Ice Cream Rewind

It snowed briefly on Friday. I'm dusting off my winter hats and scarves. I'm also dusting off the to-do list, and guess what I found? Ice cream. Lots of it. My food photo files are clogged up with scoops dating back to June, and the colors show their age:

Summery pink strawberry:



Neon-purple blueberry:

I thought I'd rescue them from oblivion in one final goodbye to ice cream weather. Adieu!

Just kidding. There is no ice cream weather in this house, occupied as it is by a certain spouse who insists that ice cream is its own food group (I don't complain...at least he's given up this notion about bacon). But fall and winter ice creams do tend to differ from their fair weather cousins. In recent months, my ice cream maker has been turning out flavors like maple walnut...


and pistachio-fig...


I trolled these fall flavors from the pages of David Lebovitz's ice cream book. Mr. Lebovitz suggested dried apricots and pistachios, but I thought I'd substitute figs. The results weren't bad, but not good enough to revisit. Lesson: Mr. Lebovitz's recipes are better than my improvisations. That's why his book is called The *Perfect* Scoop. It's also why this is my favorite dessert-focused cook book, and why, unless you own stock in supermarket ice cream, you should probably have it on your own shelf.

There have been a few ice cream blunders, none of which can be blamed on anyone other than me. I had this idea of pairing a salted caramel ice cream with a white peppercorn ice cream. This was one of those food ideas that seem so fetching, so edgy -- why hasn't anyone else thought of this? salt and pepper? come on, they go together! Well, there's a reason why you've never been served salt and pepper ice cream. Turns out, they don't taste so good. The peppercorn ice cream was the spoiler. I wouldn't call it offensive, but I think the person to whom I served it did. I went overboard with the peppercorns, soaked too many of them too long in the cream. The result was a plain-looking white ice cream that started to burn the moment it hit the back of your tongue, and then kept burning, only to fade into an acrid aftertaste. Paired with the salted caramel ice cream (which is not my recipe and is very good), it tasted even weirder. I am still entertaining the idea that a dainty scoop of the stuff served with a bitter chocolate cake might redeem the whole project. But I had Patrick try a spoonful of the stuff and then nibble a piece of dark chocolate. Didn't do it for him. I have a quart of it growing freezer burn, and ice cream never grows freezer burn in this house...except for that Dirty Mint ice cream I made a while back.

For those of you who have pushed it out of your memory, Dirty Mint ice cream happened in May of this year. This is how it went:

"At this very moment, a mint patch is creeping across my back yard. This being the first spring we've lived in this house, I didn't even know we had a mint patch. Then, one day, it was there, and it was big. Dreaming of a sustainable ice cream, I waded into my sea of mint, steeped my harvest in cream, poured it in my ice cream maker, tossed in a few handfuls of chopped dark chocolate, and waited. The result was yucky. To put it more precisely, it tasted like dirty grass (with chocolate chips). My guess is that my variety of mint is not the best for imparting flavor to food and drink (the mint juleps turned out yucky, too). No, mine is an ornamental sort of mint, which is spreading like wildfire in my backyard while my basil and rosemary are barely hanging on."

Well, I have since discovered that my mint patch is catnip. Yep, not only did this backyard hallucinogen do nothing for my pheromonic receptors, it ruined several cocktails. This I can tell you from experience: unless you're a cat on a bender, catnip juleps just aren't worth the trouble.

I'm looking forward to trying out some December ice creams. Eggnog seems a likely candidate. Pomegranate, perhaps. For now, here are two ice cream recipes, one for fall and one for summer. The seasons always manage to come round again.


Maple Walnut Ice Cream with Wet Walnuts
Makes about 1 quart. Adapted from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop.

This ice cream is nutty and sweet, with a clean maple syrup flavor. It's just the thing with a mug of black tea, a down comforter, and a textbook on psychoanalysis, which is precisely how it was enjoyed this very afternoon.

1 1/2 cups whole milk
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
5 large egg yolks
3/4 cup dark maple syrup
1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
Wet Walnuts (recipe follows)

Warm milk and sugar in medium saucepan. Pour cream into a large bowl and set a mesh strainer on top. Turn heat down to medium-low.

In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.

Stir the mixture constantly over medium-low heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. Pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the cream to cool. Add the maple syrup, salt, and vanilla, and stir over ice bath until cool.

Freeze according to your ice cream maker's instructions. During the last few minutes of churning, add the Wet Walnuts.

Wet Walnuts
Makes 1 1/2 cups.

1/2 cup, plus 1 tablespoon dark maple syrup
1 1/2 cup walnuts, toasted and very coarsely chopped
1/4 teaspoon coarse salt

Heat the maple syrup in a small skillet or saucepan until it just begins to come to a full boil. Stir in the walnuts, and cook until the liquid comes to a full boil once more. Stir the nuts for 10 seconds, then remove them from the heat and let cool completely. The nuts will still be wet and sticky when cooled.



Fresh Blueberry Ice Cream
Makes 1 quart. Adapted from Gourmet, August 1997

I made several batches of this technicolored ice cream this summer. Fresh blueberries, when they're not overwhelmed with sugar, make a very mellow ice cream, which would be nice served with pound cake or shortbread cookies. It's also nice double-scooped into a bright green bowl. You can strain out the blueberry skins, if you like. I left them in for the slight texture and speckled color that came with them. The skins are good for you too.

2 cups blueberries
3/4 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream

In a saucepan, bring blueberries, sugar, and salt to boil over moderate heat, mashing berries and stirring with a fork. Simmer mixture, stirring frequently, 5 minutes; cool slightly. In a blender, puree mixture with milk just until smooth and stir in cream. Chill and freeze in ice cream maker.

