Tangerine sorbet

So since my attempt at a tangerine ice cream didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, and I did buy more tangerines than I needed for the ice cream, I went ahead and tried to make a sorbet out of the remaining tangerines.

Peel and separate the tangerines. I had five left, and puréed them two at a time. I also zested one of them.

This was about 1/3 of the way into the purée. The larger blades couldn't get it as smooth as I want, so I switched over to the stick attachment for further blending.

Blend in sugar (I added 3/4 cups, hopefully that's enough), a pinch of salt, and a little bit of lime juice. Then pour into ice cream maker. This is after about 20 minutes of churning. With the camera flash working, you cann't tell from the picture that it was still churning... So I took another pic without flash...

They spinnin', they spinnin'!



Post Script: Shortly after I was "finished" making the sorbet, I recalled that I had read a transcript of Alton Brown's Good Eats episode that talked about making sorbet. So I looked it up. In one scene, he says of making sorbet:

Sugar in frozen desserts is more than just a sweetener. See, once dissolved in the liquid, the sugar molecules actually get in the way of ice crystals forming. [...] Now, too little sugar and you'll need an ice pick to serve your dessert. Too much, and you'll have a syrupy mess.

So, the trick, if you can call it a trick, is in nailing the right amount of sugar. And for that, all you need is your trusty sucrometer. Lent yours to the neighbor? Never got it back? No problem. A few simple rules will do.

Now, when I want a scoopable ice, I go with 7 ounces of sugar, roughly a cup, to every 16 ounces of liquid by weight. Now that's roughly, uh, 30 percent sugar.

In short:

Low Sugar = Rock Hard
High Sugar = Syrupy Mess

30% sugar solution = right amount of sugar

My original solution only had around 20% sugar, and sure enough, it was rock hard by the next day. So I took my giant tangerine ice cube out of the freezer to let it melt, then I'm going to add more sugar, squeeze in a lemon or two to balance the sweetness, and churn again.

Black sesame ice cream

So when Greg got back from Taiwan about three weeks ago, he asked me if I've ever tried sesame ice cream. Apparently he's had a chance to sample some during his trip to the far east, and it happens to be one of the things he liked.

Having never tried it, I can't attest to how it should taste, and I doubt I'd be able to find it at a local restaurant, but as I do have my own ice cream maker, I can always make my own, and hope it tastes as good as the kind that Greg had.

The first thing to do--get myself some sesame powder. I'm certainly not about to try and grind my own. Black sesame is often used as a filling in tangyuan, a Chinese dessert, so I guess that should serve as a good indicator as to how ice cream made from the same ingredient might taste.

After blending heavy cream, half-and-half, sugar, vanilla extract, and sesame powder together, it's in the ice cream maker.

Homemade strawberry ice cream

Edit: This is what it looks like after I melted the original batch and churned it the second time. It's a deeper pink because during the melting and churning process, the strawberry pieces were "cut" smaller, so more of the red got into the mixture. It's much softer than before, although I still should have let it churn for longer.

Following the recipe that came with my ice cream maker, I decided to try and make some strawberry ice cream. Here I have a pint of sliced strawberries, macerated for 2 hours in 3 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice, and 1/3 cup of sugar.

1 cup of milk and 2 cups of heavy cream are first mixed with 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract, 2/3 cup of sugar, and all the lemon/strawberry juice used for maceration. Churn away, ice cream maker!

It says to add the strawberries in the final five minutes. The whole process is supposed to take around 25-35 minutes, so I was just waiting for the 25 minute mark, and checking the consistency of the churn, to pour in the strawberry.

Unfortunately, it seems the recipe they had yielded too much ice cream--the machine can only hold 1 1/2 quart of ice cream total. That means 3 pints. Or 6 cups. The process of making ice cream means that as your mixture freezes, the churning adds air and keeps it from becoming large chunks of ice, so as air is added, the mixture increases in size (anywhere between 25% to 100%). So we've got 1 cup of sugar + 2 cups heavy cream + 1 cup milk + 1 pint (aka 2 cups) strawberry. That's already 6 cups! There's still the extra lemon juice and air unaccounted for! WTF *&^#)*%!

(Why didn't I do the math beforehand? Stupid, stupid, stupid...)

This means that my mixture would overflow when I tried to add the strawberry, and it wouldn't get to the "soft serve" consistency I needed before I put the whole thing in the freezer to set.

What does that mean, in the end? Well, it tastes pretty good, but the texture is not consistent. Parts of it is soft, while others are hard. And the strawberry is not as evenly distributed as I'd like them to be.

Otherwise, it's not too bad. I suppose I can always eat away 1/3 of it first, melt it down, then re-churn the thing.

Next time, I'll decrease the amount of strawberries and milk/cream. That should make for a much more pleasing result.

Bacon-wrapped hot dogs

It's not as unhealthy as it sounds... really. Because I use the FlavorWave Oven to cook the bacon and hot dogs, most of the fat drips down and is never consumed. I also add some grilled onions to the mix for some veggie goodness. Of course, I'm not saying that it would be healthy to eat this everyday, but every once in a while, it's not that bad.

The reason I wanted to try this is because of a conversation with Betsy, my boss' niece, who's been coming into the office on-and-off for the past month or so. Like Candice, she doesn't like to eat onions--on several occasions she had to pick out the onions from the food that either she or her dad got her for lunch. So I asked her about it, and it's mostly raw onions that she doesn't like--she has no problem with onion rings, and grilled onions will depend on how they're cooked. This then reminded me of the grilled-onions and bacon-wrapped hot dogs I've smelled the street vendors sell at downtown L.A. (when I went to E3) and Hollywood. To me, what really sold those hot dogs, was the aroma of the grilled onions.

The "grilled" onions were made using extra-virgin olive oil, with a small pinch of salt.

As the hot dogs and bacon begin to cook, fat drips down from the bacon. One piece of store-bought bacon wraps almost perfectly around a piece of hot dog, so the combination works out great. I used Ball Park franks (they "plump when you cook 'em"), so the bacon around the hot dogs will become a bit too tight for 'em, and they'll split open starting at the tip. If you cook them long enough, they'll split right down the middle, splitting the bacon along with them.

The finished product. I didn't buy hot dog buns, so I just ate them off the plate. It would be easier to eat with a bun, though.

More FlavorWave action

I took my hands at trying a "baked" version of 鹽酥雞 (a Taiwanese version of fried chicken nuggets), inspired by the "Oven-fried Chicken Fingers" I saw on Ham on the Street on Food Network. As you can see from the dark color, I probably added too much soy sauce in my marinade. Otherwise, the taste was okay, though nothing spectacular. I'll have to try again some other time.