“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.)
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.
“See, Red? When life hands you lemons, you know what you gotta do?” “Wow,” Lauren said. “Yes, Mr. Cliché, I know what I have to do. I make lemonade.” “No,” he said. “You scream, ‘Fuck you, lemons!” “And then you throw those goddamn lemons into oncoming traffic, and you go do what you want to do.” ― Priscilla Glenn, Back to You
I cook when I am sad.
I cook when I am happy.
I cook to comfort people.
I have, at times, and much to my chagrin and embarrassment at my passive aggression, not cooked when someone made me angry.
I cook when I have no thoughts in my head.
I cook when there are so many thoughts in my head that my ears are ringing to the beat of my heart and my jaw is tense and I wake myself up in the night, grinding my teeth flat.
I cook when I don’t want to write and also when I do and also when I have things to write that I cannot put down on paper just in case I die and someone goes through my papers and it’s not something that anyone should be reading.
The only time I don’t cook is when I am can’t figure out who to cook for and making anything would waste food.
Except for the only other time that I don’t cook, which is when despair sets in.
Despair is a big word, like “disappointment.” I try to use my words carefully; I am critical in my head (and sometimes out of my mouth) when people toss words around in cavalier fashion. They matter, words do, even in this age of grunting and listicles and pictures.
So. Despair.
The dictionary defines it as “the complete loss or absence of hope.”
On all but my worst days, it’s possible for me to avoid this word. There is always something to reach for. Or even just to pin my mind to, just for a little while until the feeling passes.
My dad told me the story once of a guy who swam the English Channel. He (my dad) said the guy was interviewed, and one of the questions was, “How did you make it across?” Which is a really DUMB QUESTION, but many of my father’s stories and jokes featured dumb shit prominently.
The swimmer replied, “I just told myself to swim ten more strokes. And after I swam ten strokes, I thought, well, I can just swim ten more. So I swam across the Channel, ten strokes at a time.”
Frankly, this story is so neat and tidy and fits his long-forgotten point so well that I am pretty sure my dad made it up. Which was also part of his M.O.
But it works for many different aspects of my life.
On this day, I am trying to keep the English Channel in mind. There have been three deaths in and around my life in the past four weeks: two friends of my daughter’s and yesterday, my uncle. I don’t feel much like baking today, and despite the unutterably gorgeous weather of the past two days, I don’t feel much like going outside. But today I will force myself out of the bed. I will wash some laundry, and then some dogs, and maybe I will write for money and drag myself out for a little walk.
And I will definitely dig out my mother’s recipe for Truly Citrony Lemon Bars, which I will turn into a tart and bring to a friend who maybe might appreciate them. This uses plain, simple ingredients that you have lying around, which makes it easy because there is very little actual effort involved.
It’s the whole when life hands you lemons thing. Ten more strokes.
On Saturday, I had, as my particular friend called it, a visceral reaction to the suburbs.
We had dropped Khristian’s daughter off at the movies with a friend and planned a drink and some food at the least offensive of the chain restaurants in Hunt Valley (which turned out to be California Pizza Kitchen).
Things started out fine, as they usually do, and we ordered drinks and food at the bar.
After these diversions were settled I was able to look around.
The customers next to us were unhappy with something and a perfectly nice manager came over and soothed them.
The incoming male bartender, clearly an annoyance to our outgoing female bartender, overpoured for a lone male customer and mentioned that he (the bartender) would prefer some Rumplemintz. It was clear that the male customer was not really interested in the extra booze, but it was delivered in such a way that refusal would have seemed odd, so the male customer pretended it was fine.
It wasn’t really fine. I could feel it. The gesture of the extra booze came off as the “everybody’s doing it” kind of knuckle-dragging peer pressure one experiences around the beer funnel at a backwoods party.
Then we heard the same bartender mention Rumplemintz again at the other end of the bar. Soon after we watched him stick his finger in the neck of a bottle of some kind of juice mixer to unclog it before adding it to a waiting tray of drinks which was then, presumably, delivered to an unsuspecting patron.
