Anti-Recipe: Ice Cream/Frozen Yogurt Hybrid

Figured I'd share a recent failed recipe. I wanted to create a less-sweet, less-heavy ice cream by incorporating some Greek yogurt, but it didn't really work. I'd love to hear if you've found something that does work, though.

I do not recommend making this. It's okay, but tastes a little bit cheesy and has noticeable ice crystals.

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups 2% milk
• 1 cup Heavy cream
• 0.5 cup Sugar
• 0.5 tsp Table salt
• 1 whole egg + 1 egg yolk
• 2 tsp Vanilla extract
• 1 5.3oz tub Fage fat free Greek yogurt

Procedure:

• Whisk together the milk, cream, sugar, and salt in a saucepan set to medium. Stir occasionally until just barely boiling.
• Whisk the egg + yolk together, and then temper with the cream mixture until you can add it in. Heat until it gets all foamy (just about boiling again).
• Remove from the heat and chill.
• Whisk in the vanilla and yogurt.
• Use your ice cream maker to freeze it on low speed.

What I would do differently:

I'm not sure this recipe is salvageable, but if I were to try it again, I would make these changes:

• Add 1 more whole egg, or maybe just the yolk. I think this might help avoid the ice crystals.
• Use the ice cream maker at high speed, to aerate & lighten the final product. This might also help avoid ice crystals.
• Maybe: Bump the sugar up to 0.75 cups. It wasn't very sweet, but I didn't really want it to be.
• Maybe: Bump the vanilla up to 1 tbsp (3 tsp). I really like vanilla, and it might help cover the cheesy yogurt flavor.

Like I said above, if you try this and like your result, please share in the comments. I want to play with this recipe some more.

Cold Spicy Pasta

 A use for small amounts of leftover pasta & tomato sauce, for lovers of spicy food. This is a super-simple "recipe" that doesn't involve any cooking or reheating.

Ingredients:

• Snack-sized amounts of cold leftover pasta & tomato sauce
• Hot sauce
• Grated Parmesan cheese
• (optional) A pinch of coarse salt
• (optional) Extra virgin olive oil

Procedure:

• Do not heat any ingredients. This is meant to be served cold.
• Mix together the tomato sauce and a bit more hot sauce than you would normally use.
• Mix together the pasta, EVOO, salt, and a bit more cheese than you would normally use.
• Mix the pasta and sauce together.
• Eat.

Explanations:

Use a little extra hot sauce, salt, and cheese because cold ingredients don't activate the taste buds as strongly as warm ingredients, so the dish might taste bland without.

The EVOO makes the pasta less sticky. Also, it tastes good mixed with Parmesan cheese.

Stir the ingredients separately to avoid pockets of hot sauce and clumps of cheese.

Stir the cheese with the pasta, rather than with the sauce, to give the noodles extra texture for the sauce to stick to.

My New Refresher

 Last year I made a couple big batches of Switchel mixer (similar to this one) and kept it in the fridge for hot days, when I would pour some into my stein (I keep a quart-sized stein of water on my desk), and top off with ice and water. It was refreshing, but also time consuming and messy; have you ever juiced ginger, measure maple syrup, or fill narrow-mouthed bottles with sticky fluid?

So this year I did without, until just a couple weeks ago. I was hot and needed something refreshing, and water just didn't sound tasty enough.

Therefore, here is my recipe for Switchel-light, which can be mixed on-the-fly from ingredients you probably already have in your kitchen! It is cool and refreshing like lemonade, with a bit of a bite like Switchel, and, best of all, it has no added sugar!

Ingredients:

• 1 qt water
• 10 ice cubes (approximate)
• 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 2 tbsp lemon juice

Procedure:

Put it in a container, and stir if it looks like it needs it.

Making Boxed Rice Awesome

Looking back over the last few weeks, every boxed rice mix I made (including Uncle Ben's Wild Rice, Near East Rice Pilaf, and Zatarain's Red Beans and Rice), I followed the same procedure every time.

It's not the one on the box, and they always came out great.

Oh, and it's super easy, and it tastes like it was made from scratch. Curious yet?

