Month: August 2018

You Are For Me: Honey Hopped Ice Cream With Salted Almond Toffee

beer ice cream
“Isn’t beer the holy libation of sincerity? The potion that dispels all hypocrisy, any charade of fine manners?” ~Milan Kundera~

I have always felt like I am too much and just not enough at the same time.

Perhaps not best to be writing this on the 11th anniversary of my father’s death, the 12th anniversary of my cousin Teddy’s death, and the day I am driving to a memorial for my uncle Jim who died late last week. Oh, and the last day of my daughter’s high school career (thank god), heading towards the first big milestone her father will miss (graduation).

But there you have it. The words come when they come.

As my friend Corey’s daughter J said to her the other day, “Oh my God, mom. Your feelings. They’re so big and there are so many of them. It’s exhausting.”

It is exhausting. For not only people around me but for me as well.

The constant background understanding that I am taking up too much space.

That my highs and lows are inconvenient and need to be explained away or apologized for.

That I can’t allow these strong feelings to pass through me or be processed out loud in the presence of anyone who might conceivably be offended, so I have to remove myself from people, even when it’s the exact opposite of what I need.

That sometimes I feel crushingly lonely, and the “just not enough” part kicks in to remind me exactly how worthless and unworthy I am in the first place, so what else did I expect?

Jesus. First-world, overprivileged, white-people problems, but goddamn. They still are real to me, daily present, and require constant negotiation and mediation in a brain that is already chock-a-block full of recriminations against its owner.

I have always felt outside of things – my family, my friends, the people I work with – and I don’t expect that to go away anytime soon.

I understand that I am not for everyone. Mostly it’s ok. The people I am for are with me for life. They get it.

This past weekend Khristian and I fled to the hills of West Virginia to our friends at Redwing Farm. I have known these people for nearly three decades. They have seen me through all of my iterations – safe to say they are for me. They were hosting a sleepover for their daughter’s birthday, a previously low-key affair that swelled from two kids to eight kids and potentially 20 adults staying for dinner in the space of just a few hours. One desperate text and 12 hours later, we were cresting the wooded driveway that leads to their house, there to offer moral support and help where we could.

We meant to come back in late summer anyway, not only for the company of Luke, Keveney, and Casey but also to pick the hops that twine their way up their porch railing. It had been a hard summer for the hops; although plentiful, many of them never quite opened. Still, as we left for home less than 24 hours after we arrived, I tucked a grocery bag full of them away in the car to play with at home.

Like me, this ice cream is not for everyone. It’s an unusual mix of flavors, and care must be taken to get the balance right. The first iteration was delicious but so bitter on the finish that it was impossible to eat, but this one manages to be smooth, sweet, and creamy, with a touch of citrus and salt and a definite hoppy vibe.

Honey Hopped Ice Cream With Salted Almond Toffee

Ingredients

Honey Hopped Ice Cream

2 cups whole milk

2 cups heavy cream

1/4 cup honey

1/2 cup fresh Cascade hops

6 egg yolks

pinch salt

1/2 teaspoon lemon zest

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

Salted Almond Toffee

(Annoying sidebar: you need a candy thermometer for this.)

1 1/2 cups unsalted toasted almonds, roughly chopped

1/2 stick butter

3/4 cup sugar

2 tablespoons water

1 teaspoon lemon juice

big pinch salt

Method

Make the ice cream: Heat milk, heavy cream, and honey in a heavy saucepan over medium heat until warm (look for small bubbles to appear around the edges of the pan). Remove from heat, add the hops, and cover. Steep for at least 20 minutes (taste. You should be able to taste the hops, but they should not make the back of your throat pucker.).

Strain hops out and return the milk to the saucepan. Bring back to a simmer (not boiling – look for the bubbles again).

Place egg yolks, lemon zest, and salt in a separate bowl and whisk well to combine.

Here is the tricky part, so go slow.

