July 12, 2005
Of all things icey
Undeterred by last week's cold snap I ventured into the world of cold desserts. I found a recipe in reliable old Steph's book of wonders for Lemon Granita that turned out to be absolutely delicious. I hadn't realised granita is so blindingly simple to make and the best thing about making it yourself is you can make it as lemony as you like. (I also added a dash of lime). As I like it sourpuss-lemony this is a great thing. It IS a pain to scrape though so I will be investing in one of those scraper things you use on your car windows in winter. Of course they are impossible to find in summer so I might have to beg one off the scharrel-ijs seller on the Albert Cuyp! I had more syrup than I had shallow dished for so I also made some icey-poles for Jacob's growing icey-pole stash.
While leafing through Steph's encyclopedia-of-lard I stumbled across a recipe for Strawberry and Balsamic Vinegar Ice-cream. I love balsamic vinegar and could quite happily drink the stuff and as soon as I imagined it with strawberries I couldn't get it out of my mind. Again, ice-cream is quite easy to make, its basically just whipped cream with flavourings, such as strawberries and balsamic vinegar and the resulting ice-cream was ABSOLUTELY delicious! My problem was that Ron doesn't like fruit and so all the bowl-and-spoon-licking had to be done by me. (Jacob found the balsamic vinegar flavour a bit too strong although he did like it once it was frozen) Four times the mixture of whipped cream and strawberries and vinegar has to be beaten, put in the freezer, removed and beaten again. Thats four times a bowl and spoon has to be licked. Before the ice-cream had even been frozen I was feeling just a tad overfull from the stuff! And rich! And then a litre of ice-cream that only Jacob and I can eat!'*
Of course living a fifteen second walk from Pepinno's, formerley-the-best-ice-cream-in-Amsterdam, all this may seem redundant but oh how the mighty have fallen! This summer is the first under the new ownership without the presence of Mr Pepinoo himself and you only have to look at the queues to see how things have changed. What queues? Exactly.
*Ron had thought he might eat the ice-cream as he often eats things where the fruit has been pureed and the fruit texture isn't evident. Alas, he tasted the mixture once and declared it 'too strawberry'!
Posted by Faith | TrackBack