Locally Grown Girl

Cleaning out the Freezer

Over the last few weeks, I've arranged with some friends to share a quarter side of beef from Olsen Farms (I call Brent "the stew man" because obviously that's what one should call a farmer who sells both beef and potatoes.) We've got about 10 more days before we'll pick it up, which means we have about nine nights to make room in the freezer for our 25lbs of meat.

Our freezer is a standard size bottom freezer (a design I highly recommend for anyone with a crappy back; unless you regularly freeze things weighing more than 10lbs). There's a shelf, and a small door storage spot, but most of the storage area is a drawer. When we first collected enough folks to share the meat, there basically wasn't available room for more than 2lbs, let alone 25lbs.

Following the basic rule of "if you're not sure what it is, throw it out" winnowed it down a bit. Making a concerted effort to finish the frozen scones and pan dulce made a bigger difference. (Oh poor us, I know.) Cap'n made blueberry pancakes; I made soup, and we used up frozen berries, bacon, beans and stock. Some things--like bacon fat, and coconut milk, and chiles in adobo, can stay where they are--the containers are small and don't need much room. And it won't be a problem to finish our frozen samosas...the problem there is putting it off, so we're not tempted to get another giant box of them right before the beef delivery.

The real problem is half of a coca-cola-basted ham. Thou Shalt Not Throw Out Thy Ham, Especially If Thou Hast Basted It In Co'Cola is a little-known commandment (I bet you didn't remember the one about Sunday traveling, either). The idea is that we'll thaw it out, shave some down for ham biscuits and chunk the rest of it up for use in gravy (also served with biscuits) and ask the Ham God for forgiveness on anything we end up throwing out.

Putting the order together was pretty entertaining. Different friends had very different requests for things to include in their portion. Liver (Finns like liver in casseroles); steaks (single guys don't cook pot roast); a chuck roast and some t-bones (farm girl roots); suet (for the weirdo, ie me).

In general, I highly recommend Olsen Farms. One reason: the grazing land includes a ghost town. Another reason: Brent told me that he feeds leftover potatoes to the herd, and said, "It's like their candy!" Candy 4 Cows!

Over the last few weeks, I've arranged with some friends to share a quarter side of beef from Olsen Farms (I call Brent "the stew man" because obviously that's what one should call a farmer who sells both beef and potatoes.) We've got about 10 more days before we'll pick it up, which means we have about nine nights to make room in the freezer for our 25lbs of meat.

Our freezer is a standard size bottom freezer (a design I highly recommend for anyone with a crappy back; unless you regularly freeze things weighing more than 10lbs). There's a shelf, and a small door storage spot, but most of the storage area is a drawer. When we first collected enough folks to share the meat, there basically wasn't available room for more than 2lbs, let alone 25lbs.

Following the basic rule of "if you're not sure what it is, throw it out" winnowed it down a bit. Making a concerted effort to finish the frozen scones and pan dulce made a bigger difference. (Oh poor us, I know.) Cap'n made blueberry pancakes; I made soup, and we used up frozen berries, bacon, beans and stock. Some things--like bacon fat, and coconut milk, and chiles in adobo, can stay where they are--the containers are small and don't need much room. And it won't be a problem to finish our frozen samosas...the problem there is putting it off, so we're not tempted to get another giant box of them right before the beef delivery.

The real problem is half of a coca-cola-basted ham. Thou Shalt Not Throw Out Thy Ham, Especially If Thou Hast Basted It In Co'Cola is a little-known commandment (I bet you didn't remember the one about Sunday traveling, either). The idea is that we'll thaw it out, shave some down for ham biscuits and chunk the rest of it up for use in gravy (also served with biscuits) and ask the Ham God for forgiveness on anything we end up throwing out.

Putting the order together was pretty entertaining. Different friends had very different requests for things to include in their portion. Liver (Finns like liver in casseroles); steaks (single guys don't cook pot roast); a chuck roast and some t-bones (farm girl roots); suet (for the weirdo, ie me).

In general, I highly recommend Olsen Farms. One reason: the grazing land includes a ghost town. Another reason: Brent told me that he feeds leftover potatoes to the herd, and said, "It's like their candy!" Candy 4 Cows!

Billy Pickle

I have eaten my fair share of Louie Blue Raspberry and Little Orphan Orange Otter Pops (in fact, I have a stuffed animal version of Orange, although her poor little dog Melon Collie is long lost).

And I know a lot of folks have reported drinking the pickle juice from the jars of pickles we've given them.

Still, I never saw Bob's Pickle Pops coming.

Dinner Out

Normally, I do what I can to avoid restaurants at prime hours on Fridays and Saturdays. Lately, that hasn't been possible. Saturday night, we took an old friend out to Steelhead Diner, to celebrate her return from five years in the Netherlands and her new doctorate (hurrah for you, Sarah!). The place was, of course, packed, and we ended up in the quieter back room. Several cocktails, much excellent food, an impressive whole fried catfish (which yes, was basically turned into a puppet fish head by the end of the meal) and a gigantic brownie ice cream sundae...all I can say is, "welcome back to the good ol' US, Sarah". We pigged out to a preposterous degree. As always, Kevin Davis's food was fun and tasty and the menu currently has a nice mix of simple (peppery fried chicken and garlicky greens) and fancier (black cod in a kasu marinade). We were all happy as one can be when one has eaten oneself sick.

