Tennessee Cowboy

Yes, when I looked the first time and tried to do a simulated order I got the inflated shipping costs. When I lookedt this second time it was different. Dont know what I did wrong. Also, my daughter lives in NY, so that's another option. I go visit her from time to time!. The fiddleyfarms product looks very good from the outside. do you refrigerate it after opening?

Made me laugh out loud. Yep, that's the same rule as our house!

I found villa reale sweet pistachio creme on the web but not pistachio paste. Am I looking in the wrong place?

I went there. Nice And not bad prices either. Thanks

Rats. Well, I do actually need to use such small amounts. Sigh, OK, I'll give this one to a friend and order the one you and others advised me to get!

Thanks Paul I'm watching the Home Made Ice Cream forum, lots of good stuff. Ice Cream science is a great reminder. I'm going there.

For those interested in my Pistachio Ice Cream experiment, I have started a new forum on that topic. You can find it at this link: Thanks to one of the veteran commentators for suggesting I start a new forum on this.

I just received my scale. It is small, accurate only to .1 gram. Am I going to need one that is accurate to .01 gram?

I'd like help from anyone on making the best Pistachio Ice cream. This forum is a continuation of a conversation I started in my "introduction" post, which you can see at I recently made Pistachio ice cream using the Jeni's Ice Cream Cookbook. I love Pistachio ice cream, so I've launched an experiment to find the best recipe. I am going to try two basic approaches: The Modernist Cookbook gelato, which uses no cream at all, and ice cream; I'm also experimenting with two brands of pistachio paste and starting with pistachios and no paste. Lisa Shock and other People who commented on the earlier thread said that the key is to start with the best Pistachio Paste.   Any advice is appreciated. Here is where I am now: I purchased a brand of pistachio paste through nuts.com named "Love 'n Bake." When it arrived, it was 1/2 pistachios and 1/2 sugar and olive oil. I purchased a second batch through Amazon from FiddleyFarms; it is 100% pistachios. I bought raw pistachios through nuts.com. The only raw ones were from California. If anyone has advice on using the MC recipe or on best approaches to ice cream with this ingredient I'd appreciate them. I will report progress on my experiment in this forum.

Anyone still following this post? Pistachio paste is expensive. I ordered a brand called "Love 'n Bake," which turned out to be over half olive oil and sugar. Fiddleyfarms pistachio paste, bought through amazon, is 100% Pistachios.

I'm going to assume 25% sugar--close enough for our purposes. I'm going to make one pint of gelato using love n bake and one using the more expensive paste that arrives tomorrow. Then I'll make one pint each of ice cream, see which has the best pistachio taste, and order more from there. I may also try another pint with your recommendation--put it in the blender. Then I can see which has the best pistachio paste, and order more if needed. I've got work ahead!

Oh, drat. Looked again and I misread it. I says .01 oz, but only .1 g. I was moving too quickly. Phooey.

ooops. thank you, mgaretz. II went back and recalculated, assuming that the Pistachios had to be more than 8 grams and the canola oil less than 8. I won't bore you with the math, but here has to be at least 15 g pistachios, 8 g of sugar, and no more than 7 g of canola oil to get to 30 grams with 110 calories from fat. Apologies to the manufacturer. BUT, this still doesn't match the advertisement, IMHOP

Ok, so I have to make a decision. I'm going to have enough paste to make 2, maybe 3 recipes. Can't afford much more. Do I go with the Pistachio butter and make the MC gelato, knowing it will be gritty and course? Or do I make a low fat content ice cream (towards the gelato end of the spectrum)--maybe add a little Pistachio extract to boost the flavor? Or junk the butter and make my own with a blender? This is making my brain hurt. Too many variables!

I purchased some Pistachio extract from Savory Spice. How much would you put into, say, 4 cups of milk or cream? Would you put any into the Modernist Cuisine recipe, which is water and sugar, no dairy?

Thank you Adrian. I've ordered a kitchen scale that goes from .01 g to 2000g. That should be enough! I have now received the Pistachio Paste called "Lov 'n Bake." fulfilled by King Arther Flour, btw, not nuts.com Ingredients are Pistachios, sugar, canola oil, natural flavor, salt. The panel says every 30 g has 8 g sugar and 110 calories from fat. Since 1 gram of Canola Oil has 8.8 calories, 110 calories = 12.5 g of canola oil. Soooo. 30 g of this mix has a most 9 g of pistachios, 8 g of sugar and 12.5 g of canola oil! No mention of sugar in the advertisement. I'm tempted to send it back.

I'm glad you told me. But, I'll have to find a place to hide the scale in my kitchen. My wife has declared a moratorium on new gadgets until I throw some of my precious toys away!

