Unusual ice cream and sorbet flavors

[Michael Laiskonis]

Financier is a classic little French cake, the dominant flavors being almond and brown butter. The name was coined by a boulangerie near the Paris financial houses, and was typically baked in a rectangular mold; with its golden brown color, it resembled a gold bar.

In my recent redo, I've substituted about half of the brown butter with extra virgin olive oil. We bake them in a savarin mold (imagine a donut shape) as service begins each evening.

The strawberry water is made by tossing chopped strawberries with sugar and acid (orange and lemon juice, plus their zest), placing them in a covered container and steaming the whole, either in a steamer, over a double boiler, or sometimes on top of an oven. The nearly clear, deep red liquid that results is bright and fresh and intensely flavored. This liquid is poured into the bowl tableside.

The ice cream utilizes both standard cheapo balsamic and the certified, red label Reggio-Emilia stuff, making it the second most expensive ice cream in my repertoire, after white truffle.

Edited to add link to eGRA.

[pixelchef]

That sounds utterly divine, Michael. Wow. You're good. You're damn good.

[Varmint]

Good god, that sounds awesome. Thanks so much, Michael.

[Hub-UK2]

Hot Dogs & Cream

Saw this once on Martha's Vineyard, complete with hot dog chunks, and ketchup/mustard swirled into the cream.

Completely disgusting.

I have just eaten my lunch and now feel quite sick!

[Hub-UK2]

I'm running an aged balsmic ice cream on my menu now... with an olive oil financier and strawberry "water"...

My kids love balsamic strawberries so an ice cream would be a real winner. Do you have a recipe for home use or at least which would give the proportions?

[Rachel Perlow]

I was listening to Food Talk with Arthur Schwartz yesterday and heard about watermelon ice cream from his guest's cookbook. Joyce White was discussing her new book, Brown Sugar : Soul Food Desserts from Family and Friends, which includes this recipe. She was very clear that it was an ice cream and not a sorbet or sherbet.

I don't have the exact recipe, but she says she takes 6 pounds of watermelon flesh, purees it, half gets reduced to a syrup and is used to flavor the cream base and the other half gets mixed in to add a fresh watermelon flavor. She says it is very similar to other fruit based Philadelphia style ice creams, but this is one I'll have to try to believe it works. If anyone has an actual recipe for this, I'd love to have it.

[Aquitaine]

Having a wine dinner tommorrow....

Dessert is a dueling melon soup with Ducasse's Mascarpone Sorbet, and Green Apple-Wild Mint Emulsion.  That's  the best sorbet I've had in a while. It's a full-on sensory assault, a slight lemon zip and then it bleeds into a round mouthfull of sweet mascapone.  Wonderful stuff....

Chef/Writer Spencer --

Your wine dinner dessert sounds mouthwatering....

1) "dueling melon soup" -- does that mean two types of melon? What did you use?

2) Is this a recipe manageable by a rank amateur? If so, could you please steer me to it? Thanks! (I guess it's time to clear out the freezer to make room for the ice cream maker can...)

[Bill Klapp]

Rachel: I haven't tried the watermelon recipe you posted, but I will say that watermelon may be first among fruits for retaining its original fresh flavor regardless of what you do to it.

[Michael Laiskonis]

Do you have a recipe for home use or at least which would give the proportions?

Balsamic vinegar ice cream.

[pixelchef]

Wicked. Thanks so much Michael!

[nightscotsman]

The recipe looks like a winner, Michael. A couple questions:

- the fourth step says to "add cream", but there isn't any cream listed in the ingredients. How much cream should be used?

- what is the approximate volume yield?

- what is your preferred stabilizer product?

[Bux]

Alain Passard's nearly famous mustard ice cream at Arpege, served atop a gazpacho,

Heston Blumenthal serves a mustard ice cream in a red cabbage broth. I don't know who came first and haven't had Passard's dish, but the mustard ice cream/cabbage soup was a winner at the Fat Duck.

[Michael Laiskonis]

- the fourth step says to "add cream", but there isn't any cream listed in the ingredients. How much cream should be used?

- what is the approximate volume yield?

- what is your preferred stabilizer product?

Sorry, still working out the Archive. I had some difficulty inserting the ingredients. This will yield about a quart of spun ice cream. The ingredients should read as follows...

500g whole milk

125g granulated sugar

4g ice cream stabilizer, optional

90g pasteurized egg yolks

125g heavy cream

40g aceto balsamico Reggio Emilia, red label

30g balsamic vinegar

Right now I'm using the stabilizers from Albert Uster. Once I run out of them, I plan on going with Sevarome products.

[nightscotsman]

Thanks for the clarification, but I'm afraid the vinegars are now missing from the ingredient list.

[Xanthippe]

Having a wine dinner tommorrow....

Dessert is a dueling melon soup with Ducasse's Mascarpone Sorbet, and Green Apple-Wild Mint Emulsion.  That's  the best sorbet I've had in a while. It's a full-on sensory assault, a slight lemon zip and then it bleeds into a round mouthfull of sweet mascapone.  Wonderful stuff....