It also reminded me of the semi-secret local ice cream magicians down in Shelton: Olympic Mountain Ice Cream. I generally prefer their basic chocolate/vanilla flavors, but some of their specialty versions--like the Snickers-packed caramel goodness we had in our sundae (we were fighting over caramel-wrapped peanuts)--are just delicious. They're only wholesale, which a "coming soon" website and only short mentions in a handful of restaurant reviews. They deserve to be world-famous.

And since I haven't had my sweet tea and lemon curd-topped scone breakfast yet and am craving cream and sugar, let me take a moment to sing hurrah over my favorite ice cream to actually purchase in grocery store: Snoqualmie Gourmet. I got to visit their plant a number of years ago for a story, and still remember the perfection of their Danish Vanilla ice cream eaten right as it came out of the freezer, before it had been packed and "cured", which is the second freezing of all ice cream (even that made at home). The second freeze takes the hard-soft serve consistency of freshly-made ice cream and turns it into standard hard ice cream; it alters the taste, sometimes softening intensity and sometimes deepening mild flavors. Fans of soft serve--imagine your favorite soft serve made with insanely high butterfat and exquisitely complex vanilla flavor. I ate about a pint of it for breakfast that day.

Their flavors also show up around town in restaurants--not sure if they still do the rose/pistachio flavor for Kabul, but when I've seen their custom creations, they seem sort of the opposite of the down-home thing (like Snickers) that Olympic Mountain does. I expect each company has their loyal proponents, but I could never choose one or the other to be the best. Steelhead diner now has Olympic Mountain milkshakes on the menu, and of course Snoqualmie Gourmet has their own sundae parlor in Maltby. There must be a way to determine which company's product is better in specific conditions. At the moment, Snoqualmie Gourmet wins for "best breakfast ice cream", and Olympic Mountain wins for "best late-night unnecessary dessert". I look forward to comparing sundaes, milkshakes, and if I'm lucky, rootbeer floats.

Ice Cream Success: Sammiches

My second batch of chocolate chip mint went well. I learned in the interim between batches that the awful sandiness of #1 Batch was caused by lactose crystallization. An ice cream book in my collection called it "the worst thing that can happen to homemade ice cream" and I would have to agree, unless one is fond of sugary-sweet sand. Happily. my butterfat-related naivity is now shattered, and I didn't screw around with freezing the cream. The Williams Sonoma recipe is still vastly minty--I used approximately half the mint leaf amount printed and the result is so ragingly plant-mint flavored I decided to turn most of it into ice cream sammiches. Using all fresh peppermint made a lovely improvement over the mix of spearmint and peppermint from the first batch. I wish bartenders and chefs everywhere would take note: Spearmint is bland and artifical tasting, even in a fresh leaf. In contrast, peppermint has a good bite that tempers the natural minty sweetness.

For the ice cream sammich cookies, I baked my usual brownie recipe in a jelly roll pan instead of a 13 x 9. The result was thin and chewy, which was precisely what I was hoping for--even when sandwiched together with a blog of ice cream, they're not so thick one needs expandable snake jaws to bite the whole thing. When frozen, the brownies remain fudgy and chewy, with a nice chocolate flavor that helps--in most bites--counter the mint power. Frozen brownies: I had no idea.

The brownie recipe is also the basis for the resident favorite dessert in this house: hot fudge brownie sundaes. Made with homemade vanilla or coffee ice cream, they're unbeatable. Today I'll be making a slightly salty peanut butter ice cream and another batch of the thin brownies, for another round of sammiches. My brownies use only cocoa powder, and they're based on a recipe called Hershey's Best Brownies; I tinkered with eggs and butter (and the overall quality of flavoring ingredients), and came up with this version. The texture turns out best when they're made with a stand mixer; otherwise, they require a fair amount of heavy beating at each stage. (As do so many things in life.)

Two sticks unsalted butter, melted
2 C white sugar
2 tsp Mexican vanilla
2 tsp instant coffee granules
3 whole eggs
1 egg yolk
3/4 C unsweetened Pernigotti cocoa
1 C flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
Preheat oven to 350. Lightly butter just the corners of a 13 x 9 nonstick or Pyrex pan. Beat melted butter thoroughly into sugar, using the low speed of a stand mixer or medium speed of a hand-held mixer. Add vanilla and instant coffee, and beat until coffee granules dissolve. Add eggs one at a time, mixing until well blended and there are no visible streaks of yolk. Add remaining egg yolk and beat thoroughly. Add cocoa, scraping down sides of bowl to blend completely. Add flour, baking powder and salt, and stir until smooth. Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake for anywhere between 18 and 28 minutes, depending on the accuracy of your oven and the exact type of pan you're using--I hesitate to provide exact timing because every kitchen is differently equipped. When they're done, the edges should be slightly pulling away from the pan, and a toothpick inserted into the middle should come out with just a few sticky crumbs clinging to it.

