CSA week ten - strawberry honey basil ice cream

Not too enormously innovative of a flavor this time around. You get a couple pages of results if you Google for strawberry basil ice cream before you start to hit the sorbets. Adding honey seems to be an unusual twist, though, and I think it adds something.

Ingredients:
1 pound strawberries, cleaned, hulled and chopped or sliced
8 ounces by volume (about 10 ounces by weight) modestly well-flavored honey, wildflower or generic supermarket honey would work fine
1 pinch salt
2 Tablespoons vodka
2 cups cream
2 small handfuls fresh basil leaves, bruised
2 teaspoons dried basil leaves, also roughed up a little
up to 1/4 cup sugar

1. Combine the strawberries, honey, salt and vodka in a medium bowl and let macerate 1 hour at room temperature or longer in the refrigerator. What with the honey, it's hard to tell when the berries released their juices so judge by when they soften. Move strawberry mixture to a blender and blend until only slightly chunky. [Now that I think about it, there's no reason you couldn't macerate in the blender container. You should do that.] Remove to the lidded container you'll be cooling the ice cream mix in.

2. Combine the cream with 1 handful of fresh basil and the dried basil. Bring to a boil and gently simmer for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and let sit for 15 minutes. [Normally I cover the pot at this stage, but I want to reduce the cream a little so let it evaporate. Break the skin that forms on top to let the steam out.]

3. Strain the cream into a blender and discard the used basil. Add the second handful of basil to the cream and blend until the cream turns green and the specks of intact basil are quite small. [I also added an egg yolk at this point since I had a spare handy. I didn't bother to reheat the cream so it would have a thickening effect so it just added a bit of richness.] Add to the strawberry mixture and combine.

4. Chill overnight, adjust sweetness by adding sugar if necessary, churn [this recipe makes a lot so I churned in two small batches. Neither got too very solid. The vodka and all that fructose keeps it soft.], ripen and serve.


As I said up top, strawberries and basil are a well-known combination so it's no surprise that they make for a nice ice cream. I managed to get a lot of basil flavor into the cream so it's well balanced with the strawberries, tempering their sweetness with herbal flowery notes and a slight bitterness. The honey is less prominent, coming out more as the ice cream melts, but it rounds out the combined berry-basil flavor. One person who tried it likened the result to guava; I could see that.

The texture isn't as creamy as some ice creams I've made, but pretty good considering that it's half fruit.

Shrimp risotto with peas and basil

It's been a long while since I've made risotto and I really don't know why. It's not nearly as hard as its reputation makes it out to be and it's a good way to use up whatever scraps of ingredients you've got lying around. I wonder if anyone's cataloged the various traditional toss-in-the-leftovers recipes in various cuisines. I'll have to take a look around.

In this particular case I found myself with a sudden overwhelming craving for shrimp risotto. Which is odd really as it's not something I've ever had before and the versions I've seen on cooking shows haven't been all that appealing. But if it made sense you wouldn't call it a craving. I do have risotto rice around; I guess it must be more than a year old since I know I haven't been using it. I've got a half pound of shrimp left in the freezer along with the fish/shrimp stock I made with the leftover bits from this recipe. And I figured it would go nicely with basil which I've got in the garden. I did a bit of research to see what else I might add and I came up with this:

ingredients:
1/2 cup arborio rice
1/2 cup white wine (I happen to have a dry Riesling on hand which, by chance, is a pretty good choice to match these flavors)
1 1/2 cups shrimp stock (or fish stock or clam juice or just water's probably fine)
1/2 pound shrimp, whatever size you like
1/2 cup peas (fresh English peas preferably. Freezer-burnt Publix peas will do in a pinch.)
1/2 cup finely shredded Pecorino Romano (don't substitute Parmesan. The more pungent flavor of an aged Romano works better here.)
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
3 cloves finely chopped garlic (and some shallots if you've got some)
1 small handful fresh basil (and I added some chives since the recent rain means I've got a lot of that too)
1 Tablespoon butter
2 Tablespoon olive oil
pinch of red pepper flakes


I really wanted to get the basil flavor well distributed through the risotto without it being overwhelmingly strong so I figured my best bet was to make a basil butter for toasting the rice. I roughly chopped the leaves (and the chives) and put them with the butter into my spice grinder. It didn't really work so well so I added a Tablespoon of olive oil and some coarse sea salt. That helped. So I ended up with something fairly smooth.

Next I defrosted the fish/shrimp stock in the microwave and kept heating it until it reached a simmer. Traditionally, you'd keep a pot of stock warm on the stove next to the pan with the rice but I didn't feel like dirtying another pot. When it looked about time to add more stock I ran the microwave for another minute to bring the stock up to temperature. Oh, and I also defrosted the peas.