I'll let you in on the secret: Follow Alton Brown's Pilaf procedure. I'd link to the video (Good Eats Season 1 Episode 12, Power to the Pilaf), but it's apparently not available for free, so I'll just describe it (don't worry, it's easy):

Fry the rice, before you add water.

Wat!?

Yeah. I know. Who'd'a thunk it?

So here's what you do, no matter what boxed rice mix you picked up. Trust me. I've tried close to a dozen.

1. On the box, it'll always give you an optional butter-or-olive-oil addition. Go with the olive oil. Add it to a saucepan over medium-high heat.
2. Give it a moment to heat, then add the rice and stir. If the spices are mixed in with the rice, don't worry, it's okay; if they're in a separate packet, save that for later.
3. Measure out the water recommended by the box. Now dump out 1/2 cup. The box always recommends too much. The only time you should not dump out 1/2 cup is if the serving size is 2 instead of 4; in that case, dump out 1/4 cup. Like I said, it's always too much.
4. After the rice has been frying for 1-2 minutes, you'll hear a nice sizzling sound, and should smell something nutty. Give it a stir.
5. Wait ~1 more minute. Stir it again. Do this two more times. Or three, if you're feeling brash. Some of the rice should look pretty brown now, and a distinct nutty perfume will be pleasantly pervading around your kitchen.
6. Carefully add the water you measured earlier to the hot rice. There will be lots of hot steam and some spatter. If there was a spice packet, add that too.
7. Stir everything together until it looks good.
8. Wait until it is clearly boiling again, then put on the lid and turn the heat down to medium-low (or a little higher if you like crunchy brown bits on the bottom). Set a timer for 25 minutes. This would be an ideal time to cook the rest of your meal, assuming the rice wasn't the whole thing.
9. When the timer goes off, remove the lid and stir/fluff with a chopstick. Leave the heat on for 5 more minutes, then stir again and remove from the heat. It's time to eat!

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The Perfect Manhattan

The perfect Manhattan:

• 3 small ice cubes
• 2oz Rye-heavy whiskey (I really like Tin Cup
• 2oz Sweet vermouth
• 1.5oz Dry vermouth
• 0.5oz Triple sec
• 2 Luxardo Maraschino Cherries, plus a little syrup
• ~5 dashes each Angostura Aromatic and Orange bitters

Add the ice and the four liquors to a (preferably chilled) martini glass. My favorite are these glasses.

Skewer the cherries and use them to stir. While stirring, drizzle in a little cherry syrup, less than half an ounce.

Dash the bitters over the top.

Technically, my perfect Manhattan is not a Perfect Manhattan, which requires equal amounts of sweet and dry vermouth. But all cocktail measurements are guidelines, really.

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My Breakfast Sandwich

For three weeks I've been making this sandwich for breakfast almost every day, and I just can't seem to get tired of it. It's kind of a cross between an everything bagel with lox and cream cheese, and a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich (and it makes a great hangover remedy, when combined with caffeine).

Serves: 1

Ingredients (links go to Amazon):
2 slices of sourdough bread
3 eggs
1-2 slices of smoked salmon (aka lox)
~4 thin slices of sharp cheddar cheese
butter
dill weed
everything bagel seasoning
ghost pepper powder (be careful! maybe get the mixed box and start with the jalapeno)
sea salt
black pepper

Procedure:
In parallel:
Toast and lightly butter the bread, spread the lox on it, and sprinkle the everything bagel seasoning and lots of dill on the salmon.

Fry the eggs over hard, on medium heat (I strongly recommend using a cast iron griddle). Before flipping, season with salt, pepper, and ghost pepper powder (or your pepper of choice). After flipping, lay the cheese slices on top so they can soften and maybe melt a bit.

Once both of those are done, lay the cheesy spicy eggs over the salmon and slice in half.

Enjoy!

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The secret of martinis

I enjoy cold, dirty, dry gin martinis, and recently discovered the secret to getting the balance right: Treat the vermouth as bitters.

That's it.

Here's how I like mine:

• 5 Queen olives stuffed with pimentos
• 1.5oz Olive brine
• 4.5oz Bombay sapphire gin, kept frozen
• A few dashes of dry vermouth

Spear some of the olives and use them to stir the brine and gin together, then cover the vermouth bottle with your thumb and squirt a few drops over the top.