Right around this time I started to feel…off.
I am not sure the last time I have been in a “fast-casual” dine-in chain restaurant, but I do remember saying that I didn’t want to do it again, and as I watched the people at the bar eating and listened to the modest din of their conversation or watched them staring into space or at the NCAA women’s basketball on the TVs over the bar I started to feel worse.
We finished our pizza and kale salad and paid. With time to kill, we boarded the escalator and descended into the belly of the beast: Wegman’s.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Wegman’s. And the Hunt Valley Wegman’s is legendary.
But the second I walked into the store I knew it was a mistake. It was hot, and it smelled strongly of food and people at the same time, in equal measure. Whole families were doing the weekly shopping, which translated into hordes of people, all with a determined look on their face and little regard for the people around them. We headed to the back of the store and perused the gluten-free section for a bit, and then I started to realize that the rest of our lovely day, the day that started with a walk to the Waverly farmer’s market for asparagus, a Blacksauce Kitchen biscuit, and a bag of Michele’s Granola, was not going to end well for me.
Anxiety is visceral. It may originate from a few random firing synapses in your brain, but the second those electrical impulses begin, the physical sensations are unmistakable with sensory detail that is clear, odd, and particular.
I could taste the last bite of kale salad in the back of my throat, where my breath lodged and came in short, shallow gasps. I was hot, and my clothes started to squeeze me. My mouth dried out. My heart beat in my chest, and I could feel the pulse in my belly, the one that connects to the vagus nerve, the transmitter of butterflies and anxiety and fear in a straight shot to the base of the skull.
Thinking to maybe head off the inevitable, I left my particular friend holding our few groceries and went to the restroom. Sometimes the quietness of the bathroom gives me space to collect myself. It may seem impossible that a public bathroom could become a refuge, but sometimes it’s the only quiet, peaceful space to go to when anxiety fires up.
The bathroom was rank-smelling and unclean. Loud music piped through the store, the kind of saccharine pop music that sounds like Christian rock but isn’t and involves no real instruments, reverberated against the oddly terracotta walls here. The bathroom was no help. I couldn’t breathe through my nose. My mouth was completely devoid of moisture, foul-tasting and pebbled with tastebuds that felt every particulate-filled, unrelenting morsel of inhaled air.
I will spare you the details of the next 45 minutes or so except to say that I visited that bathroom once more, plus a Peet’s coffee and tea bathroom and the movie theater bathroom (three times) before the girls finished their movie. I had taken an anxiety pill, then another half, and then another half. It’s hard to know if the medication sticks when you can’t keep it down. We made it home, where I took another pill, spent some more time in my (mercifully quiet and clean) bathroom, put on thick jammies (for the shivering when it came), and got into bed.
It’s not like I am unfamiliar with the trappings of the suburbs.
I spent 13 years in the suburbs of Atlanta. Without knowing it, in those 13 years, I lost bits of myself. It was subtle at first. Weekend shopping and meal planning on Sundays. Casual acquaintances who never really knew me (or cared to, really). Weekends consumed at the softball field, my child the center of the universe.
I kept the house, bossed my husband (Dane, for those who are just joining in) around, swore he couldn’t live without me (even went on strike once, like a total douche), and fully developed the raging anxiety that first surfaced when I was young. Every moment was gogogo, working for the weekend, taking care of business. The joy of teaching I experienced in Seattle evaporated in Georgia under a domineering boss who spent faculty meetings yelling at us.
We bought a farm. We lost a baby. I quit my job and started a school. Dane lost his job. We lost the farm. Dane died.
Sicily and I fled the suburbs for Baltimore.
Forgive me.
The vacuous homogeneity, the forced joie de vivre, the conspicuous consumption, and lack of individuality of the suburbs nearly killed me.
The low-key unhappiness that no one will admit to. The women complaining constantly about their husbands, who continue to ask forgiveness, not permission, of their wives.
The soul-killing lack of creativity, a hole that women attempted to fill chock-a-block full with Mason jar crafts, Pinterest boards, and wine painting party girls’ nights out. The insistence on calling each other “girls” in the first place.
