios and extract in and you are good to go into the refrigerator overnight (or until cooled).
The final step is the simplest - it's the remembering that's the hard part. My ice cream maker has a core that needs to be frozen in advance. Knowing that I was going to make ice cream of some sort, I threw the core in the freezer the previous day.
I scraped the custard into the core and let the ice cream maker do its magic. About 25-30 minutes later, pistachio ice cream was ready!





I'm not sure if it tasted like angels...but I would say that the taste was pretty good. It was just sweet enough and creamy. I would like to try with unsalted pistachios, because I think my pistachios in the ice cream were a little mushy...so just need to see if there can be some added crunch. Maybe not so fine pistachios next time, honey instead of sugar, and chopped apricots.





Pistachio Ice Cream (edited version of Emeril's)
Makes about 2 cups

1 cup shelled unsalted pistachios
1/2 cup sugar
6 large egg yolks
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream

Finely process pistachios and 1/4 cup sugar.
Heat milk and cream over stovetop until boil. Stir occasionally so film doesn't happen.
Beat eggs and 1/4 cup sugar.
1 cup a time, add the milk mixture into the eggs until all combined.
Put back into pot over stovetop. Stir occasionally so film doesn't happen, about 6 minutes the mixture will become "custardy". Remove from heat.
Combine pistachios and almond extract into custard.
Put into bowl and put saran wrap directly on the custard to avoid creating a film.
Put into refrigerator until completely cool.
Add to ice cream maker and let it go until ice cream forms - about 25-30 mins for this one.

Stress Baking : Fresh Strawberry Cream Cheese Bread

One of three things are typically going to happen when I am stressed. Cooking, baking, or cleaning. Fun? Not really. But, I need some kind of tangible productive activity to be happening. I need to see progress being made! As much as I'd like to think my brain will turn off if I indulge it in Real Housewives or some other equally mind numbing television, it's still working in the background. Last night's activity was baking.
I had some strawberries that needed to be used, and stumbled upon this Fresh Strawberry Cream Cheese Bread from My Baking Addiction's blog.
The recipe was super easy to put together. Was able to watch part of The King's Speech while the cream cheese and butter were softening, and then easily mixed it together to throw in the oven. I used all the strawberries I had - I believe it was a 1.5 pints. The recipe seemed really agreeable to this.
The only difficult thing was gauging when the bread was ready to come out. I started checking around 50 minutes and left it in for about 14 minutes longer. I suspect the extra strawberries had to do with this.
The bread turned out extra moist and just sweet enough with lots of strawberries!

Productive Morning : Berry Muffins

This morning, I felt productive.



Blueberry and Raspberry Muffins using this recipe

Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. S!

It's been kind of slow on the blog front, but for very good reason!
Two of my friends got married last week, and they were gracious and awesome enough to let me bake for it!


I, admittedly, am not skilled enough to test the waters with my own recipe creations, so I often go sifting through the internet (or blogs I'm subscribed to) to find something special.

After a few trial wedding cakes, it came down to this lineup...

The Cake:
Delicious white cake recipe I had found on Baking Bites blog. I found this recipe last year and it is the same I used for my Dad's wedding cake. I used vanilla bean rather than vanilla extract, and this time around I used coconut extract instead of the almond extract.

The Filling:
The couple's muse for the cake was a coconut cupcake from The Steeping Room. I figured the only way to incorporate coconut into the cake was through the filling. Next time I'm in Hawaii, I'll definitely have to find Chantilly Cake! I combined the recipe for Chantilly Cake Frosting with whipping cream to lighten it up for a filling.

The Buttercream:
Absolutely the only buttercream recipe I will ever use! I found this recipe for Swiss Buttercream last year for my Dad's wedding cake on Smitten Kitchen's blog. It is so delicious! My taste buds were after this buttercream after having tasted something similar on my best friend's baby shower cake. Smooth, buttery, and just sweet enough...this buttercream never fails me! This was my crumb coat on the wedding cake in this instance.