In a thin stream, gradually and slowly add the hot milk mixture to the egg, whisking vigorously. If you add it all at once you will end up with honey hopped scrambled eggs, which is truly disgusting.

Once the milk is added to the egg, place a strainer over the heavy saucepan and pour the mixture back into the saucepan. This catches any stray hop flowers (or scrambled egg).

Over low heat and stirring constantly, cook the mixture until it begins to thicken. You will know it is ready when it coats the back of a spoon (about ten minutes).

Remove from heat and strain again into a clean bowl, covering with plastic wrap that rests on the surface (so no skin forms). You can refrigerate this overnight (which Serious Eats says is best for flavor), or you can just cool it completely (about four hours) before churning according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

Make the toffee: While your ice cream custard is chilling, make your salted almond toffee. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

Toast your almonds in a pan (or the oven) over low heat (or 350 degrees) until they begin to release their delicious, nutty aroma (between five and seven minutes, ish). Remove from pan (or oven) and allow to cool before chopping them roughly.

Place butter, sugar, water, lemon juice, and salt in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Clip your candy thermometer to the side of the saucepan. DO NOT STIR. Swirl gently as the ingredients melt, then watch carefully as the thermometer climbs to 300 degrees. NO MORE NO LESS.

Do not wander off. You will go from barely bubbling to burnt and bitter within seconds. #AskMeHowIKnow

Once you reach that temperature, remove from heat and add your chopped toasted almonds. Work quickly to combine, then pour onto parchment paper lined cookie sheet. Spread to about 1/4″ thick (or whatever. It doesn’t really matter, but it cools faster when it’s thinner). Allow to cool completely.

Place in a sealed plastic bag and beat the toffee with a rolling pin to break it up into little bits.

PUT THAT SHIT TOGETHER: In the last five minutes of churning, add the salted almond toffee to the ice cream.

Don’t overchurn, and allow to freeze following your ice cream maker’s instructions.

Enjoy with people who TOTALLY GET YOU.

 

 

Neighborhood Slow-Cooked Apple Butter

apples
Ugly apples make the best apple butter. #Trust

Growing up, we had an enchanted orchard on our property.

I grew up on the side of a mountain in western Maryland, about an hour from both Baltimore and DC. Our driveway was an old stagecoach route, and the core of our home – the kitchen, the room above the kitchen (mine, eventually), and the dirt-and-stone basement – was 100 years old when I was little.

My childhood being what it was, I spent a lot of time alone, and some of that outside, wandering around the 11 acres of our (mostly) wooded property with a dog, a lot of ticks, and many copperhead snakes. We had a creek that ran through the property, minor rocky caves, and the above-mentioned orchard.

The orchard wasn’t much to look at. With just two each of neglected apple and pear trees, the harvest was uneven and unpretty. In the way of children, I don’t remember any pruning or care taken for that orchard, and I don’t remember any formal apple picking from that orchard. The apples and pears started out small and gnarly and grew more so as I got older, but if I had to guess at a memory I would say they were probably delicious in the way that only non-hybrid, heirloom, planted 30-years-before dwarf apple and pears can be. I took them for granted, I am sure, but I do remember pies, apple butter, and baked apples – the core hollowed out and stuffed full of nuts, raisins, cinnamon, and brown sugar and baked until the apples softened and combined with the sugar to release a syrupy ambrosia.

I remember dappled light streaming through the overgrown branches, the dampness of moss, and a constant hypervigilant awareness of the possibility of snakes. There was a moss-covered rock I spent time on, dreaming and staring out through the golden green undergrowth into the deepness of the rest of the woods.

Fast forward thirty years to five acres in Marietta in 2010 and a modestly larger group of five apple trees (plus six blueberry bushes and a peach tree that was mostly dead and only ever produced one rock-hard but perfectly delicious peach in our time there). Same unkempt branches. Same unlovely apples, but in abundance this time, weighing the branches so that in the fall I thought perhaps the pruning might take care of itself. These were Macintosh apples, I guessed, and covered with black spots that the interwebs assured me would not hurt me but just weren’t pretty to look at.

