Berkeley Ice Cream Adventures

So, Gropius and I drove to Berkeley this weekend with the express purpose of having ice cream and getting a book signed. Now, I'm sure that there are those of you who are wondering, "Why would they drive ALL the way to Berkeley to buy ice cream and who could be THAT important?"

There are certain blogs that I read obsessively and one of them is David Lebovitz's. He used to be the pastry chef at Chez Panisse for 12 years and now lives full time in Paris and blogs about his (sometimes food) related adventures there. I get jealous everytime I read his blog, remembering my own food-related adventures in Paris. Well, David has published a new dessert cookbook, A Perfect Scoop, and was autographing copies at Ici Ice Cream in Berkeley this weekend. Since Paris is a little too far to travel, Gropius was willing to make the drive down to Berkeley for me to meet someone I've come to regard as a close acquaintance.

We were able to find our way around Berkeley with vaguely scribbled directions because when we drove down the street and saw this line:



we figured we were in the right place!



And, sure enough, there was David! Of course, when I finally got to meet the guy, I stuttered and sounded like an idiot--kind of like when I got to meet Prez Clinton. Sigh.



When we got our book signed, we also got a free scoop of ice cream, and since apricots are coming into season here, I HAD to get that flavor. Mine tasted exactly like ripe sunshine should taste and one scoop was just enough.



Gropius went ahead and bought a scoop so he could try the honey chamomile ice cream, too.



The apricot reminded me of the homemade peach ice cream that my parents used to make when I was little. They reliably made two ice cream flavors--peach and malt chocolate. Both recipes from my Great-Uncle Bobby Presnall (who was quite the cook and also responsible for our family hushpuppy recipe!). The honey chamomile was great, too. The first flavor you taste is honey but then the chamomile takes over for a very nice herbal aftertaste. I think we may have to break-out our own chamomile ice milk recipe sometime soon!

On our way back to the car, we passed by a HUUUUUUGE tree. The house in the picture is NOT a small house either--the tree is *just* that massive, people.



And, for a final surprise from our trip, we passed by this car on the causeway on our way home:



Gropius said he thought it was a car from the '20s. I honestly couldn't tell you different.

When we got home, we made the cover recipe from this month's Sunset Magazine: chicken marinated with pimenton (spanish paprika) served with saffron couscous. Walter has been hungry for a salad, so we compromised with a wilted spinach salad from Saveur's salad issue earlier this spring:



A close-up picture of the chicken with the romesco sauce that also went with the chicken:

Champagne Sing-A-Long

Gropius and I had a nice dinner of take-out Mexican food at Derellek's house last night after he and Derek got through having a round (or two?) at the Rubicon, otherwise known as Gropius's home-away-from-home. We all headed back to Derellek's place since Hellen couldn't join us (that would involve leaving Emmeline behind and Home Alone).

And the perfect accompaniment to take-out Mexican food is champagne of course:



Stephan, you are right--Korbel Natural is a VERY nice champagne! And it went great with my pollo asado taco, rice, and beans. Although, honestly, is there anything champagne *doesn't* go well with?? If so, then I don't want to eat it!

Through dinner, Gropius regaled Derellek with horror stories from Dido's kittenhood. Hellen was not appreciative of Walter's Method of Raising Cats (tm).



After dinner, we retired to the living room for more conversation and to finish off the bottle of champagne. Somehow, Derek's guitar came out and he and Gropius entertained Hellen, Emmeline, and me with their own rendition of some Led Zepplin song (I don't know which). Gropius ably filled in as bass air guitar.





I think Led Zepplin is music which requires a certain level of maturity to fully enjoy it. Emmeline isn't there yet:

Ginger Muffins

So, this morning, I decided to riff on one of my favorite recipes from my Cooking Light cookbook: Fresh Ginger Lemon Muffins. I decided to skip the ginger, add some toasted walnuts and gingerbread-y spices instead. I also sub'd some dark corn syrup for the tablespoon of oil and used brown sugar instead of white. Here is a picture of the dry ingredients before I added the chopped walnuts and the wet ingredients.



Here's the approximate size of the ginger piece I used (the measuring spoon on the left is a tablespoon for reference).



I think toasting the walnuts is a must since toasting brings out those tasty-smelling oils. I hand-chopped them, too, even though I could've thrown them in the food processor, but I didn't want them to be obliterated into walnut dust (I can't seem to NOT over-chop something with the food processor). Here are a few pictures of the finished product:





After a couple of those and some Costa Rican coffee (Mmm....), Gropius and I got started on our respective projects. He was replacing the shocks and bushings in the Jetta today (still at it as I type as a matter of fact). Meanwhile, I decided to get started with one of our next house renovation projects--re-doing the kitchen cabinets. Yay.

Before he got started on his stuff, Gropius set up a workstation for me on the back porch with a couple of his saw horses and the painting tarp. He was also concerned about the concrete, so he spread out several cardboard boxes on the ground underneath.