To start the risotto proper, I heated a Tablespoon of olive oil in a medium saucepan and then sweated the onion and garlic with a bit of salt, pepper and the red pepper flakes. After three minutes I dumped in the basil butter and rice and toasted it for a couple minutes more.

Once the rice was going translucent and smelling a bit toasty I added the wine and turned down the heat to low. I let it simmer, stirring every few minutes, until the wine was almost entirely absorbed and then added a ladle of stock. Let that get absorbed, added another ladle. I think I went five ladles in all over maybe 25 minutes. Twice as much half as often would have done just as well, probably. I added the peas a bit too early. I should have waited for the last 10 minutes. Constant stirring isn't necessary, but hanging around the kitchen and keeping an eye on the pot is. Bring a book.

When the rice was just barely done--no longer chalky but not fully soft either--I added the cheese and the shrimp, took it off the heat, covered it and let it sit for three minutes. My medium shrimp were maybe just a touch underdone so you might put in the shrimp first, leave it on the heat for a minute or two and then finish it off with the cheese.

I served it with a garnish of a bit more basil chiffinaded and that was that. The recipe makes enough for two if you have a salad too. If you're going to double it, go light on the liquids to adjust for how rice absorbs. Risotto doesn't store at all well so only make as much as you're going to eat.

So how was it? Not bad at all. I usually have trouble getting the rice fully cooked, but by turning the heat really low this time it worked out well--soft but not mushy. The flavor is bright, a bit funky from the Romano with a light herbal overlay. All the components are subtly combined into a pleasing whole I found difficult to unpick even knowing what was in it. The peas are a bit overcooked but retain some distinctive flavor and still pop satisfyingly between the teeth. The only real weakness is the shrimp; I should have brined them. And, maybe, I should have fried them in the herb butter at start to mix the flavors in both components. Still, a very good first try for a shrimp risotto. Maybe next time I'll forgo the cheese and finish it off with lemon zest and cream. Plenty of options, really.

CSA - Lemon basil avocado sorbet

After my failure with last week's avocado sherbet I wanted to jump back on the horse, but a) other than the problems with the lavender I was happy with the results in general and I wasn't interested in doing it again immediately and b) I didn't have quite enough avocado left. So instead I decided to add a bit of avocado to lemon sorbet to see what happens. I've never made a citrus sorbet before so that was interesting in itself as well.

My initial research turned up lots of different lemon sorbet recipes on-line which varied surprisingly widely on how much lemon and how much sugar to use. With the variation in lemons' size and flavor and not having tried this before I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do. Lebovitz's Perfect Scoop hasn't let me down yet so that seemed a safe starting point. He was one of the few recipe authors who described the resulting flavor--"tangy"--plus his was the only recipe that specified mixing in the lemon juice at the last minute. I don't know how that would be important, but it shows he's been thinking, anyway.

So I started with 1/2 cup of water, a cup of sugar and the zest from one really big lemon. I heated that up until the sugar was dissolved. Then I poured that into a blender along with about 3/4 cup of avocado and enough more water to bring the volume up to 2 1/2 cups.

After blending, I was a bit surprised to see that the mix wasn't letting go of its air bubbles. That uneven reflection you can see in the picture is from the knobbly bubbly surface of the mix. I had no idea avocado was a foam stabilizer. This was a good sign.

While that was chilling, it was time to get a cup of juice. Or it would be if I hadn't decided that I wanted all the pulp too. Most sorbets get some additional texture from the solid bits of the fruit and I wanted to add that here if I could. So I ended up doing some careful microsurgery to peel a few lemons and either peel away the connective membranes or cut supremes. Once I had a cup I decided not to run it through the blender as I had originally planned. I liked the idea of little packets of pure lemon juice mixed in with the sweetened sorbet around it. So I just mushed up lemon bits to release about half the juice but leave the rest encapsulated. And that got chilled too.

The next day they got mixed and into the churn. This is when I got an inkling that I may have made a mistake. The freezing process, usually so elegant for sorbets, was ugly and clumpy. Who really wants texture in a sorbet anyway? Well, too late to back out now.

To add a bit more interest to the flavor, just before the mix was done churning I added a quarter cup of chopped fresh basil. Visually, the flecks of green are quite nice, but it's more to chew on which, again, might not have been the best idea. But too late now.

After churning, I ripened it in the freezer and here's the results. I still like the look, but, yeah, the texture isn't great. There is nice smooth sorbet, but it's got chunks of frozen lemon, bits of loose pulp and little leaves floating in it. I'm of half a mind to melt it down, run it through the blender and churn it again.
...
Now I'm of a full mind to do it.








