paulraphael

I think mint is one of the most challenging flavors to get right. In anything ... ice cream, cocktails, whatever. I've done some experimenting with different infusion techniques, and have looked at research (haven't found much). Dave arnold has nailed it, but his approach requires liquid nitrogen. There's often a catch with him. My next attempt at mint ice cream is going to be with a tiny bit of mint oil, and then cold-infusing the mint into the base after the base is cooked and cooled. And with some citric acid in the base to slow the mint oxidizing. How are you doing it?

Thanks everyone. It turns out Daniel will do a table for 5 if you ask nicely, so we got a reservation there. It's for later in September, so who knows what the weather will be. We're utterly at its mercy. If a hurricane or cold snap rolls through we may need to rethink things.

I recall many desserts being not so minimalist. The lettering always shames me. Everyone in that kitchen is better with a pastry bag than I am with a pencil.

Michael Laiskonis talked about this quite a bit. It's why his recipes were all very low fat (often 4% to 6% milkfat—what many would associate with Northern Italian gelatos). He considered that the ice cream would be part of a very elaborate plated dessert, that came at the end of rich multicourse meal. he didn't want people to end their meals with a fat bomb on the plate. He aimed for something more refreshing.

If you send me the whole recipe (in grams) I can quickly work it out.

Lactose is one of the most useful, in the form of the skim milk powder (which is really a wonder ingredient). It's 50% lactose by weight. This sugar has the same freezing point depression as sucrose, at about 16% the sweetness. Atomized glucose can also be useful, although it's not consistent from one brand to the next. It's mostly a naturally occurring blend of dextrose and maltodextrin (and other dextrins). I use it in sorbets, to boost solids without greatly increasing sweetness. In sorbets, trehalose can take the place of lactose. The properties are very similar, but you can only use it in small quantities. Lots of numbers in the chart on this page. Thanks to your reminder I will add glycerin / glycerol.

Blue Hill already caught my attention. I've never been there, but have wanted to go, and it seems like the kind of cooking she'd love. The NYC restaurant doesn't seem to have a website. There's a 3rd party site that's taking reservations (and they're available) but it's a little odd to not have information from the horse's mouth. Anyone been lately?

We want to take my godmother out for her 90th birthday. Looking for a great restaurant that's 1) open and 2) has outdoor seating. First choice was Le Bernardin, which is closed. Jean Georges and Nougatine have no reservations, and Daniel will only seat parties of 4 (we have 5). Thoughts??

I'm sure some of it's subjective. For me part of the complaint is "this is too sweet!" which is surely subjective. The other part is that I find other flavors getting masked. I think this is a phenomenon more akin to how the right amount of salt makes other flavors pop into focus. Too little salt leaves those flavors feeling flat. I think something similar goes on with sugar in desserts (but in this case with too much), especially with more complex or delicate flavors.

I think it's more complicated than just a temperature. The concentration of egg yolk and the time at temperature seem to be factors. I haven't experimented with this at all because I use little or no egg yolk, and fairly low temps.

There are ways to make great lower-fat ice creams without making them sweeter. I don't know why she's pushing the sugar so hard.

Welcome to my personal broken-record gripe. I think most ice cream is too sweet. I've got a plenty big sweet tooth, but start complaining when sweetness levels reach a point that they mute other flavors. In a review of ice cream books I recently wrote, Cree's book got top marks but I still complained about sweetness levels. Same goes for Lebovitz and just about everyone else. The way to estimate sweetness is to look at the sucrose equivalence. A sucrose equivalence of 15% means it tastes as sweet as 15% table sugar. Alternative sugars like dextrose and fructosse are more or less sweet, so you need to do a bit of math with them. A gram of dextrose is about as sweet as 1.4 gram sucrose. A gram of fructose is about as sweet as 0.5% sucrose. A gram of honey is about as sweet as 0.75g sucrose. Most commercial and professional recipes are around 15% sucrose equivalence (If you're an ice cream techie or an Italian, you can call this a POD of 150—Potere Dolcificante). Many home recipes are sweeter. I usually prefer a level around 12%, or POD 120. If there are very bitter or sour flavors in the ice cream, you may have to increase this to compensate. I think of ingredients like cocoa powder as having a negative POD. To your question, adding skim milk powder in place of some of the sucrose is a good start, and you can do this without doing any math, to a point. The lactose in skim milk powder has the same freezing point depression as table sugar, but a very small fraction of the sweetness. It will also promote a smoother, denser texture. If you go too far, the texture might get denser and chewier than you like. And if you're not using any stabilizers, you could get a sandy texture from lactose crystalizing (coming out of solution). In that recipe, by glucose, does she mean glucose syrup? This always drives me nuts, because the names aren't standardized. And the contents of glucose syrup aren't standardized either. I'd be inclined to ditch the glucose syrup and just use dextrose, but to make this work predictably you'd have to do a bunch of math.

