CSA week four - Acorn squash/white chocolate/brown sugar ice cream

I came really close to not making this. Right after the holidays I'd have trouble finding an audience for any ice cream. Experimental stuff like this is just a waste of perfectly good food. But once I got the flavor combination in my head I wanted to at least try it out. I compromised by making only a half batch.

I started out by roasting the squash the same way as last time: cut in half and cleaned; 30 minutes at 350 degrees, covered, face down in a water bath; 15 minutes covered face up; and 15 minutes uncovered face up to finish. No stuffing, but I did use a dark brown sugar-butter glaze. When it was finished I scooped out the meat and mashed it up with the not-so-successful glaze that ended up puddled in the squash cavity.





I only needed a half cup for the small batch of ice cream so I mixed the rest with a handful of breadcrumbs and finely diced ham, onions and pepper to make fritters that didn't have quite the structural integrity one might wish for. I should have added an egg. Tasted pretty good, though.

As for the ice cream, I put
1 cup cream
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
3 Tablespoons white chocolate
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
on the stove. I really only need everything melted and mixed, but I scalded the milk just on principle. No custard since I figure the cocoa butter and the squash should give plenty of body.

That, cooled a bit, went into the food processor with the half cup of acorn squash for a good blend. I thought I got it pretty smooth, but the final result is kind of gritty. I have a problem with that too frequently; I have to start straining my ice cream mixes more often. All the better recipes call for it.

I neglected to take a picture of the blended mix. It was beige. It also didn't have a lot of squash flavor probably because all those bits that will become grit later were lying at the bottom. Just white chocolate and brown sugar is pretty good. I'll have to make that without the squash sometime.

Here it is after churning. It thickened up pretty quickly, but, like I said, with some graininess. I pulled it a little early since it showed some signs that it might overharden. Things never turn out well if it goes past soft-serve texture in the churn.

I saved the squash seeds thinking I'd bake them up for a snack, but it occured to me that they might mix in well. I cleaned them, dried them off well, and tossed them with a few drops of oil, salt, more brown sugar and cinnamon before baking them at 375 for 15 minutes. That was a little too long, but they weren't so burnt that I couldn't claim I did it on purpose. They started popping like popcorn at around eight minutes. I probably should have pulled them out when they stopped.

The final product's not bad. The flavors blend nicely with the squash savory note on the more powerful caramel-esque of the brown sugar and white cocolate. And the seeds add a nice toastiness; the slightly burnt flavor is gone thankfully. There are textural issues though. It's a little gritty and, after a pleasing crunch, the seeds leave nasty chewy bits to deal with. So not an enitely unsuccessful experiment. I want to try a pumpkin pie topped with a white chocolate ganache. Someone remind me next Fall, please.

Coffee-crusted pork chops with white chocolate sauce

Here is the second white-chocolate sauce recipe I promised in my last post. Pork is probably a bit more of an intuitive match with white chocolate than salmon. This recipe also came from Cacaoweb and the sauce is made the same way. I'm curious if you can make a savory white chocolate sauce without a roux. I had a hard time filtering out sweet sauces in my searches so I haven't found any other versions to compare. I'll have to do some more sophisticated searching and see what I can turn up.

But for now, here's the recipe:
Pork Chops with Coffee and White Chocolate Sauce

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients
3 tablespoons butter
3 teaspoons all-purpose flour
1 cup broth [chicken I'm assuming]
2 oz (60 g) white chocolate
------
3 tablespoons butter
4 boneless pork chops [no idea why boneless is specified. Mine had a bit of bone on one side and it worked fine.]
6 tablespoons finely ground coffee for dredging [I used a medium roast]
Salt and pepper

Method
Make first white sauce with white chocolate, then cook the pork chops: [Didn't notice this so I cooked the porkchop simultaneously. Didn't seem to be a problem.]

