pickles!

“Oh, Hamlet, how camest thou in such a pickle?” (Act 5, Scene 1.)

Ogorki. Dill pickles. Whatever you want to call them, pickled cucumbers in the Eastern European style have always been one of my favourite foods. Until now it has been a sore point that I've never managed to make them. Firstly because I like to think homemade is also best. Also I worried about what I would do post peak-oil without access to Polish pickles, without access even to the tinned Israeli ones. And they're kinda expensive when you've got a pickle habit like me.

"Thou shalt be whipp'd with wire and stew'd in brine, Smarting in lingering pickle.”
(Anthony and Cleopatra, Act 2, Scene 5.)

My first attempt many years ago freaked me out because the garlic turned blue. I didn't know then that it was just because of a reaction with the stuff they put in salt so I threw them all out fearing some kind of poisioning. Last year I tried again and most of the pickles went awfully soft but a few stayed firm so it gave me hope.

But by the time cucumber season came around this year I had a lot more fermentation practice under my belt and I had met Sandorkraut, my pickling guru. (well I read his book, I didn't really meet him.) I now understood that the souring in my pickles was a simple process and nothing to be afraid of but also I felt worried as Sandor said dill pickles were the hardest pickles around. Oh the confusion!

My pickling cucumbers didn't grow too well in this drought summer but when I found some for sale at a Balaclava greengrocer I just had to give it a try. And? Success! These pickles turned out just perfect. Garlicky. Sour. Crunchy. I have never been so happy. I bought more cucumbers and now I feel ready for winter - all stocked up. Hell maybe if I can learn to grow the little mofos I'll even be ready for peak oil.

In September, 2000, after the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Dallas Cowboys 41-14 in the blazing, September heat, many players attributed the win to the vim and vigor they gained from drinking pickle juice. "I may start drinking pickle juice when I'm just sitting home chilling," said defensive end Hugh Douglas.

From this:



To this:


You can read the recipe I used here. It's really easy - just make sure you use unadulterated salt and stick heaps of grape leaves in to keep them crunchy. Otherwise all you really need to do is pack the cucumbers in a bucket with garlic and dill and pour salty water over them. Then sit back and wait for the bacteria to do their thing. I didn't have as much garlic on hand as Sandor specifies but found mine were heaps garlicky enough even using less. Now go forth and pickle.

I myself, will be planning how to get to pickle day. yes!
(The excellent "Pickle Wing" of the NY Food Museum is also where I stole the great quotes.)

you're the bombe

I think that possibly, the Easter dinner we made on resurrection Sunday was one of my finest cooking moments. Yeah, I'm an ecumenical cook - I love my kneidlach for pesakh but I was pretty happy concocting a bizarre egg themed menu for Mr J.

This was one crazy cooking experience - we, the kitchen crew almost killed each other and we were cranky as all hell but we came back from some really grim moments (gnocchi dissolving in the cooking water) to pull it all off and boy was it stupendous. To start we had egg shaped potatoes all crispy and lemony, olives and cheese stuffed little round peppers. Then there were ovoid spinach and ricotta gnocchi with napoli sauce, a salad of three heritage variety eggplants, pumpkin, more potato goodness (the other gnocchi dough reinvented as fried poufes) and other things I can't remember.

And then,

there was bombe alaska.



I was nervous about this for days. Putting icecream in the oven?! Would it melt? Were we crazy? But actually it turned out pretty darn easy. I used this recipe and was so happy to discover Su Yin's blog. She is a very enthusiastic and encouraging blogger so I felt a little more confident and made some adaptations.

I made mandarin ice cream by mixing homemade marmalade through some vanilla ice cream. Packed it into a pointy bowl with a big ball of marmalade to be the "yolk". Froze for a few hours to get the right shape. Stuck it on a tray on top of some slices of dodgy swiss roll and slathered it in maple syrup. Stuck more swiss roll slices all over it. Glad wrapped it to squish it into one mass and froze overnight. Then you just gotta whip some egg whites n sugar, lather it on and bake it. Sadly we burnt the back a little bit but luckily there are some carbon fiends in my family who declared that side lovely in all its charredness. Oh and we set it on fire with brandy then poured fresh passionfruit pulp over the slices. It's apparently the flaming which makes it bombe alaska. Otherwise it's just boring baked alaska.




So yeah, the ice cream didn't melt at all - meringue is a really good insulator. The only changes i'd make in the future would be to use fresher cake and to avoid the burning of course. The swiss roll idea sounds gross but you get great stripes on the finished product due to the jam so it does work nicely. I think something very saucy on top is important. The passionfruit is good - a hot sauce would be very awesome I think.

Now I feel very very proud housewife of this effort and I'm gonna have to do some kinda retro dinner party to show it off to people who I'm not related to. I was hunting down 60s dishes thinking that was the bombe's era. Maybe it was but apparently this crazy baked ice cream idea goes as far back as 1804 when it was unimaginatively called omelette surprise. It was named for Alaska in 1876 to honour the newly acquired territory of the US. Oh nothing like a bit of conquering to get me in the mood for some baked ice cream!

chocolate chilli ice cream

They say the internet has everything. In fact, it’s not only them, sometimes I say that too. But lately my trust has been shattered.

