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Is this still your preferred amounts of herbs and infusion times? I'm specifically looking to try thyme and basil with the ChefSteps Creme Fraiche recipe, since thyme and basil is supposed to work well with cloudberries. I'm a bit surprised that you recommend infusion for sorrel though. I thought juicing or something like this was the only way to capture the bright and vibrant flavours of fresh sorrel leaves: Or is it a different sorrel?

Congratulations on the new machine I'm happy with the Creami so far, but I wouldn't rule out a possible upgrade in the future, so I'm looking forward to read more about your experience with the Frix Air. Does the small beaker size affect the ability to make quenelles/rochers? Also, does it leave unprocessed ice crystals along the side and bottom of the beaker? That's my main complaint regarding the Ninja Creami... Is the overpressure feature adjustable, so you can turn it down or up if you want a denser or lighter texture? Some sites claim 0.5 bar overpressure, while others claim 2 bars by the way. Can you elaborate on this?

Spun an extra virgin olive oil version today. In order to keep the total fat percentage close to the original base recipe (using commercially available creme fraiche 35% and whole milk 3.5% here in Norway), I opted for a low fat creme fraiche (10% fat), and replaced only 45 grams of the water with evoo. This was another resounding success for the CS recipe, which worked great as a vehicle for the fruity arbequina evoo I used, with just a small hint of pepper in the aftertaste. It was a mistake to pair it with caramelized white chocolate however. I went with the white chocolate because I was afraid that dark chocolate would overpowered the subtle and delicate flavours of the evoo, but I couldn't be more wrong. The bitterness from the dark chocolate on my second portion complimented and highlighted the best parts of the olive oil perfectly.

New version of the CS Creme Fraiche ice cream, this one flavoured with spruce tips: Not quite as good as the one I made last week with elderflower extract, but still very, very good. I'l definitely pick more spruce tips this year. Flavour pairing with raspberries and dark chocolate (55%) soil was also great, but my second serving with caramelized white chocolate instead of dark chocolate, worked even better. Scooping and plating was a bit rushed, since I'm not used to serve ice cream as a desert, but it's fun to try something new. The creami and this base recipe is already proving to be a game changer for me Spruce tip juice was made by blending 150 grams of frozen spruce tips with 150 grams of water and passing the resulting puree though a fine mesh sieve. Next time I'll try to juice the spruce tips in my slow juicer instead. 2 grams of citric acid was also added to the base recipe to adjust the flavour. Both the raspberries and the spruce tips were picked less than 20 meters from my parents' porch by the way

Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to experiment much with the Creami this fall/winter, but besides a few more batches of the Modernist Cuisine sour rhubarb sorbet, I made a cloudberry sorbet for Christmas Eve, which turned out great. Recipe is a mix between the MC sour rhubarb sorbet and a cloudberry sauce/coulis I've made for years: 350g deseeded cloudberries (sous vide pasteurized @ 57 degrees C) 46,1g glucose powder DE42 11,6g sugar 115g Müller-Catoir Herzog Rieslaner Auslese (reduced from 230g) Salt 1,5g Citric acid 1,93g Apple cider vinegar 3,5g The complex flavour notes of fresh/raw cloudberries came out wonderfully. Even my sister liked it a lot, and she's not a big fan of cloudberries. Texture was good too, but I'll try to add a gram or two of locust bean gum next time I make it. Due to availability, I'll also try to switch glucose powder for liquid glucuse, and I can probably reduce the amount of the somewhat expensive dessert wine without affecting the flavour profile too much. This week, I tried the Creme Fraiche ice cream (sherbet?) recipe Chefsteps released a few weeks ago: https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/creme-fraiche-ice-cream I replaced water in the recipe with elderflower extract though, to make a play on a blue cheese, pickled elderflower, cream and honey dessert I got at restaurant Kontrast in Oslo back in 2019: Should have added more pickled elderflowers as garnish and grated a bit more frozen blue cheese on top of the caramelized white chocolate, but this was absolutely amazing. The recipe was also quick and easy to follow, so I think I've found the base recipe I'll use for a lot of my future Ninja Creami experiments I put a little bit of the mixture in a separate beaker to test spin the recipe, so I can't say for sure, but if you use 150 grams of creme fraiche to adjust the recipe on CS, you should come pretty close to the max fill line in one creami beaker. I used the sorbet setting with one respin by the way.

