Rookie Joins the Pros

[Tennessee Cowboy]

Hello, All.  My monniker is Tennessee Cowboy.  In real life I am a retired lawyer who has invested way too many hours in ice cream making!  I have tested over 100 recipes over the last five years, and I would like to go to a new and higher level. . . hopefully with your help.  

 

One of my fixations over the years is how to make low- or no-sugar recipes so that my friends who are on sugar restricted diets can enjoy what I make.  At the moment I'm working on pistachio ice cream, and trying to make the pistachios more flavorful and present.

 

My wife is a spectacularly good cook, and I'll share some of her secrets if she will let me.

[Darienne]

Howdy, TC.  And welcome.

Not sure how many of us already on eGullet are the pros.  I certainly am not one.  But I am an inveterate ice cream maker.  Would love to share some of your more successful ice cream recipes. 

[kayb]

Welcome, Tennessee, from an Arkansan across the river. Anxiously awaiting ice cream recipes.

[Lisa Shock]

Welcome!

 

The secret is having good pistachio butter/paste to start with. The whole nuts are for crunch and show, not as much for flavor. I have tasted a lot of products at trade shows. The best pistachio butter I ever had was from Sicily, and had a dark brown color. I have long since forgotten the brand, they were carried by a distributor who specialized in gelato supplies.

 

Some food wholesalers will sell non-clients products if you pick up at their back door (no delivery) and pay cash. Look for a smaller distributor that carries a lot of imported European products, also look for your local distributor of Albert Uster product. (if you have a culinary school nearby, their provisions department may be able to help you) That said, some places like Amoretti will sell 'ones' of things over the phone if you say you are testing product. IMO, the Amoretti items tend to be top shelf.

 

Sometimes, since ice cream is mostly just milk/cream, I add a little extract to boost flavors. I make a lot of my own extracts, but, the local high end market also carries a nice selection here. That said, some of Amoretti's are amazing.

[Tennessee Cowboy]

Thanks for the kind words!  I'm entering the Martha O'Bryan Ice Cream Crankin contest this year (fundraiser for local nonprofit, http://www.marthaobryan.org/crankin/ ).  Last year I won 3rd prize with a Date and Pecan combo.  This year it's Pistachio Surprise.  I started with the Jeni's Ice Cream recipe which call for making a paste from roasted pistachios.  Then i made Pistachio pralines, chopped them up and tossed them in at the end.  Was a big hit, but the pistachos in the pralines sort of lost their flavor.  SO, I went on the web and ordered Pistachio Paste So, here's the plan:  I found some Pistachio paste and raw pistachios from nuts.com.  They arrive on Friday.  

 

The jenis recipe is basically cream, milk, sugar, corn syrup, cream cheese and pistachio paste.  I'm going to try Ruben's basic recipe to replace Jeni's, but I'm still trying to figure out how to preserve the pistachio flavor in the nuts.  Advice welcome!.  

[Tennessee Cowboy]

7 hours ago, Darienne said:

Howdy, TC.  And welcome.

Not sure how many of us already on eGullet are the pros.  I certainly am not one.  But I am an inveterate ice cream maker.  Would love to share some of your more successful ice cream recipes. 

Hmm.  So many recipes I've tried.  My original is Dates and Pecans, with dates soaked in liquer to keep them from being frozen.  Right now I'm working on Pistachio.  Long term goal is to come up with a good low sugar ice cream for my diabetic friends.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

1 hour ago, Tennessee Cowboy said:

SO, I went on the web and ordered Pistachio Paste So, here's the plan:  I found some Pistachio paste and raw pistachios from nuts.com.  They arrive on Friday.    

 

I'd love to hear your feedback on the paste from nuts.com.  The last pistachio paste I bought on line was not smooth enough for my taste.

 

Modernist Cuisine pistachio gelato is a great way to preserve pistachio flavor because there is no dairy.

[Lisa Shock]

I would look for a gelato recipe, myself.

 

In some recipes, the flavor and fat of milk/cream is desirable. Like, I make one where I take a basic vanilla recipe and steep orange peels in the heated mix. It comes out very creamy and orange-y without curdling, etc.

