Tag Archives: Sorbet

Varietal honey

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I’ve always loved honey–even as a child–especially comb (also known as cut-comb) honey. Now that I have bees I have my own honey–but it is wildflower honey. It’s a mix of Honey jars 20160702_140009whatever is currently providing nectar for the ladies to tote back to the hive and process into honey.

Varietal  honeys have flavors that can be quite distinctive. (Note that I’m not referring to “infused honey” which has had flavors added–e.g. chilli pepper, which sounds delightful to me, but rather honey which is made exclusively (or almost) from a single flower.) My honey shelf includes varietals such as leatherwood, tupelo, orange blossom, thyme, lavender, eucalyptus, buckwheat, sourwood–and what was purported to be kudzu honey. I think the Hawaiian white is all gone. Always on the lookout for good varietals. It’s a real treat to have these on biscuits or warm, homemade bread, or used in a sorbet, sherbert, or granita where the individual flavors really stand out–or just on morning oatmeal.

These thoughts on varietal honeys sprang from update from Honey Bee Suite answering the question of whether or not bees made honey from poison ivy/poison oak. Turns out that they do–and the blog post included a link to a source of some really interesting varietals from the Pacific Northwest varietals. I think I really have to have some poison bees on frame of honeyoak honey–especially as I share the experience of having that same kind of reaction to exposure to poison ivy, although mine didn’t involve any horses. Just a lot of poison ivy.

The post on poison ivy/oak honey had a link to a site that has an interesting array of varietal honeys from Old Blue Raw Honey as single season, samplers, and the year-long honey subscription–a serious gift for a honey lover!

To have a varietal honey there has to be enough of the blossoms to let the honey bees do their “monofloral” thing. Even wildflower flavors will vary from season to season as the flora shifts; fall will bring goldenrod and aster nectar for honey. One of the intriguing things about honey in the comb is that you get to variable flavor even within “wildflower” honey.

 

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Cool stuff for hot weather

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pickling and Amira cucumbers side by side

This hot weather has me looking for cool things–ways to beat the heat. Cucumber is one of the first things that comes to mind when I think of cool, refreshing things–with tomatoes in salad, or with mangos. But thinking really cold, I started  skulking through my old recipes for a dimly remembered recipe for cucumber sorbet with eucalyptus honey.

Eucalyptus honey is fairly dark, with an assertive earthy, spicy flavor with a slightly cool overtone like mild menthol. For some it might be called medicinal, but I found it an interesting combination, with the cool cucumber plus the extra little kick of coolness from the eucalyptus honey. (If you don’t have eucalyptus honey, this sorbet will still be tasty.)

Problem–someone (no names here) didn’t write down the quantities or the source of this recipe–or maybe it was an off-the-cuff invention with whatever was around at the time that obviously included eucalyptus honey.

So, some research. Going to The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz (one of my two favorite sources on frozen dessert stuff), and Jenis Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer (my other ice cream favorite) I found what I needed to fill in the missing quantities for the sorbet.

Cucumber and Eucalyptus Honey Sorbet

Ingredients

  • 2 English or Japanese cucumbers–about 2 pounds–coarsely chopped
  • 5 ounces eucalyptus* honey
  •  1/2 cup water
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • pinch of salt

Preparation and notes

  • I prefer the English or Japanese cucumbers because you don’t need to remove seeds. This would take about 2 cucumbers. Peeling is not necessary. If you have slicing cucumbers, remove seeds.
  • Combine honey and water; heating is not necessary.
  • Combine ingredients in a blender and puree until smooth.
  • Pour into prepared ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer’s directions
  • To make without an ice cream maker, use the method for granitas: pour into a shallow baking dish and place in the freezer. Stir with a fork about every 30 minutes until firm. (This breaks up ice crystals although the texture will not be as fine as with an ice cream maker–but still tasty.)

*A note on honey: Eucalyptus honey is a varietal honey; made from the nectar that bees collect from flowering eucalyptus trees. It is not an “infused” or “flavored” honey–those are made by adding flavoring to wildflower honey. I found the eucalyptus honey in my local Harris Teeter grocery store, next to the orange blossom and wildflower honey.

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Some other interesting recipes that I found whilst trolling the internet:

 

 

Blood oranges….

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blood orange slice

blood orange

I have to say that for the most part, I hate shopping–except food-related shopping. When I do food-related shopping, I almost always come home with something that was not on the shopping list (Yes, I do make shopping lists, but I don’t really do meal planning.)  do sometimes venture in to the food store without a list, though I do try not to go food shopping when I’m hungry. Sometimes I go to the grocery store impulsively and spontaneously–triggered by some extraneous event.