The apathy towards politics, or the overwhelming conservative nature of the politics they did participate in.
The sheer size and number of SUVs and the callous, blatant disregard for fellow humans who are not in the inner circle, as evidenced by the lush green lawns and huge bags of garbage.
The subtle once-over every time you walk in someone’s door.
The endless evenings and weekends driving to activities or playdates or else keeping up the lawn, the house, the charade.
Forgive me.
It’s small wonder that in terms of volume and sheer violence, most heinous crimes are perpetrated not in rural areas or in the darkest parts of the urban jungle but just outside the beltway. School shootings happen in the suburbs, most often carried out by deeply unhappy people with startlingly easy access to guns.
But I digress.
I didn’t realize how miserable I was being the person I was never meant to be until I didn’t have to be that person anymore.
I shared these thoughts with Sicily the following day. We were walking across a parking lot, and when I told her my thoughts, her chin quivered and she lowered her sunglasses to cover her eyes.
“Do you regret it?” she asked me. “Being a softball mom?”
I stopped in the parking lot and looked her full in the face. I reassured her that she is the joy of my life. She made me understand the unfathomable depths of love and has given me the most blissful moments I have yet experienced in this incarnation. I am who I am today because she was born – she has made me a better person.
In truth, as much as my flight from the suburbs was about excavating the person I buried for so many years, it was also about being someone my kid could look up to. To show her that even from the shadow place of grief and through years of feeling unworthy, there is a way to come back. That it’s a sad and hard and joyous and exhausting and frustrating and hilarious and angry-making journey filled with ten tons of bullshit but also an equal measure of tears and laughter and the full range of emotion.
That feeling the full range of emotion – the crevasse of the depths and the universal height of joy – is the necessary thing. It’s the thing I couldn’t feel for 13 years. It’s the thing that came surging through me as we wandered the chaos of a strip mall in suburban Hunt Valley on a Saturday, only this time it came like a coiled snake, snapping out of a clay pot.
I want my beautiful daughter to know that it doesn’t have to be so for her. She can be who she is, just as she is. The Wiccans express it thus: “An it harm none, do as thou wilt.” And so I say now to both myself and my daughter.
As my anxiety receded, I felt like eating. Usually, I don’t eat for the rest of the day after an anxiety attack, and today was no different, but my cravings are always specific – sweet, comforting things, usually in the form of cake. I am possibly cake’s biggest fan.
In light of the burgeoning spring that has begun to sprung outside my bedroom window, and to honor my heart walking around outside of my body as we both continue to move towards who we are, I present to you this lovely, easy, unfussy carrot cake. I made carrot cake for Sicily’s first birthday. She ate it with a fork, no sticky fingers for her, and I knew, even in the middle of the suburbs, that she and I would somehow get to be just fine.
LouAnn’s Carrot Cake
Sicily, a.k.a Muffin Girl and Lovey LouAnn, maybe would have chosen a different cake for her first birthday, were she given a choice. I made this to try to reconcile her steady diet of organic, handmade meals and snacks with my deep love of sweet, sweet birthday cake. This recipe is a mash-up of several different recipes I have made over the years, with tweaked spices and a new technique that is shamelessly stolen from Cook’s Illustrated. After making cake in this way, I may never return to the round.
2 2/3 cups shredded carrot (about 3 large carrots – this measurement needn’t be exact)
Frosting and decoration
12 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 stick butter, softened
Optional: 1/4 cup buttermilk powder
2 teaspoons lemon
3 cups powdered sugar
Optional: milk, as needed
2 cups pecans, toasted, cooled, and chopped
Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 13″ x 18″ rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper (allow overhang at the ends) and set aside.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.
In a larger bowl, use the same whisk to combine eggs, oil, bananas, and vanilla. Whisk thoroughly until egg and oil are completely incorporated.
Add flour mixture to egg mixture and stir until combined (note: if you are using regular AP flour, do not overmix). The batter will seem fairly thick, closer to brownies than cake.
Fold carrots into the batter.