[0. Never cook a porkchop without brining for a half hour or so to improve flavor and texture.]
1. Melt 3 tablespoons butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. When the butter has melted add the flour and mix well.
2. Add broth, stirring constantly to incorporate and cook the flour.
3. Let the sauce cook on low heat for approximately 15 minutes, stir regularly. [As last time, I found the pan drying out a couple times so I added more broth. I used less this time and ended up with a hollandaise-thick sauce as a result.]
4. Add salt to taste.
5. Take the saucepan off the heat and add white chocolate, stir until melted.
6. Melt 3 tablespoons butter in a nonstick pan over medium heat.
7. Season the pork chops with salt and pepper, then dip them into ground coffee taking time to coat both sides thoroughly.
8. Cook the pork chops until done, about five minutes per side. [I found three minutes per side to be sufficient. Maybe my heat was too high.]
9. Serve with rice, mango chutney, fried plantains and/or bananas and white chocolate sauce.


Now this, I really liked. First off, the smell of the coffee and pork sizzling in the butter was surprisingly appetizing, although I suppose I should have expected it. I've had breakfast before and should know full well coffee, pork, butter and salt go together even without the toast and fried egg.

The coffee crust is an earthy counterpoint to the porkchop. It doesn't have near the richness of a brewed cup, of course. It's more like the flavor a chocolate-covered espresso bean, but sweetened by the pork juices instead.

The sauce is quite rich, which is good with the lean pork. The white chocolate is again well incorporated in the flavor of the sauce, only being recognizable in the aftertaste. This time around it has the useful role of subtly marrying with the coffee. It's a combination that works wonderfully, but you can't immediately identify why.

The mango chutney (Chef Allen's Mango Tears which I picked up back at the Mango Festival) adds some brightness to the dish but isn't really necessary. This is genuinely quite good, novel ingredients entirely aside. I could easily see making this again.

Salmon with white chocolate sauce

I wish I could remember why I bought a half-pound chunk of white chocolate. I doesn't seem like something I'd buy without some purpose in mind, but no idea. As long as I've got it, I may as well carve off chunks and make some use of it. I've been noticing savory white chocolate sauces showing up on cooking competition shows for the last year or so and I've been wanting to try it before it gets too passe. I found a couple straightforward recipes on http://www.cacaoweb.net. As you already know from the subject of this post, I'm trying the salmon recipe first. I'll try the other in a day or two.

I'm not making any changes to the Cacaoweb recipes to start other then cutting them down to my single serving to start out. Once I get a feel for the ingredient I'll improvise a little more. Here's the first recipe a few annotations:

Salmon with White Chocolate Sauce
Yield: 1 serving

Ingredients
3/4 tablespoons butter
3/4 teaspoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup fish broth [I've got some homemade fish stock in the freezer]
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice (unsweetened)
1/2 oz (15 g) white chocolate
1/4 tablespoon fresh, green pepper corns (or dried red pepper corns) [I picked red peppercorns out of the peppercorn mixes I have to make up a quarter teaspoon.]
------
1/2 tablespoons butter
1/2 pounds filet of salmon cut into 4-5 oz (120-150 g) portions
Salt and pepper


Method
Make first white sauce with white chocolate, then cook the salmon:

1. Melt 3/4 tablespoons butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.
2. When the butter has melted add the flour and mix well.
3. Add fish broth, stirring constantly to incorporate and cook the flour.
4. Let the sauce cook on low heat for approximately 15 minutes, stir regularly. [I found that the sauce thickened up too much over the fifteen minutes so I added more stock to keep it saucy.]
5. Add lemon juice, white chocolate and pepper corns.
6. Add salt to taste. [There's no 'meanwhile' here so I assume you're supposed to keep the sauce warm for the next ten minutes while you cook the salmon for the chocolate to melt and the flavors meld. My salmon was done in five, but the sauce seems well incorporated.]
7. Melt 1/2 tablespoon butter in a nonstick pan over medium heat.
8. Cook the pieces of salmon for about five minutes per side until it has browned. Add salt and pepper to taste. [I think it works better if you salt and pepper the salmon before adding it to the pan. Also five minutes per side seems like an awful lot.]
9. Serve the salmon with rice, sauce and cooked asparagus or broccoli. [or squash]

So, you want to know, how did it taste?