Falling Back

Spring Forward. Fall Back. I'm never quite sure whether I'm returning to Standard Time or entering Day Light Saving Time, but this mnemonic device tells me in which direction to turn my watch. I breathed a little sigh of relief this weekend, as I turned back those dials, repeating "fall back, fall back, fall back" to myself all the while. After running headlong through October, November is looking like a good month for falling back. And I'm hoping to land in the kitchen.

Let me tell you a little story about mnemonic devices, Greek etymology, Latin poetry, and swiss chard ravioli. Mnemonic devices are, according to Greek etymology, matters "of memory" (mnemonikos), but according to a certain Greek mythographer they also devices of forgetfulness.

Bear with me. The story winds a bit.

Hesiod has us believe that he met the Muses, those nine daughters of the goddess Mnemosyne (Memory) who inspire poetry, on the slopes of Mt. Helikon. There, they sang to him of the births of the gods, a song to preserve ancient tales in the minds of future generations, but also, they told him, a song to make the grief-stricken forgetful. This song Hesiod dutifully recorded in his Theogony.

During the past months, I've been inspiring both memory and forgetfulness in undergraduate students of classical mythology, though none, I expect, would deem me a Muse. Hesiod's gods now faint early-semester ghosts, the fall of Troy is the song I'm presently singing. This week it was unlucky Dido and her funeral pyre. Heavy stuff. And this after marching though the rape of Persephone, the mangling of Hippolytus, the infanticide of Medea, the blinding of Oedipus, and the rage of Achilles.

The stuff of classical mythology has been cutting into my kitchen time, and that's a tragedy in itself as there's no better antidote to suffering, death, and undergraduates than chopping, mixing, and kneading. Fall back...it's a mnemonic device good for forgetting.

Haunted by Dido's hissing wound and glaring shade, I wandered into the kitchen, hauled out my pasta rollers, and started chopping through a few pounds of greens. Within an hour, I was tucking into a plateful of over-sized swiss chard ravioli tossed in browned butter sauce. They weren't much to look at, but homemade pasta doesn't have to be photogenic. Many comfy things aren't.

The beauty of this recipe is in the play between the soft, familiar pasta exterior and the dark, savory-sweet filling. The combination of swiss chard, pine nuts, raisins, and kalamata olives is an old Catalan formula, and I have to say, there's something about this recipe that tasted old, as in ancient...like something that could have been lost in the annals of culinary history. But it wasn't, bless the gods. Of this, I am sure: I won't forget it.


Swiss Chard Ravioli in Rosemary Butter Sauce
Adapted from a recipe that appeared in the February 1997 issue of Gourmet.
Makes 4 servings.



For filling:
2 pounds Swiss chard, stems and ribs discarded and leaves washed and drained
4 tablespoons finely chopped onion
2 garlic clove, chopped fine
3 tablespoons pine nuts, chopped coarse
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
6 Kalamata olives, pitted and chopped fine
4 tablespoons golden raisins, chopped fine
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste

For pasta dough:
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour plus additional for kneading
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon water
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt

For Browned Butter Sauce:
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 tablespoons pine nuts
1/4 cup white wine
1 tablespoon finely minced fresh rosemary
a few pinches of coarse salt


Make filling:
Finely chop Swiss chard (you should have about 6 packed cups). In a large non-stick skillet sauté onions, garlic, and pine nuts in oil over moderately high heat until onion is softened and pine nuts are a few shades darker. Stir in olives, raisins, and half of Swiss chard and cook, stirring, until chard is slightly wilted. Stir in remaining chard and season with salt and pepper. Cook filling, covered, over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until chard is tender, about 5 minutes. Add lemon zest, Parmesan cheese, and nutmeg. Cool. Chill filling, up to 1 day.

Make ravioli:
In a food processor blend all ingredients except for additional flour until mixture just begins to form a ball. On a lightly floured surface (or in a mixer fitted with a dough hook) knead dough, incorporating additional flour as necessary, until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. Dough is best used immediately but may be made 1 day ahead and chilled, wrapped in plastic wrap.

Set smooth rollers of pasta machine on widest setting. Cut dough into 4 pieces and wrap 3 of them separately in plastic wrap. Flatten unwrapped piece of dough into rectangle and feed through rollers. Fold rectangle in half and feed through rollers several more times, folding in half each time. Dust with flour if necessary to prevent sticking.

Turn dial down to next (smaller) setting and feed dough through rollers without folding. Continue to feed dough through, without folding, making space between rollers narrower each time, until narrowest setting is reached and pasta is about 4 inches wide.

Put pasta sheet on work surface with long side facing you and mound filling 2 inches apart lengthwise along half of the pasta sheet (you should have 4-5 mounds). Around each mound of filling brush dough very lightly with water. Fold dough lengthwise in half over mounds of filling, gently pressing around mounds to force out any air, and seal edges well. Trim edges with a fluted pastry wheel or knife, and cut between mounds of filling to separate ravioli.

Line a large tray with a dry kitchen towel and arrange ravioli in one layer. Make more ravioli with remaining 3 pieces of dough and remaining filling in same manner, transferring to kitchen-towel-lined tray and arranging in one layer. Ravioli may be made 8 hours ahead and chilled on towel-lined tray, covered loosely with plastic wrap.

In a large pot, bring salted water to a boil. Cook ravioli until tender, 5 to 6 minutes, and drain in a colander. Add ravioli to browned butter sauce, toss gently to coat, and top with grated Parmesan cheese.

For browned butter sauce:
While water is coming to a boil, heat 4 tablespoons butter over medium heat. Add wine and pine nuts and cook until sauce is golden-brown and pine nuts are toasted. Add rosemary and salt to taste.