If you're using a really dark metal pan, lower the temperature to 325. If you want to do the jelly roll pan sandwich cookies, grease just the corners again, bake at 325 (or 300 for a dark pan). The baking time should be the same as for the 13 x 9 pan. Using Hershey's Special Dark cocoa works pretty well, too--the brownies are almost black and a bit less sweet. If you want longer explanations of why I use Mexican vanilla and Pernigotti cocoa, flip over to the Brand Loyalty category link on the left side of this page.

Ice Cream Failure #2: Curdled Mint

When you almost follow a recipe, it can lead to great unpleasantness. The plan was to try the mint chocolate chip recipe from the excellent Williams Sonoma ice cream book. Before heading out of town during the tail end of Seafair, I infused a pint of Organic Valley heavy cream with about a cup of fresh mint, mixing up some home-grown peppermint with farmers market spearmint. I chucked my pint of now-green cream into the freezer before heading out of town, and when I thawed it out on Monday, it seemed a little grainy, but I heated it up and it all seemed fine. The resulting custard had a fine strong mint flavor and a great texture; it seemed fine when I pulled it out of the fridge next day and froze it. But then it froze really quickly and had a bad gritty texture, which only got worse after being hard frozen for a couple hours. It wasn't the more standard bad-homemade ice cream graininess; it was more like tiny sand flakes instead of ice crystals.

All I can find about freezing heavy cream online are non-specific comments to only freeze high-butterfat cream (check) and that "it may not whip after freezing" (at all?). That would explain why the volume wasn't as high as usual--air wasn't incorporating as it usually does. The recipe called for a packed cup of fresh mint, and at those proportions, it would've been more like Altoid ice cream; as it was, it was vaguely Scope-like. This particular recipe also called for light cream, rather than heavy, but in this book, each recipes slightly varies the custard formula of butterfat + sugar + eggs; so far, I've found I like a mix of whipping cream (close to 40% butterfat) and half-n-half (about 10%), which adds up to light cream. Light cream may exist in a chemical-free variety someplace in this town, but I have yet to find it. My second guess for solving the gritty problem is too much butterfat, and the strong mint oil somehow curdled the excess.

The only successful part was the color. The custard was a slightly green shade of yellow, but a dab of blue color and a dab of green made it lovely. Which of course just made it all the more disappointing in its badness.

Failed Attempt #1: Doughnut Ice Cream Sandwich

Unfortunately, I can't remember who to credit for the flash of genius behind "doughnut ice cream sandwich". Some other genius suggested a doughnut sundae; another blogger recently fancied up a bread-based ice cream sandwich with brioche. What I wanted was a light raised doughnut with that thin-but-fudgy chocolate frosting, filled with homemade vanilla ice cream--sort of a combination of a bismark and a profiterole.

A chocolate bar was acquired from Top Pot (bar style gets around the ice-cream-oozing-from-the-middle problem), sliced, loaded up with the most recent batch of ice cream, wrapped up and chucked back into the freezer briefly. I only had two bites: The first one was enough to confirm that frozen raised doughnut is awful, but the frozen frosting was good enough that I was hoping to get past the badness. Didn't happen. Frozen doughnut is tough as hell, but then disintegrates into cold dust as you chew. The degree of badness is astonishing.

I think--and hope--that the answer is as simple as not freezing it again after filling it with ice cream; which I guess will keep the portion size down if nothing else.

A New Trouble With Chocolate

I made French chocolate ice cream this evening. It's "French" because it's a custard base, with eggs and cream and sugar and cocoa all made into a thick custard sauce and poured hot over chopped chocolate, which melts and softens and stirs into the custard making it thicker and very densely chocolate. The recipe I used specificed not to use unsweetened chocolate or milk chocolate, giving their cocoa liquor percentages at 100% and 12% respectively. I had semi-sweet chips on hand, which are typically around 15% cocoa liquor. I also had a fancy bar of Dagoba milk chocolate, which was labeled 37%. It had the deep flavor of semi-sweet, but a nice creamy milk-chocolate finish. It worked fine; the resulting ice cream is smooth, intensely chocolate, and a light mouthfeel; I used half and half (10% butterfat) instead of my usual whipping cream (36%). The lighter cream lets more air into the final product, which with rich homemade, is rather a good thing.

Anyway, it's time for cookbooks to start recommending a range of chocolate liquor percentage for use in a given recipe. Would you use 73% in place of semi-sweet? Would you not use milk chocolate labeled at 43%? The percentage is now given on any number of brands I see at both QFC and Whole Foods, and a bar you like to eat out of hand doesn't always traslate properly into a given recipe, because it can upset the sugar quantity.