First off, the combination of white chocolate and lemon is synergistic on its own as I've found earlier when making ice cream, but once you add fish broth you really can't recognize white chocolate in the mix until the lingering finish, and even then you have to be looking for it. The citrus brightness hits first, with a savory unctuousness coming in underneath. There's a definite, but inarticulate, seafood flavor there that pairs well with the salmon. That fades too leaving a sweeter finish with the white chocolate closer to the top. Oh, and the red peppercorns give another off-kilter flavor component somewhere between black and Szechuan peppercorns when you bite into one.

Overall, it's not at all bad, but it's not knocking my socks off either. I'd call it an interesting novelty. But everyone's socks are different so maybe it'll do the trick on yours. I could easily see this as someone's favorite sauce, just not mine. It's easy; try it yourself and see what you think.

White chocolate banana cherry ice cream

Cherries are finally in season and Publix is carrying some surprisingly fine examples at a pretty good price these days. I was tempted to just eat the whole bag straight, but the blog has its demands so an ice cream application it's going to be. My first thought was make a straight cherry ice cream using a Philadelphia style base--that's ice cream that doesn't use an egg-based custard, just milk, cream, sugar and flavoring, something I've been meaning to try for a while. But I've thought of another, more interesting, context for a Philadelphia-style ice cream (which I may not get around to doing unless I find a better ice cream audience, but I live in hope) so I set that aside.

My second thought was to use the chunk of white chocolate I've had sitting in my pantry for some time. I've made a couple white chocolate ice creams before both of which had very smooth creamy and light textures, but both of those also had a custard base and I was curious if I could melt some white chocolate into an eggless cream mixture and get good results. White chocolate and cherry is not an exceptionally unusual flavor combination, but I came up with it independently on my own so I'm going to give myself some credit on this one.

My third thought was that I should try to lighten up my recipe so my co-workers might actually eat it. To that end I cut the amount of white chocolate I was going to use from eight ounces down to four and added half a banana instead. So that makes my base:
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
4 ounces white chocolate
1/2 banana (frozen and defrosted)
1/3 cup Splenda blend (or 2/3 cup sugar)
1 pinch salt

1. Chop chocolate finely.
2. Add chocolate, Splenda blend and salt to cream and milk in medium saucepan. Heat over medium low heat stirring frequently until everything is dissolved.
3. Place banana and cream mixture into blender. Blend until smooth.
4. Cool on counter for 1/2 hour then refrigerate to 40 degrees.

As for the cherries, I wanted some syrup but I didn't want to cook them. I pitted and roughly chopped 1 1/2 to 2 cups of cherries, sprinkled them with a Tablespoon or so of sugar, added a dash of vanilla, a squeeze of lemon juice and a couple Tablespoons water, stirred well and let sit in the refrigerator for a day. And then, once the ice cream base was in the churn I put it in the freezer for 15-20 minutes to get good and cold.

As for the churning I'm disappointed to say that my fancy Cuisinart churn has been no real improvement over the bargain Sears brand one it replaced. I've noticed that the bucket wobbles back and forth on top of the motor. I think it fits securely when it's warm, but it shrinks a little when frozen so it doesn't sit on the base correctly. You'd think it would be designed better than that. The wobbling means that the dasher can't stay firmly against the side of the bucket and scrape the frozen bits out into the mix for even freezing. In my old churn, there was a large enough hole in the top that I could get in there with a spatula and scrape down the sides while the bucket spun. Not with the Cuisinart. Instead I shut the machine down every five minutes, grab the dasher, manually scrape the sides, replace the lid and start it back up again. The weak motor in the Sears churn wouldn't be able to get going with a half frozen mix in place, but the Cuisinart doesn't have any trouble. On the other hand, the motor is strong enough that a fully frozen mix doesn't stall it out so I can't judge readiness by the pitch of the struggling motor's whine any more. No big deal either way, really, but for the extra expense I was hoping for better.