I just realized--I have a postage scale! That should work.

I've done some reading on this, and glycerin has no effect on blood sugar levels according to what I read.

This is a real important topic. Lots of us are on sugar restricted diets. I have been working on this for a couple of years. I use the Jeni's cookbook recipe as my basic cream mix (it uses 1T plus 1t of cornstarch for each 4 cups of milk/cream, added at the end and boiled for 1 minute more) I've succeeded at reducing the sugar by half, but my family wasn't happy when I went to zero. Here's what I've learned: For sweetness: My wife objects to stevia, so I have settled on this formula: Substitute 1/4 c xylitol plus 1/4 c erythritol for each 1/3 c of sugar in the recipe. I added three drops of Stevia liquid. Recently I found a product called LC-White Sugar Sweetener with Inulin. It's very expensive, and I've not yet tried it. Jeni's calls for corn syrup, which violates the rules. I have tried lecithin and glycerine, one for one with the corn syrup, and that seems to work. The lecithin feels weird going into the mix. Other ways to get scoopability: Cornstarch is one. I eliminated the 2/3 c sugar in teh Jenis recipe and kept the cornstarch and it was scoopable. BUT, that recipe kept the 2 T light corn syrup. I have a sack of poly-D fiber in the pantry; it's supposed to work but I don't know how to use it. I have used Cremodan, which seems to be a mix of several thickeners, and it definitely works. It is hard to get it to go into solution, however, and I've never figured out when it goes into the mix and how to do it so it dissolves. I've had to resort to a hand blender to get it broken up. If the rules of the forum allow you to send me your address I'll mail you some Cremodan and you can try it. The big can I have will last me a lifetime. I have seen references on the web to using Inulin and poly-D fiber. I haven't been able to figure out how much, when to put it in, and exactly what it substitutes for. I've not found a recipe on the web that uses either, so I don't know quantities or how and when to add it. I'm really glad to find someone who's working on this. I'd like to help any way I can (after an ice cream contest in June, that is. I'm going with sugar there)

I am planning to make Pistachio Ice Cream with broken up Pistachio Pralines as a mix in. I tried it once, using the Jeni's Ice Cream recipe (roast and run 1 c pralines through the blender until smooth, then add to her normal mixture. There is a discussion of the pistachio ice cream under new members forums. On the Pralines, I have read all of the posts in this forum on Pecan Pralines--click below if you want to see all of the posts. My questions are: 1. In general, how should I adapt the pecan praline recipes for Pistachios? I have attached a file with most of the different recipes from the generic pralines forum. Is there any reason to think one would be better than the other, as applied to pralines? 2. Any particular pistachio roasting recipe you think would work well? (I've purchased raw, unsalted) 3. To get more pistachio-related flavor, should I substitute Pistachio Extract for Vanilla Extract. Do I substitute one-for-one? 4. Is there a role for Pistachio Paste to impart a more intense Pistachio flavor? If so, how? Praline-multiple recipes.docx

For others: here is a file that has the original modernist recipe for pistachio gelato, their revised recipe for Peanut Butter Gelato, and the amounts to use for each ingredient if you substitute tapioca and xanthum gum for the orinal thickeners. aa-Recipes for Pistachio Ice Cream.doc

this has sort of turned into a Pistachio gelato/ice cream thread. Is that OK under the norms and rules of egullet? Assuming the answer is yes, one more thing on the Pistachio/gelato. My test ice cream added chopped pistachio pralines for a burst of sweetness and flavor. The pralines were wonderful, but did not have much Pistachio flavor. I made them with a pretty standard praline recipe and added roasted pistachios into the mix before spooning it onto the cookie sheet.

I looked at the reviews again on nuts.com, and discovered that they lump all the reviews of nuts.com into one file; so, what i thought were glowing reviews for the Pistachio Paste were mostly unrelated. Then I read reviews on Amazon. There i discovered that the nuts.com product is NOT 100% pistachios. The ingredients are not listed on amazon or nuts.com. Buried in the reviews is the comment that there are "natural flavors," and an almond-y flavor comes out. Rats. So I went to L'epicerie, but their shipping costs are out of this world ($20 for a $30 order). So it was back to Amazon, where I ordered the Fiddleyfarms at $40 for a 16 oz. package. Whew, now I see why none of the commercial operations use it. Also ordered pistachio oil. Adrianvm, would you send me your stripped down version of the Modernist recipe? They don't have the home version on the web; they say tapioca and xanthum gum work, but don't give quantities.

Thanks, Teo. I'll read the ingredients list with care. The site went on at length about the difference between their different products. They seemed to have about five different sources. When I ordered I did not have the benefit of all this good advice, so I'm holding my breath that I didn't make a big mistake.