Posted 29 June 2005 - 10:32 AM
Here's a the unedited version of a piece I originally wrote for the Washington Post a couple of years back, aimed more at those comtemplating taking up the freezer for the first time than veteran crankers but, I'd like to think, helpful and amusing.
If you're near a Pottery Barn, BTW, they had Cuisinart Ice Cream makers for sale earlier this summer, and were throwing in an extra cooling thing-y for free, which is nice. I actually thing the ice/rocksalt makers give a slightly better product, but the ones I see around are brutally expensive, in the $150 range, versus $50 for the Cuisinart.
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An unofficial count at the Georgetown Safeway turns up well over 200 different ice creams, sorbets, and frozen god-knows-whats, ready to be carried home and devoured, preferably directly from the carton before roommates or a spouse can get at it.
So, why make your own?
First, because Ben and Jerry don’t haunt the local bodegas waiting for those extraordinary Haitian mangoes, preferred base for the world’s most unctuous sorbet, to come into season and ripen perfectly.
Second, because even with far more than 32 flavors to choose from, mass marketers can never exactly match your own taste, menu and secret vices.
And finally, homemade tastes even better than you than you think -- and it’s easier to make than you’d imagine.
Like most good cooking, ice cream- or sorbet-making is half done by the time you leave the market. The quality ingredients you select make your product taste dramatically better than even the most earnestly produced hand-scooped treat.
That, and freshness. You wouldn’t know it from the advertising or the packaging that comes with commercial ice cream, but frozen desserts are actually delicate and short-lived. Made with fresh fruits and high quality dairy products, they are best consumed they day they are made or – as with Huey Long’s fictional doppelganger, Governor Willie Stark, who allowed that he might run for re-election if he kept “relishing that peach ice cream for breakfast” -- first thing the following day.
In addition to Governor Stark, the story of frozen desserts is larded with politicians and celebrities: Nero, Catherine d’Medici, Marco Polo and Charles I all figure prominently in popular histories of the dish. Happily, we can dispense with these Old Europeans because our own founding fathers – and mothers – have a legitimate claim as the architects of the modern ice age.
Local boys Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were early ice cream pioneers. Jefferson left us the oldest known American recipe for the dessert, and Washington invested in an early ice cream-making machine.
And many credit Dolly Madison with elevating after-dinner ices from a curiosity to a genuine trend, when she served ice cream at her husband’s inaugural ball. Her influence is still strong in Washington, where the annual Ice Cream Social may be Capitol Hill’s most anticipated lobbying event. And First Lady Laura Bush has helped her husband overcome his distaste for formal events by capping each of his three state dinners with a frozen treat: mango-coconut ice cream for President and Mrs. Fox of Mexico; ginger-almond ice cream for President and Mrs. Kwasniewski of Poland; and a mango-coconut (again!) “lei” to President and Mr. Arroyo of the Philippines.
Obviously, this is the perfect stuff for a Washington 4th of July.
But first you’ll need an ice cream maker. You can still find the occasional hand-cranked model around, but they tend to be expensive and too large, in addition to demanding. Today, almost everyone makes ice cream in an electric machine that relies on a coolant-filled sealed bucket, reminiscent of a huge thermos. You have to plan ahead with one of these, chilling them overnight in the freezer. But once it’s ready, there’s nothing more convenient.
With your machine unpacked – or pulled out of the basement where it’s sat since the wedding -- and the bucket cooling quiescently in the freezer, it’s time to figure out what to make. A cookbook or on-line search will turn up a bewildering spectrum of frozen desserts, involving various combinations of fruit, sweetener, egg yolk or white, flavoring agents, cream and milk.
So, follow Emerson’s command to simplify accept only two frozen desserts: sorbet and ice cream. Sorbet made with pureed fruit or with fruit juice, natural sweetener and, sometimes, a background flavor which may include fresh herbs or liquor. And ice cream made of eggs, cream and milk, combined into a custard base, and flavored as you see fit.
Ice cream is bass, sorbet is treble. Which one to serve depends on your mood, what’s available in the market, and what diets your guests are on. In an Atkins era, butterfat-laden ice cream is almost dietetically correct. For everyone else, sorbet is as close to health food as you can get while still feeding a sweet tooth.
If you’ve never made either, start with sorbet. Just puree and strain the ripest, most luscious fruit you can find – summer berries are perfect. Add a pinch of salt, and honey or a simple syrup, and a hint of something that contrasts with the main ingredient -- a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar for strawberries, perhaps, or lime juice for mango. Navigate by your own taste buds.
Ice cream seems a little more complex, until you’ve made a crème anglaise – the custard cream at the base of great ice cream – a couple of times. But it’s actually pretty simple. Beat sugar into egg yolks until it dissolves. Boil a half milk-half heavy cream mixture. Pour the boiling cream into the eggs all at once, whisking relentlessly, and then returning the mixture to the pot. Stir over very low heat until the crème anglaise coats the back of a wooden spoon.
In either case, chill the resulting mixture to refrigerator temperature before pouring it into the machine. Freeze according to manufacturer’s directions, and add any solid flavorings just before you turn the machine off. Scoop it into a chilled container and harden in the freezer.
For best results, eat a light summer dinner on your patio or back porch, while dessert chills, toasting the wisdom of Washington, Jefferson and Madison, and cultivating Washington’s summer weather like an old friend…the only thing that can improve your homemade treat is a hot summer evening to eat it on. No wonder the founders were screaming for ice cream.
And remember: without stabilizers and additives, homemade desserts can turn pretty solid overnight, and the flavors fade fast. So eat lots. And don’t forget to wash the bucket and freeze it before you turn in -- you’ll want to make more tomorrow.
I'm on the pavement
Thinking about the government.