The Fondant:
I haven't experimented with fondant at all until this opportunity! It was somewhat exciting to do so, and I was even more excited to learn about Marshmallow Fondant. Having had many wedding cakes with TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE tasting fondant, this was a simply amazing discovery for me. Initially, I had used a recipe where you combine marshmallow fluff with powdered sugar and let my mixer do all the work - for the real deal I used a completely new to me recipe from What's Cooking America for Marshmallow Fondant. It was extremely easy and saved my mixer some burn up time.

Everyone loved the cake. I wish I could take credit for it, but it's due to all these wonderful people who came up with the recipes!

Baking the cake was really fun. Being cake number two, I still need to work on my timing and cake decoration skills. Which equals...naked cake!

Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. S!

Gawumpkies

Or however you spell them...my Gram makes them the best.
Being on the other side of the country from her for all my life, it'd be a treat to have them when I did. Luckily, my Dad knows how make them, and that's how I learned.

Gawumpkies

1 Medium Cabbage
1 lb Ground Pork
1 lb Ground Beef
2 cups of rice (uncooked)
Salt
Pepper
1 large can of Stewed Tomatoes

Cook up the rice as instructed.

Peel away the outer leaves of the cabbage, and then cut out the stem. Fill up with some water, cover, and put into a microwaveable bowl - microwave for 5-8 minutes. Carefully peel leaves off of the cabbage. Have a plate and paring knife nearby. The middle vein of the cabbage leaf will be prominent, cut this back with the paring knife. Put leaf on plate and repeat until you have a pile of leaves to work with. (I find when the leaves get annoyingly small or there's too much to cut off the leaf that you won't have one left, use these to line the base of the crock pot - it will prevent burning of the gawumpki)


Combine pork, beef, rice, salt and pepper in a large bowl. You can start by mixing with a fork, and then mix around with your hands to make sure that everything is mixed in evenly.

Take a cabbage leaf into your hand. At the base of leaf, place a large spoonful of the meat/rice mixture. Fold up the sides of the cabbage leaf and then curl the leaf in your hand until it is a sealed roll. Place it in the crock pot.



Continue until meat or cabbage is used up or the crock pot is full. Whichever comes first.


Take the can of stewed tomatoes and pour over the pot of gawumpkies.


Cook in crock pot on high for 4 hours, low for a only an hour/hour and a half more if you are paranoid. Any more and you'll burn them for sure.

Dad swears by short or medium grain white rice. I don't tend to have this in the house, so today I experimented by using brown rice. Now I think the importance of the white rice is the starch, which my brown rice lacked, so my gawumpkies were a little more crumbly than usual. I think I picked up the wrong kind of tomato can, too (I picked up crushed) - but in the end they turned out pretty darn tasty. And it doesn't hurt to know that these things are always better the second day!

Some of my cousins eat them with ketchup, and I think that ruins it...I'm a salt and pepper kind of girl. Yum yum yum!

The Other Grape Leaves - Yebret

When most people hear grape leaves, they tend to think of Greek Dolma, a grape leaf stuffed with tomato based rice and spices. When I ask for grape leaves, I ask if there is meat inside of them. So far the only place I have found them at a restaurant is in Tucson at Shishkabab House. Luckily, I have been fortunate enough to learn how to make Syrian Grape Leaves, or Yebret, enough times that I am able to recall the recipe and share. They are stuffed with meat and rice - I use lamb, because I think it has more flavor, but have also made with ground beef, chicken, and turkey. Yes, they are ordered in preference.

Yebret

1 jar Grape Leaves
1 lb Ground Lamb
1 tbsp Allspice
1 cup Long Grain Rice
2 tbsp Pine Nuts
3 cups Water
3/4 cup Lemon Juice
6 or 7 Garlic Cloves

In a bowl, combine the lamb, allspice, rice, and pine nuts.