Pour batter into prepared pan. Use an offset spatula to even the surface and make sure it is level.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the top is dry. You can use a cake tester or toothpick to test also; no crumbs should stick to either.
Cool in pan for five minutes, then carefully life with the edges of the parchment paper and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.
To make the frosting, place cream cheese, butter, and buttermilk powder (if using) in a large bowl. Using a hand mixer, beat until smooth. Add lemon juice and powdered sugar (sift if you are particular; I am not), one cup at a time, beating well between additions. If your frosting is too thick, add a teaspoon of milk at a time, beating well, until it achieves a smooth, spreadable consistency.
To assemble, use a sharp knife to cut the cake into four pieces: one big cut across the longest part of the cake and one on the shorter side (you will end up with four rectangles that are about 6″ x 8″ each).
I use a rotating cake stand to frost, but since this is a round cake that is not entirely necessary. Frost and fill, allowing plenty for the top. If some crumbs show through on the sides, that’s okay.
When the cake is frosting, press handfuls of pecans into all four sides until covered. Pro tip: DO NOT DO THIS OVER THE SINK (don’t ask how I know). What happens is you waste a ton of pecans, which are very expensive. Complete this by holding the cake in one hand over the same rimmed baking sheet it was cooked in, using the other hand to press a handful of pecans into the sides at a time. Whatever is leftover can be used in another application.
Try not to eat it all, but remind yourself that since there are carrots in there it’s practically a vegetable.
Recipe Notes
You can substitute applesauce OR drained crushed pineapple for banana in the same amounts.
Buttermilk powder is not strictly necessary, but it’s nice to have around and lasts forever. Find it in the baking aisle near the canned and powdered milk.
You could also add currants to the batter…if you were a MONSTER.
I am not a rise-and-grind, hustle-and-stack kind of girl.
While I recognize the value in this philosophy for some folks, it just doesn’t feel good for me. It feels frantic and crazy-making and doesn’t leave any space inside it for enjoying the fruits of your labor.
It’s a grind. A slog. An ongoing rush to get something more than what you have.
My dad, in his day, and all of the days I had with him, was a hustle-and-stack OG. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2001 and given six months to live. I quit my job and flew back East from Seattle so he could get to know his infant granddaughter in whatever time he had left. Although he positively doted on her (for the next six years), he was often too busy to do more than come up from his basement office and say hi. He traveled for his work constantly and worked through multiple bouts of chemo and radiation and many courses of experimental treatments.
In a moment of frustration, I asked him once what amount of money it would take for him to stop working long enough to come out of the basement and enjoy his family before he died. He had no answer – it was literally the hustle he liked, I think, more than the progress towards any goal.
Part of this compulsion to grind stems from fear. Fear of not having enough, being enough, or deserving enough.
But then I read this quote from Osho:
“Don’t move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move.”
Yes. THIS.
Fear is oxymoronic in that it can alternately hold us back and compel us forward. Fear is the trigger that serves our flight, fight, or freeze instincts, the ones buried so deeply in our brains that we don’t even recognize that this compulsive need for hustling and stacking is just a modern-day version of fleeing from a saber tooth tiger.
The other side of this compulsion is that we never truly get to experience whatever it is we say we are seeking to experience if we are constantly hustling. There is no ease, no balance. No repose. No rest.
Of course, this ease and repose can masquerade as lazy, and the whole world will jump to tell you that time spent slowly is time wasted.
As all three regular readers of this blog can attest, I disagree with the whole world in this regard. I don’t think you can really know what it means to feel something without slowing down to feel it. You might think that “hustle and stack” has little, if anything, to do with feeling, but think back to a time when you won something. That rush of adrenaline; that quick flush of victory. For some people, it’s positively ADDICTIVE.
Today in my yin yoga class with Jessie Kates, she talked about the idea that having goals and plans in this life are good, but sometimes we get so distracted by them that we forget to slow down to take detours to do things that give us joy just because. Maybe the detours don’t make us money, or they don’t increase our social media reach, or otherwise elevate us to the lofty, random standards that others set. But WOW.