So, before:








after:









and afterer:










and even afterer:


The texture is much improved with that perfect creaminess that I'm still amazed that sorbet can achieve. Maybe it's frozen up a little more solidly than your average sorbet. There wasn't any alcohol included so that hurt it but maybe the avocado helped? Further investigation is required.

The basil flavor is now well distributed and maybe there's a hint of avocado there too. You can tell that straight lemon sorbet would be like a piece of hard candy: just citrus and sweet melting on the tongue. The basil makes it significantly more interesting. The flavors aren't blended into anything synergistic--the lemon and basil are clearly distinguishable--but they go well together and take the edge off each other. Italian sweet basil would probably have worked better than the Thai basil I've got. Lemon basil would probably have worked better still. But I've got what I've got and what I've got is certainly plenty nice on a hot Miami day. I may revisit this when the CSA supplies some Italian basil. Maybe I'll use lime instead. ...Argh, I just did a quick Google and found that Jaime Oliver does a basil lime sorbet and Emeril does a basil lemon. OK, I've been saving a perfectly unique ice cream idea and it's going up next in the line-up. Watch this space.

Fried chicken with basil leaves

After coming back from my trip I was disappointed at how poorly my curry leaves fared. I stored some in a sealed plastic bag with a strip of paper towel to absorb any stray moisture and some in one of those perforated greens storing bags. The batch in the sealed bag had begun to rot. I think they would have done fine for a couple weeks, but it's now around four weeks since I got them in my summer CSA a la carte. The second batch was well on its way to drying out, but the leaves had lost all of their aroma and without that they're hardly worth calling curry leaves.

I'll admit that this is something I should have checked somewhat earlier than halfway through preparing a recipe called Fried Chicken with Curry Leaves. However, I had a back-up plan. I've been needing to prune the basil in my garden (Last year I didn't and my basil plant grew like I was under attack by Plantman but died just as quickly.) so I can move this recipe from Malaysian to Thai. Luckily I had already switched out the soy sauce in the marinade for fish sauce so I was on my way. I don't actually know what variety of basil I've got, but it doesn't have the peppery bite of real Thai basil so I'll have to toss in some peppers to compensate.

So here's how it went:

Ingredients:
oil for deep frying
2 chicken thighs, boned, skinned and cut into largish bite-sized pieces
1 large handful basil leaves
1 small onion, chopped into largish bite-sized pieces
1 small green pepper, chopped into largish bite-sized pieces
1 bird's eye or similar hot pepper, sliced (and seeded if you're a wimp)
Marinade:
1 teaspoon fish sauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon white pepper (black pepper is fine, but I got tired of grinding. I need a new more efficient pepper mill.)
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1 Tablespoon corn starch
Glaze:
1/2 Tablespoon oyster sauce, I used Chinese-style which worked fine although I've just learned that Thai-style is different
1 Tablespoon fish sauce
1 Tablespoon sugar
80 ml chicken broth
20 ml rice wine
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
juice of 1/4 lime

Directions:
1. Combine marinade ingredients, add chicken, marinate in refrigerator for one hour.
2. Heat oil for deep frying in a wok. Add chicken in batches without draining. Deep fry until golden brown. Don't worry about under-cooking as they'll be going back into the pan for a significant amount of time.
3. Drain all but 2 Tablespoons of oil (or heat 2 Tablespoons of oil in a wok at high heat if you used an actual deep fryer).
4. Add onion, peppers and small handful of basil leaves. Stir fry until onion and pepper begin to soften and become translucent.
5. Add chicken and glaze. Stir fry until almost, but not quite dry.
6. Add remaining basil leaves, toss and immediately remove from pan and serve over rice.

No offense to ponikuta whose original recipe this is based off of, but this turned out much better than when I followed her recipe to the letter. The switch from curry to basil leaves was, I think, a lateral one, but boosting the amount made the results much more aromatic. Adding the onion and pepper gave a better solids to glaze ratio so the sauce didn't over-reduce as it did on my first try. Instead of those overly salty and simple results, the flavors this time are a lovely blend of the savory chicken boosted by the oyster and fish sauces and the sweet of the lime and sugar with the basil wafting up behind and the pepper burning beneath. This would actually be a fine not-quite-vegetarian dish as the sauce brings out and supports the flavors of the onions and peppers. You could deep fry tofu and it would work really well, but don't use those frozen pre-fried tofu puffs. They'd absorb too much of the glaze and it wouldn't reduce right.

It's when I unexpectedly get these sorts of spectacular results that I regret that I'm only cooking for myself. Well, that's why I have this blog; If I can't feed you, at least I can record and pass on the recipe. Please make this; I promise you won't regret it.