That one looked absolutely flawless! I definitely need to make a last ditch effort to find some Boletes next weekend. For the past couple of weeks I've been focusing on Craterellus tubaeformis. Sunday's trip resulted in 1,4 kg cleaned mushrooms, including a few Craterellus lutescens, but I could easily have picked twice or three times that amount. I also picked a few Hydnum repandum a copule of weeks ago:

Somewhere along the Norwegian coastline 😉

I would never have made a comparison of cloudberries and honey. They both have floral and bitter flavour notes, so once you cook the cloudberries, the similarities may become more pronounced. I can't remember the last time I had cooked cloudberries (jams/compotes) though. Not that I don't like it. Fresh or uncooked berries are just in a different league. Cloudberries have a very characteristic flavour, which people seem to either love or hate, but l really don't know how to explain the flavor to someone who's unfamiliar with it. The thing I love about them is the balance between sweetness, sourness and bitterness. Cooking them, or adding too much sugar, alter this fragile balance. In other foraging news, chanterelle season has been amazing so far in my area: I've probably picked about 10kg of cleaned chanterelles so far, so now I'm stocked up on dried, cooked and (my take on) creamed chanterelles. No luck finding any Boletus edulis yet though...

The flavour is pretty much spot on to my taste. On its own, the sourness is nearly too much, but I found that caramelized white chocolate balanced it nicely. I used citric acid instead of malic acid though, and also added 2,4 grams of salt in a recipe scaled to 56% of the original MC recipe, which almost reached the maximum fill line in the Creami pints.

My favorite wild harvest: Cloudberries Low temp sous vide pasteurization before freezing: Normally, I use them in a sauce or coulis I serve together with panna cotta. Now that I have an ice cream machine/Ninja Creami, I'll also try to replicate the flavour of the sauce in a sorbet.

I haven't had much time to experiment with the Creami yet, but I've made a few versions of the sour rhubarb sorbet since I got the machine. I really need to work on my scooping technique, but both flavour and texture have been great I may have deviated from the original recipe by straining the mixture after the blending step instead of before, which frankly sounded weird to me, so I'm not 100% sure it's meant to be so creamy. I guess I'll have to do a comparison once the rhubarb is back in season next year...

I think I'll end up buying an extra Boss to go tumbler first: https://www.breville.com/us/en/parts-accessories/parts/sp0008983.html And cut off the top (or bottom depending on how you look at it) to see if that can work as a cheap fix for blending small batches in the Super Q.

I've generally been happy with my Sage/Breville Super Q. It works great for soups, big batches of vegetable/fruit purées and jobs like that, but I really miss a small jar like the Twister to process smaller batches of herb oils, nut butters/pastes, etc. Unless Sage/Breville comes out with something like this soon, I guess my sister and brother in law will get another used kitchen appliance as a Christmas gift 😋

This looks very similar to a roasted and salted pumpkin seed praline paste I tasted at a Norwegian michelin star restaurant last summer. The praline paste isn't visible in the picture, but the flavor combination of strawberry (sorbet) and roasted pumpkin seeds was absolutely amazing. I made a small batch of it last fall, and I'll definitely make it again now that the strawberry season is right around the corner. Probably not in the Creami though...

I'll have to look up the recipe when I'm back with my cooking books tomorrow, to see if I have the necessary ingredients and equipment to make an attempt at that recipe.

I still don't know when I'll get my Creami. The four extra pints I ordered from abroad arrived today however, and an assortment of stabilizers from Modernist Pantry is scheduled for delivery tomorrow. That means I can prepare and prefreeze a few tests in advance 🙂 I guess I'll probably end up with a pint or two of rhubarb sorbet, since we have a lot of that available in our garden at the moment. And this sorrel sherbet recipe looks very tempting as well:

Old post, but great advice. My mom, dad and I forage for mushrooms every summer and autumn, and if done safely and carefully, mushrooms are an amazing and abundant local resource. We only pick four safe species which we are 100% confident in, and none of them can be confused with any dangerous species. My favourite, Craterellus tubaeformis, is somewhat controversial however, because it can grow in close proximity to the deadly Cortinarius rubellus. Just want to add that it's important to use an up to date and region-specific guidebook, because reccomendations, both regarding what's edible/poisonous and safe practices when it comes to preparation/preservation can change over time.

That looks delicious, Andrew. It's probably a bit too early yet, but this reminds me that I need to check if the local spruce tips can be picked this weekend... How was the flavor pairing between mango and spruce tips by the way?

Can't believe it's taken so long, but the Creami finally seems to have reached the Norwegian market too. Ordered mine a few minutes ago. Unfortunately, the web shop had sold the one they had in stock earlier today. but hopefully it will be delivered within 7-14 days.

I've had the best results doing this with the sequential program on my Henkelman. That seems to extract more air bubbles per cycle, and the stages also gives me more control if and when I have to hit the abort button to avoid spillage.

Comments in this thread helped convince me to go for a wet pump chamber vacuum sealer. From there, the jump to an ACS controlled Henkelman Boxer 35 with liquid sensor was just a "small" additional upgrade... I'll never use it enough to justify the cost, but a year later, I couldn't be happier with the purchase, so I just wanted to say thanks for the advice. The build quality from Henkelman is of course top notch, and maintenance hasn't been an issue at all - probably a combination of limited hobby use and the liquid sensor and oil cleaning program doing its job to prevent oil contamination.