The squirrels sure loved the apples. They would sit high in the tree and take one bite, hurling them to the ground, often just as we walked by. If they had better aim things might be different, but as it stood then our orchard was littered through the late summer and early fall with half-eaten and partially rotted apples, bees, and the sickly sweet smell of decay.

Even with the squirrels doing their wasteful best, the apples the first year we moved to that house were abundant. I sent my horse’s hoof trimmer home with bags, and anyone else who wanted some, from the neighbor to the mailman to the UPS driver. And still there were too many.

In our urban environment now, there is no easy abundance of fruit – unless you look for it. Just one alley over there is a peach tree loaded with small, hard, but soon-to-be-delicious peaches. Two blocks away is an apple tree, pruned back hard last fall in anticipation of a house sale but coming back gangbusters with big apples. A sad little peach tree shares that yard as well, and an overloaded crabapple tree is just down the block in a pocket park off an alley.

Last week I nearly missed the apple tree down the block. I meant to go on Sunday morning but couldn’t quite drag myself out of bed, and when I passed it walking home from teaching yoga on Wednesday, nearly all the apples within sidewalk reach were gone. I don’t know what kind of apples these are – their texture is spongy and the flavor is tart apple essence rather than a big, bounding punch in the taste buds. But they might as well be my favorite kind – they have the terroir of Hampden, Baltimore. This could be a positive or negative, depending on your perspective, but for me, in many ways this tree brings me back to that enchanted orchard and makes me feel more connected to this city that I am still trying to love in spite of its trash and corruption and inequality. I can come to this tree in all of its stages – barren limbs, shy little buds, bursting flower, heavy with apples, gently drooping with the coming cold – and it brings me a similar peace that I felt in the glade on the side of the mountain in western Maryland.

This recipe is an easy solution to a beautiful abundance of fruit – apples, peaches, or pears. It couldn’t be easier, and you don’t need a stupid Instant Pot to do it. Allowing it to slow-cook overnight (or during the day while you’re at work) deepens the flavors, caramelizes the sugar, and produces a nuanced fruit butter unlike anything I have ever tasted.

Share it with your neighbors.

Neighborhood Slow-Cooked Apple Butter

(makes about four pints)

Ingredients

A dozen or so apples, about six pounds, peeled, cored, and chopped  (see Recipe Notes)

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg (freshly ground if you can)

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

hearty pinch of salt

Method

Place all ingredients in your slow cooker and stir to combine.

Let it cook on low for eight hours, or high for four to six. You sort of know when it’s done. Look for completely soft apples, like melted butter almost. If your slow cooker isn’t slow, keep an eye on it and watch for burning. If your apples are not very juicy, you can add a little apple cider (1/4 cup or so).

When the apples are cooked, use an immersion blender (if you have one) to blend until velvety smooth. If your apple butter is not a dark, luscious brown, it needs a little more time. You can let it cook on low for another hour or so.

If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can use a regular blender. Be mindful of lava scalding hot apple butter flying from the blender, though. That shit is deadly.

Recipe Notes

  • Because the neighborhood apples were not as flavorful as I would have liked, about half of my most recent recipe was supplemented by Braeburn apples, which are a good crunchy combination of tart and sweet. Straight up pie apples require more sugar to make a proper apple butter than I would like to use, so go for a mix of sweet and tart. For god’s sakes, don’t use Red or Yellow Delicious.
  • An apple peeler makes life so much easier. I use this one.
  • This recipe can be preserved with canning. The USDA would prefer that you use a pressure canner, but I have canned this by ladling hot apple butter into clean, sterilized pint jars and boiling in a water bath for 15 minutes.  If I don’t hear the pop of the lid, I eat it within two weeks, give it away, or freeze it. Some people add citric acid to deter bacteria, but I like to live on the edge.