First there was the traumatic experience of not finding a certain foot shaped birthday present for a certain someone. I mean, I was sure that once I was actually prepared to part with real money this magic world of ebay and suchlike would open up to me. All those shopping ads would finally have a purpose. But no, twas not to be.

And then on Friday there was the crushing realisation that there was not a recipe for chocolate chilli icecream to be found anywhere on the whole damn interweb. Nowhere in this whole damn place no matter if we say it dub dub dub or doub doub doub. Well maybe there were one or two. But none I’d trust. Some had white chocolate! And that's always the difficulty with internet recipes and special occasions – how to know who is gonna let you down?

Anyway, I fell back on my own inner strengths. And some cookbooks. And I made this leetle recipe by adapting a sherry ice cream recipe from the ever trustworthy Moro. (Trustworthy despite the fact that it is disturbingly written by a het couple called Sam and Sam. yuk.)

The ice cream was delicious. Just chilli hot enough to match the cinnamon and be lovely and warming. Very chocolatey. I used the icecream maker for most of it but then left it in there so long that it warmed up and was like a thick mousse. Oops. The bit that didn't fit into the maker I just threw in the freezer. That was a pretty perfect consistency after about 3 hours with just one stir in the middle.

Chocolate Chilli Ice Cream fit to finish off a guinness book giant nachos attempt.

7 egg yolks (yeah 7)
600 ml cream
300 ml milk
500g solid Mexican drinking chocolate (or dark chocolate)
sugar – maybe. I didn’t use any because the chocolate was sweetened. Your call.
2 cinnamon sticks
2 big dried chillis

Now the hardest thing about this recipe is probably judging the chilli factor. You want it to have a kick but more as an aftertaste than as a burning effect. I used two Guajillo chillies infused into the milk, plus a little chilli powder. These chillis are large and roasted so they don’t have too much of that sharp taste and pack just enough heat. Use your own judgement as chillies vary so widely.

Okay lets get started. Put the cream and milk in a biggish pot with the cinnamon and chillis and heat until just about to boil. Use all your predictive powers to figure out when to turn it off. Leave it to infuse. Beat the eggs for a good 5 – 10 minutes, until they go much paler and a bit thicker. If you want to add sugar, beat it in with the eggs.

Now you need to make the custard. Cos ice cream is really just frozen custard. But you knew that didn’t you smarty pants. So add a little bit of the milk mixture to the eggs to loosen them up. Then add all the eggy stuff to the milk pot and return it to a low heat. Stir it constantly and cook it until the eggy taste goes.

(And now a side note on custard, chickens and curdling
My guides Sam and Sam say “be careful not to curdle it” but they also say to cook until it thickens. This is a hard thing to judge and I actually stuffed it up and curdled it. Tallace was aghast and there was some momentary throwing around of the blame. I think though, it was a good thing. I’ve been reading Gay Bilson’s Plenty and she reckons everyone should cook a custard past the curdling point once. It helps you know what to look for and also not to be wimpy about how long you can cook it. Because the thing about custard is it’s like playing chicken. With the eggs. And if you wimp out too early your custard is going to be thin. That's bad. But ice cream is a good time to make the over cooking mistake because after it’s all frozen the curdling is not too noticeable at all.)

So anyway, cook gently. Mine got some little flecks in it which are the first sign of curdling. Hopefully yours won’t. When you’re ready to wimp out or happy with the thickness take off the heat and pour it into a bowl which is set over ice water. You wanna cool this baby down. Fish the cinnamon stick and chillis out.

Melt the chocolate and add it to the mixture. You might wanna test the hotness of your chilli now. It’s hard to judge as it will change as it freezes but at this stage you want it to have noticeable heat. Once your mixture is at room temp you can put it in the freezer. Pull it out and give it a good stir every time you remember. And soon chocolate chilli goodness will be yours. And all the props you get for making your own ice cream.

It should look like this:

the guinness book nachos attempt

It's genetic you know. I saw it with my Mum last night at Pesakh and I did it myself for the missus' birthday. We worry about there not being enough food. We wear ourselves out cooking way too much food. We worry about who's going to eat it all. Sometimes we worry it didn't taste good and then we worry about the leftovers going to waste.

But it was fun. Very fun. We made:

• roasted salsa verde (tomatillos)
• raw salsa verde (ditto)
• roasted garlicky tomato salsa (hot!)
• pico de gallo (fresh tomatoes, radishes, coriander...)

last of the season mango salsa
(so good, I think it was the blanched red onion)


the biggest bowl of guacamole I've ever seen


stupidly large amounts of my best black beans


and everyone piled it onto ridiculous amounts of corn chips and melty cheese.
(queso fresco/mozarella/salamini)

Perfect food for a large bunch and it goes so well with margaritas!