... when so grievous has become your gout that you need assistance from the stable boy to operate the duck press.

I've stopped adding up the cost of my ice cream ingredients. It's a luxury you have if you're not trying to sell and profit. Some of the flavors I make (especially chocolate) end up costing way more than anything you can buy. Even if you assume my time is worth nothing (which seems to be the world's opinion).

Not the same. It's actually alkaline. It's the magic ingredient for making mac 'n cheese with any cheese you like.

Maybe. That can be a tough question. With countertop commercial machines it's hard to know if the ice cream quality will really inch in the direction of the big dogs (full-size Carpigiani machines, etc.) or if you're mostly buying robustness. I've been curious about machines like this but haven't had much luck finding reliable reviews. I assume they're made for a niche market, like very small restaurants or cafés that want to make their own, but at a fairly low volume.

Intellectual property law has been well tested when it comes to recipes. Neither the ingredients nor the method is protected. All that can be protected is the exact wording of the recipe (which falls under copyright law, not patents or anything that can be connected to ideas). So if you describe the method in your own words, you're not violating copyright anymore than if you describe the plot of a story. Some people take issue with this, and I understand why. I've just made peace with it. If I share a recipe, and you decide to give it away, I'd prefer if you share the exact wording. Same concern as yours ... please steal my actual ideas, not a bastardized version that's bound to disappoint. The most petty trope in cooking is the grandma who gives away a recipe but leaves out a critical step so no one can make it as well as her. I haven't experienced this myself. I hope it's a dead idea.

I use "steal" affectionately ... as in, "good artists borrow; great artists steal." Which may or may not be true, but it's fun to say. A nice thing about contemporary cooking culture is that most chefs give away their ideas freely. Recipe ideas aren't considered intellectual property. And if you have cooks working for you, there's no way to keep your tricks secret. So the best way to get credit for your ideas is to publish them. Get them into as many hands as possible, and everyone will know what you did. And then when someone takes your idea and turns it into something amazing and different, they'll publish their version ... and return the favor.

In these cases sometimes the best bet is to steal the flavor ideas and graft them on to your own base recipes.

You could also say she's discovering the pleasures of going beyond simple ice cream. She's describing doing quite a bit of the chemistry that pastry chefs do when striving for better textures. She wanted to get rid of eggs, and found a way to avoid thin and icy textures by adding milk solids (skim milk powder) alternative sugars (honey—which is mostly invert syrup, which has more freezing point depression and better water control than sucrose) and another freezing point depressant (alcohol, which isn't a great ingredient, but can work).

Than you, Mitch! By geeky you mean sexy? Silly autocorrect.

Just remember that dried whole milk much more perishable than dried skim. I even treat dried skim milk as if it's quite perishable (it isn't really, but it can take on stale flavors easily ... not sure if it actually gets stale of if it absorbs odors). I like to double bag milk powder and keep in the freezer. I'd definitely do this with whole milk powder.

Making only a pint almost certainly let it freeze faster, too.

Ruben's ice creams are all so high-fat and high-solids, I'm skeptical that of any of these protein cooking techniques make a real difference. If he's not comparing results with triangle tests, I'm not giving much weight to these opinions. Anything you do with a recipe that has those numbers is going to be rich and dense and smooth. And none of the technique stuff is going to have a meaningful effect on flavor.

That's great to know, Mitch. I'd be curious to hear your impressions of ice cream drawn at 11 minutes vs. 20, or whatever you were doing. It isn't guaranteed that the ice cream will be better if you draw it earlier. It's just highly likely that if your machine gets it to that temperature faster than some other machine, you'll see better texture with the fast machine. I think it's safe to say that -5C is a good maximum draw temperature. But I don't think there's harm churning a little longer, if it doesn't cause problems (like making butter!) It's possible that whether you get better or worse results by going longer will depend on how cold your hardening cabinet is (average home freezer? Extra-cold home freezer? Blast chiller?) One thing to consider: deciding on a consistent draw temperature helps you make your recipes more consistent ... you hope to see them with roughly the same consistency at that temperature.