Joy? The possibility of joy? The potential to do something just because it feels good for your soul?
YES. THAT.
That I would rise-and-grind for.
I will also rise-and-grind for:
an early morning camping trip
a road trip
my birthday
Sicily’s birthday
Khristian’s birthday
most people’s birthdays, if I am honest
complicated cooking projects
a long walk in the woods
a heart-opening yoga class
I am done rising-and-grinding for the sake of itself, and I am certainly not making the hustling and the stacking a priority. I sound like your grandmother, adding “the” in front of “hustling” and “stacking” (as I often do with The Facebook, except that’s what it used to be called, but I digress), but know that it’s a writing device and is not accidental and since I know the rules I can break them so there.
I like the idea of a leisurely morning on my balcony with coffee and three trees’ worth of birds twittering and flitting. I like listening to little kids walking to the park across the street and watching dogs with their zingy little bodies flinging themselves around with sheer delight at being outside because they can. This is not time wasted. This is time spent rooted in the essence of respect and awe, and wouldn’t that be a lovely thing to do?
We can actually construct a life that has built into it more time for joy and awe and respect and wonder and zingy-body flinging, so long as we are willing to shuffle off the mortal coil of Stuff and Striving. I suppose it’s a bit of striving to make this happen, too, but in the very best way – the shedding part of striving, where you shed the illusion that you have to Do and Be and Go in order to be considered Successful.
(and true and weird thing that just happened: as my brain wanted to type “Successful,” my fingers typed “Suzannah.” STRANGE.)
The best parts of this will come together with less effort than one might think necessary. Just like this ice cream. Khristian and I are cooking our way through Madhur Jaffrey’s Vegetarian India, and as we finished up one meal and began to plan the other, these flavors came to me. Sweet. Sour. Spicy. Salty. The balance of flavor was not instantaneous, but that’s just the way things go, mostly, in ice cream as in life.
Take a detour with me here, and then tell me the best detour you ever took in the comments.
Make the ice cream: Place dairy and vanilla bean (or extract) in a heavy saucepan over medium heat and heat until small bubbles appear around the sides (do not boil).
While the dairy is heating, place egg yolks, sugar, and salt in a large mixing bowl and whisk to combine.
When dairy is ready, remove from heat and begin to slowly add to eggs, whisking constantly. I cannot emphasize enough the words “slowly add” and “whisking constantly.” If you add quickly and don’t whisk, you will make sweetened scrambled eggs. Pour a few drops of dairy at a time to begin, gradually working your way to a thin, constant stream of dairy, whisked into the eggs.
Once combined, place the saucepan back on the stove with a fine-mesh strainer on top of it. Strain the milk and egg mixture back into the saucepan and cook over medium-low heat, whisking constantly, for about ten minutes (or until the mixture begins to thicken). Eventually, the mixture will thinly coat the back of a spoon, and you will know it’s done.
Place the fine-mesh strainer over another bowl, and strain dairy mixture into the bowl. Place plastic wrap on the surface of the dairy mixture and place in ‘fridge to cool completely. This can be done a couple of days ahead of time if you prefer.
Make the caramel: While the dairy is chillin’, make your caramel. Caramel is not hard but requires patience and a tiny bit of finesse. Combine sugar and water in a high-sided heavy saucepan over medium heat and swirl gently to mix (don’t use a spoon; pick up the saucepan and swirl it around).
You can leave the sugar/water mix briefly to combine the heavy cream and tamarind extract in a separate bowl. The tamarind extract immediately makes the cream thicken. This is totally fine. Do not panic. Set aside.
Take a look at your sugar/water mixture. You are looking to see if the sugar is completely dissolved and the mixture is bubbling. The bubbling will cause sugar deposits to climb up the side of the pan; use a pastry brush dipped in water to encourage those crystals to rejoin the liquid, but do not stir in.
Once your sugar mixture turns a light golden yellow, remove from heat and whisk in the cream and tamarind concentrate mixture. The sugar will bubble up (hence the high sides of the saucepan), so work quickly to incorporate the cream mixture. Stir and cook over medium-low heat until the mixture begins to thicken enough to coat the back of a spoon. Place in a jar or other container and let cool to at least room temperature. Set aside.