I got some absolutely heinous acid-type stuff from Home Depot that I sprayed over the cabinet doors. And I mean, heinous stuff--I had one jeans and a long-sleeved shirt on a day when the temps were in the upper 80s (which is a nice break from the triple digits earlier this week).




If I didn't know what I was looking at, that cabinet door almost looks like a topo of the Alps or Sierras or something!

Anyway, after much elbow grease and scrubbing/scraping with two different tools AND steel wool, this is what the finished product looks like:



I did one drawer, just to see how hard they'll be and then I did cabinet doors until I ran out of paint stripper (I got the small container, so the number of the counting shall be 4--for those Monty Python fans out there). I think this particular project is one that will take place in *several* stages, starting with cabinet doors and drawers before attempting the stuff that can't be easily carried outside (not looking forward to that step btw).





Still, I think the kitchen cabinets will clean up pretty nicely once we've got some stain on them. Gropius and I were thinking initially of a walnut stain, but now that I see the raw wood, we're wondering if perhaps cherry wouldn't be a better choice?

Buttermilk Sorbet

Last Friday, I made the Almond & Buttermilk Sorbet recipe from the NYTimes article about Patricia Wells (written by Mark Bittman, one of my favorite food writers). I consider myself a HUGE buttermilk fan--buttermilk biscuits, buttermilk panckes, buttermilk-soaked fried chicken. Detecting a theme here? Yeah, I don't eat buttermilk in an uncooked state. Or I haven't until now....but I think this recipe might've changed my mind.



The recipe has become archived on the NYTimes website, or I would provide you with a link. So, you will have to settle for a vague description of the recipe (and email me privately if you'd like to have the precise directions).

So, first you combine lemon juice, corn syrup, and sugar in a pan and let it cook over medium heat until the sugar dissolves and let the mixture cool to room temperature. Then, you stir in buttermilk and almond extract, transfer it to a bowl, and put it in the fridge to cool.

Meanwhile, you toast whole, un-messed with almonds in a skillet until they're fragrant (over medium heat, please). Transfer them to a plate to cool. Once they're cool, throw them in a food processor with sugar and process the whole thing until you have a fine powder.



I put the chilled buttermilk mixture into my trusty donvier that I keep in my freezer for just such occasions and let the machine do its magic.



I transferred the finished sorbet to a container and put it in the freezer to harden up a bit and waited for dinner that evening...but apparently, life has other plans and I didn't get to enjoy the frozen fruits of my labor until Weds evening. Given that the high in Sacramento that day was 101, I think it was the *perfect* ending to a hot day.



As you can see, you're supposed to sprinkle the sorbet with the powdered almond-sugar mixture (which I'm imagining would be good as cinnamon-almond toast, too?). The buttermilk gave the sorbet a nice, tangy flavor which was offset nicely by the powdered nut-sugar on top. The almond has a very delicate, subtle flavor that played nicely with the lemon, too.

Juleps and Gardening

So, Gropius and I used the gift certificate that Kristin and Cory gave us as a house-warming present today. Thank you, Kristin & Cory! I was certain that we had gone over the gift certificate amount when we got up to the register, but turns out, we had $2 left to spare. We bought a various mish-mash of stuff--soil, rocks, plants. They had a TON of their vegetable plants on sale, so we scooped up more peppers and tomatoes and some squash to put in our garden, plus some flowers.

Our primary purpose though was to finally re-plant the poor "dwarf asian pear" tree that was left in a bucket in the backyard and remained there this winter when we were certain that it hadn't survived. Imagine our surprise when it started sprouting leaves! It was also absolutely INFESTED with tiny brown ants.

So, before we re-planted it, we had to rinse the ants off. Gropius used his root-rinsing bonsai technique on the tree (we found the queen and the eggs, so we think we eliminated the colony).



Then, we put it in a pot that we bought at IKEA earlier in the week and put some geraniums around the base. We thought the geraniums were really pretty and unusually colored. I'm glad Gropius insisted we needed something around the base of the tree because it would've looked pretty bare otherwise.



Gropius giving the tree and flowers a good watering in their new home:



Here are the geraniums close-up--pretty, huh?



After we were done with the tree, planting various tomatoes/squash/peppers, and spreading rocks, we celebrated our gardening efforts with mint juleps. Gropius has been wanting to make the recipe he found in Saveur for a while and we finally had the bourbon and the mint!



He did "lighten" the recipe though--it called for 1/2 c of bourbon and he only used 1/3 c instead. I've got various pictures to post--they're all me trying to be artistic.



I like this close-up picture better...



...but Gropius likes this one (I think the sky is too washed out, but it's pretty washed out in mine, too--a filter might've helped?).



Here's a pic of Gropius reading Saveur.

You scream, I scream....