Drain the grape leaves from jar and place them on a plate. Some grape leaves will still have the stem on them, cut them off as you are folding the yebret.

Unfold a grape leave on a cutting board, veiny side up. At the base of the leaf, place about 1 tbsp of lamb mixture. Squish the meat down so it makes a long rectangle at the base of the leaf. Begin to roll the base of the leaf towards the top of the leaf, folding in both sides, and tightly roll until you get a little grape leaf shaped cigar. Continue until you run out of meat.


Chances are you'll probably have extra grape leaves. Line the bottom of the pot you intend to cook the yebret in with the extra grape leaves - this will prevent burning of your yebret. I use a 5.5 qt skillet and usually end up with a single layer of yebret. Add the water and lemon juice. Then sprinkle the garlic cloves on top. Find a plate that will fit inside your skillet and use that to hold down the yebret. Place lid on top of the skillet.


Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer. Cook for about 25 minutes and then turn off the heat. Let the yebret sit for at least 30 minutes, but the longer you leave them be the better the taste seems to be!

I like to serve them warm with a garlic yogurt as a dipping sauce. It's very simple, just requires time to chill and bring out the garlic flavor:

Garlic Yogurt
Plain Yogurt (or Greek Yogurt if you like thicker)
Pressed Garlic, to liking.

Mix together and store in the refrigerator before use. I like to keep in the fridge for at least 6 hours. The longer you let it sit, the stronger the flavor will be.

Kielbasa and Broccoli Egg Bake

Like every Connecticut visit, I had to bring home several rings of kielbasa from Filipek's. They make the most amazing kielbasa that it's worth the bag charge. (Although, I think I was flying Southwest that time so HA HA HA take that airline baggage fees!)

Typically, standard fare is to boil up the basy, saute some sauerkraut/onion/butter/salt/pepper, and eat with some good spicy mustard. If I'm feeling super fatty, I'll cook up a box of the frozen pierogies, too. Alas, if it's something my Polish genetics can't tolerate...it's the excessive carbs.

So I thought I'd try and find a different way to consume my mass quantities of kielbasa. My Gram got me hooked on kielbasa and egg sandwiches on one of my return flights - the second I took a bite of that sandwich, I knew that kielbasa + egg = amazing.

Kielbasa Quiche it must be.

Sans crust.

Add broccoli, onions, and feta (it's what I had in my fridge).

And we come up with Kielbasa and Broccoli Egg Bake.

I didn't measure anything other than the eggbeaters, so here we go:

Kielbasa and Broccoli Egg Bake
1/2 ring of Kielbasa (probably about 8")
2 1/2 cups of eggbeaters (10 eggs)
Frozen Broccoli
Frozen Onions (I think this was 1/2 an onion)
Some Olive Oil
Salt, Pepper
Feta Cheese

Use 9x13 baking pan and spray with non-stick cooking spray. Preheat oven to 350.

Cook the whole kielbasa by putting it in a pot, filling with water and let boil. With fresh kielbasa you'll notice it will plump up. Not sure with Hillshire or other store bought preservative laden rings. Don't let the casing explode - if this happens you've cooked it too much.

Defrost frozen broccoli and onions. Drain as much as you can, then saute in a pan with a little bit of olive oil (I took the bottle and drew a quick circle around the perimeter of pan). I also sprinkled some salt and pepper on the veggies. Saute enough that the water is pretty much evaporated. Don't brown it. Put into large bowl.

Cut half of the kielbasa ring and dice into little squares. Do the same for the feta. Empty into veggie bowl.

Add your eggs/eggbeaters to the bowl and mix together. Empty into prepared baking pan.

Put into oven and time for 20 minutes. At 20 minutes, check it out...mine still needed some more baking, so I left it in for 5 more minutes. I would say take it out before it browns on the side because if/when you reheat it, it will probably be rubbery. Sometimes less is more :)