Make the crumble: Combine all ingredients in a food processor or blender and pulse until you have medium-fine crumbs. Set aside.
Put it all together: You will process the ice cream according to your manufacturer’s instructions. I pour my custard in and process for about 15 minutes, then add the peanut crumble for five minutes (until totally incorporated) and then the completely cool tamarind caramel. I like there to be chewy streaks of caramel throughout, a little tartness to cut the sweet.
Recipe Notes
A word on dairy: I generally use 50% heavy cream and 50% whole milk in my ice creams, but you can use whatever is on hand. The more cream, the creamier (which makes sense). You can also be vegan AF if you like, but I have not tested this with plant milks (the ice cream or the caramel). Both might be very delicious with coconut milk.
The wild profiterole, captured in its natural habitat.
First, for you, a poem about love. Sort of. If you are not a lover of poetry, feel free to skip to the erudite synopsis – the TL:DR, if you will – below:
To His Coy Mistress
Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day. Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart. For, lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long-preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust; The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.
~Andrew Marvell~
Essentially, Andrew Marvell is trying to convince his mistress to get freaky, and quick, before worms begin to eat them in the grave.
What this is really about is time (well, and if we are being honest, which we should always try to be, also sex), and how little we have in comparison to how much we tell ourselves we have (time and sex, both).
This winter break I wanted lots and lots of time. I wanted to have weeks of time to do as much or as little as I wanted, with no stress of deadlines. It may seem that as a freelance writer I have all of the time in the world, but in truth my days fly by in a haze of writing and basic life management. Most days I raise myself from a shitty night’s sleep and deliver The Child to school, and then, even with the day stretching out long before me, writing, house maintenance, family maintenance, yoga teaching/class planning, and yoga studio assistant managing fill up those minutes I thought I had plenty of when I first woke.
It astonishes me how I used to do all of the things I do these days with the added pressure of running a school and managing livestock. I cannot remember how it is that I got things done.
And that’s the haze aspect. I didn’t really spend too much time thinking about or noticing things that were happening. It’s the same as if your head is on fire – you don’t note the color of the flames, you just put the fire out. So many parts of my life have rushed by in a blur that I never fully experienced.
But the only way to really dive deep is to make time to do so. There are multiple studies on how we can’t actually “multi-task,” and that entering deeply into something is the only way to truly know that thing. If you quickly Google “how to learn something” you get 622 million results. The first few pages talk about learning something new every day and then quickly devolve into ways to learn new things in five minutes, or ten. It’s all about learning/doing the thing and less about experiencing the thing.
It’s hard to jump off the Must Get Things Done Treadmill.
But jump off I must. Not for any reason other than I want to continue to try to be present for everything. Possibly not things like cleaning the cat box or doing my taxes, but maybe even those things, too.
For months now I have wanted to give real pastry a try. I have been craving cream puffs and eclairs and cheese danish with an immeasurable ferocity for months now. The only reason I am not 1,000 pounds is because I am unwilling to pay eight bucks a pastry for substandard gluten-free bullshit. I may splurge for a $4 gluten-free cupcake on occasion, but I always regret it (I make them waaaaay tastier).
But real delicate pastry takes time and attention, both of which have been hard to come by in these past months.
Not anymore.
Here are profiteroles. Pâte à choux pastry, light and puffy, filled with sweet vanilla cream and striped with chocolate.
Authentic and delicious. Gluten-free (although you can make them with regular AP flour).
They take some time. I have modified the process a bit for less hands-on time, but still. You can’t just pop these in the oven and walk away.
Profiteroles
This recipe bows in gratitude to Michael Ruhlman and Ratio, but changes are made to accommodate the peculiar properties of gluten-free flour.
Ingredients
Pastry Creme (Creme Patisserie, or Creme Pat as they say on The Great British Baking Show)
1/2 cup chocolate, chopped (I used bittersweet chips because it’s what I had)
1/4 cup heavy cream
Method
Make the pastry creme first. In a large bowl, mix together flour and egg yolks until thoroughly incorporated and smooth. Set aside.
