Six Threes Ice Cream

3 Jun

Dear Summer,

Did we do something to anger you?  I only ask because it seems as though you have been avoiding us.  Here we are, the first week of June, and you are nowhere in sight.  I can’t help but think that maybe you are feeling a bit hesitant about joining us this year.  Maybe you had a great time hibernating during the months you were not with us, making you decide that you’d rather stay asleep a few more weeks instead of prodding your good friend The Sun in the ribs and making a good argument for spending some time with us.  We’re pretty fun, you know.  We like going in the pool and hitting baseballs in the backyard while our skin warms in the heat of the afternoon, and the hammock is all cleaned off and good to go.  Basically, we’re ready whenever you are.

Look, I even made a little something to celebrate your arrival.  My husband’s family has this great ice cream recipe that I had been dying to make.  I first tasted it at a family reunion last summer—remember that?  You were sort of there, Summer, but mostly in name rather than in feel (it was extremely cold and wet last August, as you may recall, but I promise I am in no way holding that against you).  Anyhow, my husband’s family made a huge batch of this ice cream.  They took turns hand churning it, and when it was done they called to all of the children to come and have an inaugural taste of the ice cream straight from the dasher.  All of the children were feeling uncharacteristically shy, so I swiped my finger against the dasher and demonstrated how non-poisonous and definitely delicious the ice cream was.

As you may also recall, the children had a rather difficult time getting to the ice cream covered dasher after that, such was my devotion to gobbling that thing clean before anyone else could snitch a taste.  I wouldn’t say I went so far as to push any children aside while protecting my ice cream sample, but that was only because I happened to be taller than all the children, allowing me to conveniently hold the dasher up much higher than they could reach, rendering unnecessary any sort of pushing or jostling on my part.

So, I decided that, in anticipation of your arrival, I would make some of this ice cream.  It is dead simple to assemble, and it tastes supremely fresh and cooling.  The ice cream is egg-free, but it has the smooth, soft, creamy texture of a custard-based ice cream. Do you know what the secret is, Summer?  It’s the banana.  The banana makes the ice cream so rich and luscious, you’d never know it was devoid of eggs.  I tell you, this is the perfect ice cream to start with if you’re feeling hesitant about making homemade ice cream.  It really is foolproof.  Plus, the taste bears a strong resemblance to that of a Creamsicle, which not only gives it points for childhood nostalgia, but also for maximum enjoyability.

I hope we see you soon, Summer.  Rumor has it you’re going to be making an appearance this weekend, but, quite honestly, I can’t really bring myself to believe that prediction, what with how little we’ve seen or sensed of you thus far.  Don’t get me wrong, I want to see you, but I don’t know if I can handle any more stilted anticipation.  If you do happen to show up, believe me, I’ll be more than happy to eat my words—right along, in fact, with a nice bowl of this delicious ice cream.

All the best,

EM from Savory Salty Sweet

Six Threes Ice Cream

The original recipe, which uses three of each measure of ingredients, makes enough ice cream to fill a very large hand cranked machine.  Since the ice cream machine I own only holds 1.5 quarts of finished product, I had to scale the recipe down by two thirds.  This, technically, does not make the ice cream I made a combination of six threes, but rather six ones.  However, since that name does not have nearly the clever ring to it as the original name, I have decided to just stick with calling it six threes ice cream.  Still delicious, just not as abundant.  If you have a larger ice cream maker, you should, by all means, scale the recipe up to make as much ice cream as you can.

Note: Be sure to follow the directions and keep the dairy and citrus ingredients separate until the dairy has been partially frozen in your ice cream machine.  If you add the citrus to the dairy beforehand, the acid in the citrus will cause your dairy to curdle.

1 ripe banana

1 lemon

1 orange, the zest finely grated or chopped

1 cup milk

1 cup cream

1 cup sugar

In a medium bowl, blend or mash the banana.  To this, add the finely grated or chopped zest of the orange.  Squeeze juice from lemon and orange, and combine with the mashed banana and orange zest.  Set aside.

In a large bowl, combine milk, cream, and sugar.  Whisk steadily until sugar is completely dissolved.

Add cream mixture to your ice cream maker, and allow to churn until it reaches the slush stage.

Add the fruit mixture to the slushy cream mixture, then churn according to manufacturer’s instructions (until, that is to say, you have ice cream).

Makes about 1.5 quarts of ice cream.

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The Kitchen Garden

31 May

 

 

Cucumbers

It would be no exaggeration to admit that we bought our house because of the size of the yard.  The average size of a residential lot in the close-in neighborhoods of Portland is around 5000 square feet.  The lot of our last house was only 2000 square feet, which meant that one could do little more outside than just sit and read, or perhaps sit and fantasize about what life would be like with a more spacious yard.  In this miniscule yard I had a very tidy little vegetable garden where I grew tomatoes, herbs, squash, and peppers.  Everything fit into two small raised beds that we built out of lengths of cedar fencing.

Raspberries

Strawberries

Our current house sits on a lot that is over three times as large as that of our last house.  We have space for our kid to run around and play, we have trees, and we, finally, have room for the type of kitchen garden that I’ve always thought would fit wonderfully in a family yard.  Meaning, a vegetable and fruit garden that would sit comfortably and seamlessly in a yard that was also suitable for playing, exploring, and relaxing.  If we can grow cucumbers ten feet from where we can also play baseball, we’re as happy as can be.