Chef/Writer Spencer --

Your wine dinner dessert sounds mouthwatering....

1) "dueling melon soup" -- does that mean two types of melon? What did you use?

2) Is this a recipe manageable by a rank amateur? If so, could you please steer me to it? Thanks! (I guess it's time to clear out the freezer to make room for the ice cream maker can...)

Add me to the list, please -- I'd love the recipe when you've finished your current project. And I know just where to go to get wonderfully fresh marscarpone . . .

[ludja]

These aren't too different, but were unusual to me when I made them--and excellent:

Ricotta Ice Cream (I served it with a simple Italian cornmeal cake and blood oranges; the texture and flavor are marvelous)

and

Pear Ice Cream (ouf of Lindsey Shere's Chez Panisse Desserts; I served this side by side with a Pear Sorbet).

Toasted Pinon Ice Cream

Rose Geranium Ice Cream served with angel food cake and whipped cream.

My icecream maker (Donvier) is one of my happiest kitchen acquistions!

An excellent, unusual ice cream I had in a restaurant was Thai Basil IceCream. This was served with a chocolate flourless cake and the scoop of ice cream was covered with dark chocolate shavings, kind of like a porcupine. Had this at Gerald Hirogoyen's restaurant, Pastis in SF (his new restaurant, Piperade, is now in this location). I haven't tried this at home yet.

[torchef]

[Heston Blumenthal serves a mustard ice cream in a red cabbage broth]

Another interesting ice cream i enjoyed at the fat duck was tobacco flavoured. I can't recall the other component, but I remeber enjoying it a great deal. Heston Blumenthal is definitely one of the most intense chefs out there. In a good way...

[ludja]

[Heston Blumenthal serves a mustard ice cream in a red cabbage broth]

Another interesting ice cream i enjoyed at the fat duck was tobacco flavoured. I can't recall the other component, but I remeber enjoying it a great deal. Heston Blumenthal is definitely one of the most intense chefs out there. In a good way...

Welcome torchef!

Those both sound very intriguing; I haven't had any savory ice creams yet but think it would be great if done properly.

Was the tobacco ice cream on its own or was it an element in a dish?

[Ovenfrenzy]

When I was visiting San Francisco a couple of years ago my husband and I came across an Indian ice cream shop in the Mission District. We had saffron, cardemom, and rose flavors. They were all very good, with such beautiful colors. I found some rose flavoring in an Indian grocery this weekend- now if I could only find all the parts to my ice cream mixer I'd be set to try making some of my own. Wish me luck- the mixer has only been used twice in 12 years.

Edited February 17, 2004 by Ovenfrenzy (log)

[ariggsby]

In Spain this summer I had three oddities:

Parmesan

Leek

Crayfish

The Parmesan ice cream was quite good, and turned out to be easy to reproduce. The other two were actually ok in context, but I haven't tried to make either.

[eljo]

At a small place in St. Remy-de-Provence, called La Serre I think, about a year and a half ago I had for dessert a rosemary sorbet and a red pepper sorbet. The rosemary was not unlike other herbal sorbets I have tried and made (lemon basil - yum), but was quite good, and evocative of Provence itself, with rosemary growing wild everywhere. The red pepper was amazing. It was late September, so the peppers were dead ripe and, of course, very sweet. The flavor was intense and the sweet/savory balance was perfect. It was one of the most memorable dishes I tried in Provence.

I have not tried to reproduce it, but I would guess substituting a red pepper puree for, say melon, might work. I think you would want a reduced sugar content, though, and I know the proportion of sugar to liquid and other ingredients is key to sorbet success.

[bloviatrix]

Since strawberries and balsamico are so good, has anyone done a frozen version of that?

I posted my recipe for strawberry-balsamic sorbet on recipe gullet a couple of weeks ago.Here it is.

[torchef]

Was the tobacco ice cream on its own or was it an element in a dish?

Hey, thanks for the welcome ludja. The ice cream was served as a component in a dessert. And now that i think of it, I believe it was chocolate in some form. Blumenthal also is known for Bacon and Egg Ice cream....I think. He has an interesting take on the psychology of food. He believes we taste things differently based on expectations we hold in our memory....for example if we are served crab ice cream, on some level we expect it to be sweet, it being ice cream. But when we taste the dish and it is savoury our brain interprets it much differently than if it was associating it with a savoury memory....I hacked that up pretty well, but I hope you get the gist.... (Fat Duck just received it's third Michelin star!) Fat Duck Restaurant

[porkpa]

Toasted marshmallow ice cream found at Greg's Ice Cream in Toronto is just wonderful.

Porkpa

[slyaspie]

deep, dark red rose flavored icecream of course, made from the dark rose syrup i bring back with me by the bottle from cyprus (it's usually used for an iced rose drink or as syrup for warm milk for children, much as chocolate syrup is used here). over there, the main flavor in the icream man's van is rose, sorbet-like cosistency. I've also made it with the rose water that you can flavor desserts with, but i don't like it as much.