Anyway, I made slightly larger batch than usual so I had to shut the churn down before it overflowed while the ice cream was still a little softer than I would have liked. But it'll probably work out fine. I alternated scoops of ice cream with spoonfuls of cherries, Folded everything together a few times to distribute the syrup and stuck it in the freezer for ripening.

So how did it turn out? Pretty well. The texture is about the same as a light custard, say made with just two egg yolks: smooth and creamy, but a bit chewy and quick to melt. I'll call it a success. As for the flavor, it's interesting. In the sherbet I made last week the pineapple, coconut and banana flavors merged synergistically. That's not happening with the banana and white chocolate. The two flavors aren't really very far apart, but the flavor of a spoonful of this ice cream keeps switching back and forth as my attention shifts like the optical illusion that can be a vase or two faces. It's kind of weird, really. Both flavors are surprisingly strong given how little of either ingredient is in such a large batch of ice cream. The combined flavor is on the mellow side and the sharp berry tang of the cherries cuts through and clears it away until the next bite. So, the full effect if you're paying close attention is of at least three flavors (with hints of vanilla and citrus) shifting around with each bite. If you're not paying close attention then it's just really really good.

Sesame lemon white chocolate ice cream

I often pick up good ideas from Iron Chef. Top Chef is less fruitful I find. The iron chefs often use familiar ingredients in novel combinations; the Top Chef candidates use more unusual ingredients and complicated preparations which means I have a tough time envisioning--entastening?--their dishes. I can get a better sense of how Iron Chef dishes will taste more often than Top Chef dishes.

I made note of two particularly interesting and potentially doable flavor combinations from the latest Battle Chocolate: white chocolate and sesame and dark chocolate and pumpernickel. The latter seems familiar but I can't recall when I had it. The former, I decided to check out.

On the show, the white chocolate was accompanied with a sprinkle of raw sesame seeds, but sesame comes in a variety of forms and I did some taste tests to see which worked best. I actually thought the raw sesame seeds didn't hold up against the chocolate. On the other hand, tahini and white chocolate was interesting in a sort of white nutella sort of way. But what really blew me away was white chocolate and toasted sesame oil.

There's probably some way to make that combination work in a pastry, but I'm more practiced in ice cream and it seemed pretty easy to mix the flavors in: melt the chocolate in the dairy and mix the oil into the egg yolks. Specifically, I used one cup milk, a cup and a half of cream and about a 2 inch cube of white chocolate; and three egg yolks, a scant half cup of turbinado sugar and about a Tablespoon of sesame oil. Adding a teaspoon of lemon extract was a last minute decision; the cream was mellowing out the sesame oil's high notes so they needed boosting. I would have used orange extract if I had any on hand. That might have made it a bit more visually interesting, too. I'm tempted to make a sauce just to add color, but it's so flavorful, complex and interesting already I really shouldn't.

I'm quite proud of the results as both the flavors and textures are lovely. All that fat keeps the mix from hardening during the churning or holding much air so the results are smooth, dense and rich. (On the minus side that does mean that it melts very rapidly.) The flavors are all quite intense. They start with the lemon--sweet, but not lemon candy sweet and sour, but not lemonhead sour--with undertones of white chocolate that slowly cross-fade into the toasted sesame oil. The savory toastiness of the oil plays against the sweetness of the sugar and chocolate. There's a fair bit of stuff happening and I find it difficult to explain. I'm going to bring it in to work on Monday; maybe one of my coworkers can give their impressions in the comments.