My last such foray was triggered by sitting at the counter of Hope Valley Diner discussing food with another regular lunch customer–also a foodie.  What sent me to the grocery store was his mention of a chocolate cake from Fresh Market: namely chocolate ganache cake.That definitely got my chocolate imagination going–after all ganache is basically chocolate and cream, maybe some butter–but it’s really serious chocolate–adult chocolate.

Being in need of a chocolate fix since I’d been indexing all morning, I detoured by the Fresh Market on my way home (it really wasn’t more than a half mile in the opposite direction) hoping that I would find chocolate ganache cake by the slice. So–my intent on entering the Fresh Market was to obtain a single slice of chocolate cake.

As I walked through the entrance into the vestibule I was immediately faced with packages of California-grown Moro blood oranges. I seem to be constitutionally incapable of walking away from blood oranges, so there was the first “additional” item, so I really did need to get a basket though I hadn’t thought I needed one.  Now the blood oranges were not individual–they came in a little easy to carry bag–meaning that I now had several blood oranges.

Continuing on my way to the bakery section, I detoured though the produce (around the edge of the store).  That took me past the Bolthouse juices. (Yes, I find daily grapefruit, orange, etc boring too many days in a row.) I noticed a couple that I’d not found at my Harris Teeter market, so those (Daily Golden Vedge and the Stone Fruit Smoothie–still haven’t found the Mango Ginger + carrot) )got popped into the basket.

I made it to the bakery counter after a brief detour around the cheese counter and the seafood salad bar. I first noticed a whole chocolate ganache cake–shiny top as you’d expect from ganache, very dark, with the sides of the cake covered with dark chocolate shavings or chopped. Thankfully, there was a single slice of this luscious looking cake in the case. That got put into the basket with a sigh of relief–after all, THAT was what I came for! I made it back past the chocolate bars and other candy without adding anything more to the basket, checked out, and headed for home.

Blood Orange and Sage Sparkling SodaOnce home I had a blood orange–and realized that I was going to be eating or juicing blood oranges for a bit. Though straight blood orange juice is certainly not a hardship, serendipity has a way of intervening. While I was perusing my favorite blogs, what should I find but a gorgeous photograph and a recipe for blood orange and sage sparkling soda.

The image at the left is from Snixy Kitchen blog–just too gorgeous not to “plagiarize” with attribution, and share. I’d not thought of the combination of sage and orange, but with the “imagery” of the blood orange I’d just eaten, and a brush of the sage wintering on my deck, I knew I had to try it. This as a beverage is definitely a keeper–I’m sure that I’ll be making sage simple syrup again, and I have to think this would make a great sorbet as well as something to put in a glass and drink.  This combination of orange and sage also has me thinking about veal, pork, maybe chicken….Thank you, Snixy Kitchen for a great combination!

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Now if you’re wondering about the chocolate ganache cake?  Well, I ate it before it even occurred to me to take a picture, and I haven’t found a chocolate cake image that even comes close–so I’ll have to go with words: very, very dark, moist, with ganache between the layers and as icing, not too thick.  Dark chocolate chips/shaving on the sides, not too sweet, but sweet enough–adult chocolate–absolutely luscious.  That’s probably where I’ll go look for my next chocolate fix.

Spiced Strawberry Sorbet

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It’s summer time–I know that you don’t want to hear me complain about heat and humidity, so I won’t.  There are some things that are good about it–and one of them is strawberry season.  I’ve enjoyed some of the local ones that I’ve gotten at Harris Teeter (so happy to see them carrying local produce). When strawberries are perfectly ripe I just want to eat them completely unadorned. But the hot weather makes me think about cool things like sorbet, ices, and ice cream.

bowl of washed strawberriesHere’s a recipe that I’ve had for literally years.  It’s so good that I wanted to share it with you as one more way to enjoy the season’s strawberries. (Thanks to Google, I can tell you that I got this recipe from Epicurious.com). Just as in making the sour cream strawberry ice cream, you don’t want berries that are just “okay” or “fine for ice cream”, you want them to be absolutely luscious–the kind where they are so fragrant that they make you feel like you’re right in the strawberry field feeling the sun shining down on your back and smelling the ripe, fragrant berries.

I’ve made one slight change to this recipe–I like to toast the black peppercorns in a dry skillet until they start to smell aromatic and peppery, then crush and add to the sorbet. I think it makes a more complex, spicier accent from the pepper.