 

But, in some flavors, IMO, the fats from the dairy coat the tongue a bit and inhibit flavors. I don't know how much gelato you have tried, but, the flavors are generally more intense than ice cream. This is due to a higher ratio of flavored ingredients, and a much lower fat, lower dairy  content. Great gelatos are often dairy-free.

 

JNW replied while I was writing this! Yes, try the MC gelato!

[adrianvm]

I tried a bunch of pistachio pastes in preparation for making the Modernist Cuisine gelato.  I haven't been so impressed by the very expensive imported products from Italy.  Another complication is that they contain (a lot of) sugar, so it complicates scaling your recipe.  So for example the Stramondo "Ritrovo" branded Pistachio Cream, costs something like $45/lb and is 43% sugar (so that's $79/lb for the nuts).  I found it too sweet to eat directly, and when I made it into gelato it wasn't fantastic. The best product, by far, was the fiddymentfarms pistachio paste.  It is very smooth and roasted enough to bring out the flavor but not too much.  At $40/lb it's still darn expensive, but not as bad as the Italian stuff.  The fiddyment "butter", which is half the price, is coarser and also has a different flavor that isn't as good, but I still thought it was OK.  I guess you pay through the nose for the smooth texture.   I also got some 100% pistachio pastes that were imported from Italy and I felt like they were all over-roasted.  It seems to be a favored practice in Italy.  I had the same problem with the hazelnut pastes.  These pastes just taste like roast flavor to me instead of tasting like pistachio.  Texture was good, though. 

 

As an aside, I read that almost no commercial pistachio gelato uses real pistachio paste, even in Italy, because it's too expensive.  Instead they use pastes made from pistachios, almonds and green color. 

 

The "Pistachio Nut Paste" made by American Almond (in a can), which nuts.com sells is no good.  It just tastes like almonds.  They seem to put a bunch of almond extract in the product.  Not sure what is going on there.

 

I thought the Modernist Cuisine recipe was excellent.

 

 

[Tennessee Cowboy]

Re:  Pistachio ice cream/gelato.  Now I'm totally bumfuzzled.  I can see the problem that the cream covers up the pistachio taste.  I've never made a gelato, much less a gelato with no dairy at all.  Not sure I'm ready to go that far.  Anyone have a gelato recipe they like best, other than epicurean?  

[Tennessee Cowboy]

As soon as I get the pistachio paste from nuts.com I'll let everyone know, though my taste buds may not be refined enough.

[teonzo]

If you have a good blender then there is no need to buy pistachio paste: cook your ice-cream base, pour it while still hot in the blender, add the whole pistachio nuts and blend at full speed for 15-20 minutes (if your blender risks overheating, then run it 5 minutes, stop it 2 minutes, run it again a couple of times). The amount of liquids in an ice-cream recipe allows you to get a smooth result. And you get a nice green color.

Personally I would suggest to look for Iranian pistachios, you can find high quality nuts for much cheaper prices than the Sicilian ones. Sicilian pistachios became a sort of a hoax, especially the one labelled as Bronte. If you sum up all the stuff that is sold as Bronte then you get an amount far superior than the one produced in the whole Sicily (Bronte is just a little subzone, few square miles, not the whole Sicily). I've been able to taste the top quality pistachios from Sicily (thanks to people living there) and from Iran (same), the Iranian ones were superior.

If you buy pistachio paste then read carefully the ingredients. Pure pistachio paste is never pure, it must have a little % of vegetable oil otherwise you can't get a paste from 100% pistachios (they don't have enough oil like hazelnuts). Avoid with all strength the sugared creams or similar products: you can be sure they used low quality nuts for those products.

 

 

 

Teo

 

Edited May 10, 2016 by teonzo
mispelled a verb (log)

[Tennessee Cowboy]

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.  

[adrianvm]

I recommend that you not get too hung up on terminology.   Italian "gelato" is generally said to be lower in fat (around 12%) and served at a warmer temperature.  (And it's made without eggs.)  So basically it's just a lower fat style of ice cream.  There's nothing special that differentiates it from ice cream.  The Modernist Cuisine "gelato" is made from pistachio paste and pistachio oil.  They are probably calling it "gelato" simply because there's no dairy in it and they didn't want to use the word "cream". The original version calls for a bunch of stabilizers, but they later published a "simplified" version in their "At Home" book without most of those ingredients---that's the version I made.  The fat content of the mix appears to be around 20%.  That recipe is excellent.  My advice is don't waste your time, or pistachios, on anything else.  I don't think you'll miss the dairy.  We didn't. 