Safe but tasty

After the extra-experimental semi-successes of my last two ice cream experiments (Thai iced coffee and candied yam for those who haven't been paying attention), I decided to go with something rather safer this week. For that reason, I made David Lebovitz's recipe for white chocolate and fresh ginger ice cream without major modification. Lebovitz is the author of the universally adored ice cream cookbook The Perfect Scoop so I figured it was a pretty good bet. I did want to add something of my own to it, particularly as I wasn't going to match it with a nectarine and cherry compote as he did.

Looking around for flavors that play well with both white chocolate and ginger, I settled on cranberries. There aren't an enormous number of recipes using all three, but all three pairs turn up pretty frequently. Lazy as I was being, I couldn't be bothered with dealing with fresh berries and instead used the half-dried sugar-injected cranberries from the gourmet grocery. Frozen, they're a bit chewier than they are at room temperature so I'd suggest chopping them up for lots of little specks of berry if you're going to follow my example. But they were fine whole so use your own judgment.

I used Callebaut chocolate which is my preferred brand of chocolate when I'm buying in big chunks. However, I really don't think it makes a big difference which brand you buy when you're talking about white chocolate as long as you stick to the high quality names. If anyone knows better do please correct me, but I can't imagine anyone bothering with a white chocolate taste test.

I won't go into great detail as this recipe isn't mine, but I do have a couple of observations.

First, white chocolate and ginger are a great synergistic combination. White chocolate on its own is, while flavorful, very one-note (despite the chemical complexity of cocoa butter). Ginger gives it a spicy complexity it lacks while the white chocolate smooths out ginger's harsh edges. It's not a completely uncommon pairing, but I think it deserves wider recognition. Personally, I found the flavors in this ice cream recipe a bit strong for my tastes. That may have come from rounding errors as I cut the original amounts by two-thirds to fit in my churn, but I'd back off the amounts or add a half cup of milk next time.

Second, from my experience using chocolate in ice cream before, I expected the mix to firm up in the refrigerator before churning. Not only didn't it firm up, it never really solidified in the churn or even after ripening. I'm not complaining; the lack of thickening allowed extra air to be churned in giving it a light smooth texture. Given the strong flavors, I don't think I'd want it any denser. What I had forgotten was that I was comparing white chocolate with dark chocolate which not only is chock full of cocoa solids, but also doesn't have any milk in it. Of course white chocolate is much more melty.

Tossing a chunk of white chocolate into a fruit-based ice cream should improve the texture and give a subtle added component to the flavor. I bet it would work well with any berry or stone fruit. I'll make a note of that for next spring when they're in season.

Chocolate plus stuff that has no business being in chocolate

A new Whole Foods location opened up near my work recently and, while it didn't have much that will make me switch from the grocery-shopping ruts I've already dug, it did stock a couple of chocolate bars I've been looking for for a while now.













In case you can't read the small print there, that's white chocolate with kalamata olives and milk chocolate with bacon, both from Vosges. It's interesting to see these sorts of exotic combinations moving out of experimental chefs' kitchens and into supermarkets. Vosges and Whole Foods are both sufficiently upscale and exorbitantly priced that I don't think the existence of these bars spells the death of the trend. But I can buy Frey white chocolate with cinnamon and blood orange at Target so the long term outlook is not good. (That the chef who did a bacon ice cream on Next Iron Chef got dressed down by the judges for lack of originality is a pretty bad sign too. Although he was doing a riff on french toast and even I could have come up with that.)

The real problem here is actually how banal both bars taste. The kalamata olives are identifiably that, but in all that white chocolate they taste no more unusual than, say, almonds. The bacon bar was even worse off because it tastes so familiar. Katrina Markoff, Vosges' founder, spells it out on the back of the box: chocolate chip pancake breakfast. I missed the pancake.

It really shouldn't be surprising that these bars weren't very surprising. They both were strong hits of sugar, salt and fat. Everything else was grace notes. (I had to take a shot after trying them to include the fourth food group, alcohol, and complete the experience.) There's still something interesting here, but it's going to have to be more complex. It's got me thinking, anyway.