Spiced Strawberry Sorbet

Ingredients

  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 2/3 cup water
  • 3 tablespoons black peppercorns, coarsely crushed
  • 1 quart strawberries, hulled
  • 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, or to taste

Preparation

  • In a saucepan combine sugar and water and bring to a boil, stirring until sugar is dissolved.
  • Stir in peppercorns and remove pan from heat.
  • Cover pan and let syrup stand 1 hour.
  • Strain syrup through a fine sieve into a food processor or blender and discard peppercorns.
  • Puree hulled strawberries with syrup until very smooth and force though sieve into a bowl, discarding seeds and other solids.
  • Stir in vinegar and chill, covered, until cold.
  • Freeze mixture in an ice-cream maker, following manufacturer’s instructions.
  • Serve sorbet with sliced strawberries.

The Epicurious recipe suggests an accompaniment of toasted almond Phylo crisps; that recipe is given at the link above.  The balsamic vinegar does not need to be absolute top of the line–but it should be authentic–not a cheap imitation.  To be frank, I’ve never gotten around to making the phyllo crisps to go with the sorbet, though I can attest that a good traditional pound cake, tuiles, or madeleines are excellent with it.

After tasting strawberry with green peppercorns in a Hachez Cocoa d’Arriba chocolate bar, I want to try this using green peppercorns, probably bloomed with heat before putting them into the sorbet.

Another taste combination that occurred to me was to add cilantro (tiny, newly sprouted plants).  If you’re questioning my sanity on that one, there is a reason it occurred to me.  When I was in San Antonio for the national American Society for Indexing convention, I had dinner at Los Ramblas (Spanish cuisine), and I had a strawberry gazpacho with tiny cilantro “microgreens”–those with just the cotyledons–not even the first true leaves; it was an awesome flavor combination that I think might adapt nicely to sorbet. (The microgreens are not nearly so strongly flavored as fully grown cilantro.)

small alpine strawberry

alpine strawberry

Strawberry Sour Cream Ice Cream

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This was scheduled for a later post, but the HOT weather and the impending end of strawberry season dictates it should be shared now.  I hope you all enjoy this as much as I did–and will be for a bit yet.

I’ve just realized that strawberry season may be coming to an end and I’ve not yet make strawberry ice cream–so that has become the project of the day.  I brought a huge basked of strawberries home from the farmers’ market with me.  Ate a bunch, and now it’s ice cream time.  In the past I’ve not really make a lot of ice cream, but I received a wonderful book of recipes for my birthday:  The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz and I’m finding lots of things that I want to try out.  (This is a Philadelphia style ice cream–a particular favorite of my as it does not have me making custard, so it’s really fast and easy to put together).

Strawberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream  (Adapted from “The Perfect Scoop”  p. 90)

Ingredients: 

  • 450 grams fresh strawberries, rinsed, hulled and sliced.
  • 150 grams sugar
  • 1 tablespoon (15 mL) vodka or kirsch
  • 240 grams sour cream
  • 250 mL heavy cream
  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice.
Assembly: 
  • Slice the strawberries and toss in a bowl with the sugar and vodka.  Let stand at room temperature for one hour, stirring occasionally so that the sugar dissolves. 
  • Pulse the berries and liquid with the sour cream, heavy cream, and lemon juice in a food processor/blender until almost smooth, but still slightly chunky. 
  • Refrigerate for 1 hour, then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions. 

How simple is that.  The hard part is waiting until it’s frozen.  The strawberry aroma is intense if you start this with good ripe strawberries…I’d never really though about smelling ice cream before–but while I was peeking into the ice cream maker I realized that I WAS smelling strawberries–and that made the waiting even more difficult.

It took about 25 minutes for the ice cream to be really thick and showing indentations where the blades had gone through.  It expanded to reach the top of the canister, so I stopped at that point.

The recipe suggested having a dip while it was still at that creamy stage–for harder, put it into the freezer in air-tight plastic containers.  I did have an immediate sample but some did get put into the freezer for later–in single-serving portions.

This may be the most intense strawberry ice cream that I’ve ever eaten.  I’m sure that part of the credit goes to starting with really good, ripe strawberries–not supermarket berries.  These were from the farmers’ market.

Now that blueberries, blackberries and peaches are on the way, I’m sure that the canister for the ice cream maker will absolutely have to live in the freezer. (Makes me glad that I have a small chest-type freezer on the back porch).  I also have to say hearty thanks to the friend who gave me the Perfect Scoop for a birthday present!