 

Is the product you ordered from nuts.com the Love'n'Bake Pistachio Paste?  I don't see anything else there, and like I said, that product didn't taste like pistachios to me, so I didn't bother trying to make the gelato with it.  I think it's about 37% sugar.  I think I made almond macaroons with it.   When I read reviews on this product, many other customers complained about the almond flavor, so it wasn't just me. 

 

I'm skeptical that you could get a smooth texture by putting your ice cream mix in the blender.  I think if it started grainy it would stay grainy.  But I have to admit that I never tried that.  You might possibly be able to get a smooth texture by putting pistachios in the food processor (or maybe a blender) with some of the pistachio oil and running it for 15-20 minutes, but I'd use just enough oil to keep it moving.  I have produced very smooth nut butters by running nuts through a stone-grinding type grain mill equipped with stainless steel stones, but it clogs a lot and it's very slow.  The fiddymentfarms stuff, as well as the other Italian 100% pistachio pastes I bought from L'epicerie were extremely smooth. 

 

[Tennessee Cowboy]

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.

[Tennessee Cowboy]

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.

[Tennessee Cowboy]

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

Edited May 11, 2016 by Tennessee Cowboy
Source of recipe was ambiguous (log)

[adrianvm]

When I ordered from L'Epicerie I got a bunch of pistachio and hazelnut pastes, so my shipping wasn't so bad for the total order.  But the truth is I still haven't found a source of hazelnut butter or 100% hazelnut paste that I like, or that tastes like what I get if I make it myself from lightly roasted hazelnuts.  

 

I think if you use the PB&J recipe and simply reverse the substitutions they made---so use water instead of juice, and use pistachio paste instead of peanut butter---then you'll get the recipe you want.  I can double check tonight in the book.  Do you have a scale that can weigh 0.3g of xanthan gum?  If you don't I can try to weigh some xanthan gum and give you a volume measure for it. 

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

44 minutes ago, adrianvm said:

Do you have a scale that can weigh 0.3g of xanthan gum?  If you don't I can try to weigh some xanthan gum and give you a volume measure for it. 

 

It works out to about 1/8 teaspoon but I suggest a scale.  Suitable scales are cheap compared to pistachio paste.

[Tennessee Cowboy]

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

[adrianvm]

No, a postage scale is unlikely to work.  I have a regular kitchen scale that measures in single grams, which is probably similar to what your postal scale does.  You need about ten times as much precision to measure 0.3 g.   But JNorvelleWalker is right that suitable scales are not expensive.  For example:

 

http://www.amazon.com/American-Weigh-0-01g-Digital-Scale/dp/B0012LOQUQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462991258&sr=8-1&keywords=precision+scale

 

[Tennessee Cowboy]

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!

[Lisa Shock]

My scale is only about 8" square and about 1.5" high. Should be pretty easy to hide in a rarely used stockpot or in a pile of rectangular baking pans... And, yeah, good scales that measure accurately to 0.1 or even 0.01g aren't that hard to find or that expensive. I paid $45 for my 0.01g - 4500g scale on ebay, it came directly from the manufacturer in Thailand.

[teonzo]

8 hours ago, adrianvm said:

I'm skeptical that you could get a smooth texture by putting your ice cream mix in the blender.  I think if it started grainy it would stay grainy.  But I have to admit that I never tried that.

 

 

I can speak for direct experience. Tried 3 different pistachio ice cream recipes, one with egg yolks + cream + milk, one with cream + milk (no egg yolks), the Modernist Cuisine one. Each one came smooth, I used a cheap blender, nothing professional.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[adrianvm]

1 hour ago, teonzo said:

 

 

I can speak for direct experience. Tried 3 different pistachio ice cream recipes, one with egg yolks + cream + milk, one with cream + milk (no egg yolks), the Modernist Cuisine one. Each one came smooth, I used a cheap blender, nothing professional.

 

 

 

Teo

 

 

I'll definitely give that a try next time.