Heat milk, sugar, and salt to a simmer in a heavy saucepan over medium heat (look for small bubbles to appear around the edges of the pan). Remove from heat and grab a whisk.
Whisking constantly, slowly drizzle the hot milk mixture into the egg mixture. WHISK CONSTANTLY. Don’t skimp, and don’t add the hot milk too fast. If you do, you will end up with sweet scrambled egg which is gross and nobody wants that.
Once the milk is completely added, pour the mixture back into the milk pan and cook over low heat, whisking constantly, until the mixture begins to thicken (about five to ten minutes).
Pro-tip: use a whisk. I tried a spatula and that did not end well.
Remove from heat and add scraped vanilla bean (or extract). Place a fine mesh strainer over the bowl you will cool the pastry creme in. Pour pastry creme into the strainer to remove errant lumps (of egg or flour). Place plastic wrap directly on the surface of the creme and place in the ‘fridge to cool thoroughly while you make the pâte à choux.
To make your pastry, preheat oven to 425 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment pastry. Set aside. Set up a stand mixer with a paddle attachment (or see Recipe Notes).
Heat water, butter, and salt in a high-sided saucepan over medium heat until butter is completely melted.
Add flour to water/butter mixture and stir with a wooden spoon, still over heat, until mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan and forms a ball. You will also notice a thin skim of pastry on the bottom of the pot.
Move pastry to the bowl of the stand mixer and let cool slightly. You want to be able to touch it, but you don’t want it cold.
Turn on stand mixer and begin to add beaten egg a little at a time. Smart people beat each egg separately and add them one at a time. You may not actually use all of the egg, which can be scary.
Don’t be scared.
Add a bit of beaten egg at a time and beat until it is incorporated. Ultimately you are looking for a dough that is somewhat stiff but still able to be piped. This is somewhere between cookie dough and a thick batter. It should not ooze at all or be sloshy. I know this to be true because that’s what my first attempts were like, and I ended up with egg-tasting pancakes. #Barf
The reason you may not use all of the eggs is because of the level of humidity in the air, the temperature of the flour/water/butter mix, alignment of the planets, the difficulty of the French: any number of reasons. It’s best to concentrate on the texture you are aiming for rather than the amount of each ingredient.
This is why people have dogs: to eat their extra eggs.
So beat your eggs as needed into the flour. When done, you can refrigerate your pastry dough for a day, or you can proceed.
Place dough into a pastry bag (see Recipe Notes) fitted with a round nozzle; I used a size 11, but you can eyeball it and go for 3/4 to 1″. Pipe 1″ rounds of dough onto parchment one inch away from each other. Each dough ball should have a little peak on top (if not, your dough is too runny. Sorry.).
Use a wet fingertip to smooth the top of each dough ball.
Place in oven at 425 for ten minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and cook for another 20 minutes.
Remove from oven and pierce sides with a toothpick to allow excess moisture to escape. Place back in turned-off oven and let them dry out for another 10 minutes.
Let cool completely.
Filling options:
Pipe cooled pastry cream with a skinny nozzle through the hole you made with the toothpick
Slice in half and use a spoon to dollop cream between both halves
For the optional drizzle, melt chocolate and cream over low heat, stirring constantly. If you are fancy as fuck, place that into a squeeze bottle and with a practiced air move it back and forth over your filled profiteroles until you achieve the chocolate coverage you desire.
If you have leftover drizzle, add some heavy cream, shake well, and pour over ice cream. Or add to milk and heat for hot chocolate.
Recipe Notes
You don’t need a stand mixer to make these, just lots of muscle. You can add your eggs and beat with a wooden spoon until you achieve the desired consistency. You can also use a food processor.
You also don’t need a pastry bag. Use a sealed freezer bag with the end snipped off and the pastry tip nestled into the snipped-off corner for the exact same result.
If you have read all the way through, finish this sentence in the comments: Had I but world enough and time, I would…”