Blueberries

Tomatoes

Being modest gardeners, we are not the type of people who plan ahead in the spring for autumn canning.  We eat everything that we grow, but we also make an effort to not grow more than we can eat.  We happily harvest and preserve all the garden produce we can, but we are very conscious of not going overboard and growing so much food that we run out of places to store it.  We’re a small family to feed, so we’ve always known that ripping out an entire quarter of our yard for a vegetable garden would make no sense for the way we live.  As time goes on and the play space in our yard evolves, I am sure that our garden will change along with it.

Purple Basil

Genovese Basil

It’s been a cold and sad May this year, and I don’t really know what type of weather June will bring us.  Our garden thus far is hanging on, but certain things are looking a little worse for the wear  That lovely bright green basil that you see in the previous picture from two weeks ago?  Yeah, it now looks like this:

Basil in Distress

To say that I am feeling unhappy about this would woefully understate the intensity of my displeasure.

I am curious about the gardening exploits of other people out there.  Does anybody have great garden plans?  Has your spring been as punishingly cold and wet as ours?  How is your garden faring thus far?

Vegetable Garden

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Orecchiette with Grated Garlic and Tomato

28 May

When the sun comes out, we leave the house.  Not to, for the one millionth time, make mention of the abysmal weather we suffer through in the Pacific Northwest, but when May begins to draw to a close and June starts to creep up on us, we all start to feel a little cooped up from the previous seven months we’ve just spent trapped indoors by unrelenting rain and gloominess.  You can understand, then, why a rare glimpse of the sun during the month of May (or June, for that matter, because here summer likes to hang out in its pajamas and nurse a few beers on the couch for a while before it finally decides to emerge from its extended time off and finally get to work) will cause people to take to the streets of Portland in a pasty parade of boisterous revelry.

Because you’re contractually obligated to own a bicycle if you live here, we, not surprisingly, spend a lot of our outdoor time traveling by bike to various locations.  We bike to the park, we bike to the baseball field, we bike to the science museum, and we bike while running errands.  If the weather is truly wonderful, we pack a picnic and head downtown to have a picnic on the waterfront.  If the weather very suddenly stops being wonderful and forces us back home before we find ourselves biking through a rainstorm, we unexpectedly unload ourselves from our bikes to face dinnertime totally unprepared.  On the rare occasion that I don’t want to break down and just order Thai food (okay, so I always want to break down and just order Thai food, but budgetary constraints dictate that ordering Thai food several times a week is a ridiculous and ruinous financial strategy), I head into the kitchen and prepare what has become our quickest last minute dinner.

When the summer months actually arrive proper and the garden is bursting with tomatoes, this pasta dish sees a lot of action in our house.  More a handful of ingredients than an actual recipe, the technique (and I use that word very, very loosely here) of making this dish should serve as a nice base for creating a quick tomato pasta.  You boil your pasta water, throw in your pasta, then start on the sauce.  You put some fat (butter, olive oil, both) in a pan, allow it to gently melt, then grate in some garlic.  While the garlic simmers and melts into the fat, you grate up as many tomatoes as you can find, then add them to the garlic.  You simmer the sauce while the pasta cooks, you add some pasta water to the sauce, you drain and the pasta and combine the two, you stir in a bit of Parmesan, season everything, then you’re done.

If you think you’d want the sauce to be more garlicky, use more garlic.  If you want a looser sauce, add more pasta water. Add herbs, add red pepper flakes, add a sharper cheese–no matter what you want to do to this base recipe, it’s pretty difficult to render it inedible.  And, depending mainly on how fast your pasta water can come to a boil, you can have this dinner on the table in around 20 minutes.  Which will leave you plenty of time to, weather permitting, hop back on your bike after dinner and head out for some ice cream.

Orecchiette with Grated Garlic and Tomato

1 lb orecchiette, or another pasta of your choice (I find that the shape of orecchiette is perfect for cradling little bits of this sauce in each bite)

2 tablespoons of butter or olive oil (I like to use a mixture of both)

2 or 3 large cloves of garlic

3 or 4 large ripe tomatoes (or more, if you have them), cut in half and seeds removed

salt and pepper

Parmesan cheese

fresh herbs

Cook pasta in salted water according to package directions.  While pasta cooks, heat butter or olive oil (or both) in a medium-sized pan over low heat.  When the butter/olive oil is heated, use a small grater or rasp grater to grate the garlic directly into the pan.  Gently saute the garlic over low heat, stirring occasionally, until it starts to melt into the butter/oil and become translucent (about 1 to 3 minutes).

Using the large holes on a box grater, grate all the tomatoes directly into the pan with the garlic.  (You can grate the tomatoes onto a cutting board the add them to the sauce, but, accounting for the juiciness of the tomatoes, it is actually easier and less messy to just grate them directly into the pan.)  Grate the cut side of the tomato, so you end up holding the empty skin of the tomato after all the flesh has been grated into the pan.  Discard the tomato skins.  After you have grated all the tomatoes, simmer sauce over low heat, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking and browning.  Right before you drain the pasta, scoop out 1 cup of pasta water and add it to the tomato sauce, stirring to combine.

Drain the pasta, then return it to the cooking pot.  Add the tomato sauce to the pasta and stir to combine.  If desired, stir 1/2 a cup of grated Parmesan into the pasta while it is still in the pot, or reserve Parmesan to add later, when serving. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Top each serving of pasta with chopped fresh herbs (I used basil here, but any combination of fresh herbs is nice–basil, parsley, thyme, chives) and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese.

Serves 4-6 people.

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