Dido and I had pretty harrowing days today. Given that our backyard is Grand Central Station for neighborhood cats, I took her to the vet this afternoon to have a yearly check-up and to get her immunizations up to date as well. We never bothered to get her vaccinated for feline leukemia in Colorado or Iowa. I had her vaccinated once for it in Ohio because the vet said that it was rampant there (yet another reason to hate Ohio). But, given her dust-ups with at least three different cats, I figured it was a good idea in California.

It should be noted that this is the same cat hospital/vet clinic where Derellek took Lucy so I was a little wierded out about being there anyway. Dido yowled in her carrier the whole ride over there (it's over near Land Park) which is normal. The clinic had a mascot cat who was a larger, male version of Dido (with some British shorthair mixed in, I think). He sniffed her carrier on the floor while we were checking in at the front desk and Dido growled at him. Then, she was pretty quiet....

....until I dumped her out of her carrier (had to up-end it to get her out). The vet wanted to test her for feline leukemia and feline AIDS (I thought they were the same thing??) before vaccinating her since it doesn't make sense to protect her from a disease she's already got. Luckily, the test came back negative, so we're in the clear.

But, the test itself was an ordeal. Apparently, it was a simple blood test, but I had to wrap Dido up in a towel so the vet assistant could carry her out of the exam room and back to the lab to run the test. I heard the most God-awful shrieks of terror for 5 loooong minutes. Seriously, shrieks of terror. These are the same shrieks that she does to Walter which usually end in a low growl, but they weren't ending in a growl today. When she came back to the exam room, Dido had gained another vet assistant and BOTH of them were wearing leather BBQ-grill style gloves and holding her down, still wrapped in the towel. Apparently, my girl is a FIGHTER.

I always thought those women who described not being to bear the sound of their babies crying as over-reacting, hovering types until this afternoon. The vet assistant who ran the front desk had to talk to me to keep me from shrieking myself. Seriously, I was tearing up like *I* was the one being wrapped in a towel, held down by two strangers while a third poked me with a needle.

Although, now that I think about it, I do recall a similar experience when I was 9 and had stitches on my right cheek from falling face-first onto a water sprinkler. My parents had to drive me up to San Angelo to a doc-in-the-box walk-in clinic. My dad and brother went somewhere and left Mom and me there. The relatively youngish doctor insisted that he had to drape my face, to "protect the field," while he did the stitches but I wouldn't let them put anything over my face. According to my father, you could hear my screams from the parking lot when they came back and he walked into the exam room in time to see me kick the doctor as hard as I could in the crotch while my mother held my arm(s) down. Needless to say, I'm really surprised I didn't have more of a scar on my cheek from that episode!

I was too upset to take any pictures during the screaming, but here's a picture of the cat clinic's resident mascot, Boz:



And here's the African Queen herself, plotting revenge against me, I'm sure:



I think a day like today deserves a little ice cream salve....more on that later though:

Sachertorte

So, in honor of Franz Sacher's creation of the Sacher Torte 175 years ago, Gropius and I made a sachertorte (note the small "s" since this is NOT the official one from the Hotel Sacher in Wien/Vienna). I had never made one before, but I think the end result will be VERY tasty and looks pretty good (there is a bit of a learning curve involved with that chocolate glaze!).

First off, when you approach the cashier at Whole Foods with these:



you're bound to be asked, "What are you making?" You just can't go wrong with cream, butter, and chocolate, can you?? ;)

The Sachertorte is a chocolate layer cake with an apricot glaze that's then covered with a shiny chocolate glaze. The recipe I followed is from my trusty Rick Roger's Kaffeehaus cookbook and is Walter Leschanz's version of a Sacher Torte (I figure the head baker from Demel and Sacher can't be wrong, right?). So, I whipped butter, melted chocolate, added 7 egg yolks:






Then, I whipped 7 egg whites into soft peaks, folded those into the batter, sifted flour, folded that in, and then put the thing in a springform pan and into the oven:







And the end result looked like this:





After that was done, Gropius and I went to the movies (saw "Knocked Up" and wow. GREAT movie).

This morning, we made the apricot glaze which involved an entire jar of Bonne Maman (sp?) apricot preserves and a couple of Tb of rum:



Then, Gropius cut the cake into three (!!) layers.



This is different from the "official" Sacher Torte rezept and was the ultimate determinant of the court case between Demel and Hotel Sacher about whose recipe was the "official" one. (Hotel Sacher won). Leschanz argues that the three layers helps to keep the cake moist which is a common problem with sachertortes (torten?)--the cake itself can be very dry. We glazed each layer with the apricot glaze and then the top and sides of the entire thing and let it cool.



Then, it was making the chocolate glaze! Melting 6 oz bittersweet chocolate, 1 1/2 c sugar, and 3/4 c water over med-high heat until it reaches 234 degrees then pouring the stuff over the top of the cake. Wow.





Here is the learning curve though--I should've pour some over the top, let it cool, and then poured more to more fully cover the sides of the cake. Oh, well. Guess that means I have to make it again??



I think the reflection of the fireplace and wall from across the room on the top of the cake is pretty awesome.

Next up: Dobos Torte!