kareina

It has been on the hot side recently--really hot for here, up around 30 C, but nowhere near as bad as many other places this summer, so I can't complain.

It did, however, prompt me to make up a batch of ice cream. I had some pears in the fridge which sounded like a good addition, but they were more firm than ripe, so I decided to cook them first, which worked really well.


Butter Walnut Pear Ice Cream

0.5 l chopped pears
4 T water
2 T brown sugar
1 dl chopped walnuts
5 dl cream
1.5 dl turkish yoghurt

Peel and chop the pears, put them in a pot with the water, brown sugar, walnuts, and butter, and bring to a boil. Let them cook over a med-low heat till they start to soften, remove from heat, cover, and let them sit for a while, then put the pot in the fridge for an hour or more. (I have no idea how important, if at all, the resting time is, but that is what we did, so I am recording it.)

When the pears and their sauce is well cold, stir in the cream and yoghurt, and freeze according to the instructions for your ice cream maker.

This came out really yummy. The two tablespoons of brown sugar plus the sugars naturally in the fruit and dairy are plenty to keep the final result from freezing too hard, and give just enough of a sense of sweetness for a tasty result. This amount filled 21 silicon muffin cups to put into the freezer for later, and we ate a fair bit of it straight away that didn't make it into the cups.

My dear friend Khevron, and his wife Lareena, are busy travelling around Europe just now. They started in Ireland, where they have family, and have worked their way north and west (with a little back and forth in southern Scandinavia as there is just the one train track to Bergen and they chose not to take the boat from there) to Luleå. They were on the night train Thursday evening, which meant arriving in Luelå at noon. So I worked in the morning and finished up in the lab (where we changed out the tubing connecting the laser to the ICP-MS for the first time since getting the machine) just on time to head to town. I have been putting off going to town to ask the optometrist’s office to tighten up my glasses, which had gotten loose where one side attaches to the nose. Therefore after they arrived we put their bags in the car and walked over. Khevron was looking for some clip-on sun glasses, since he left his prescription sunglasses at home. He also asked them if they could adjust his glasses, one arm of which was pointing out in a weird direction after having been stepped on. My optometrist’s office didn’t have clip ons, and didn’t dare try to fix his for fear of breaking the arm right off, but they fixed mine and suggested that he try the one next door.

The shop next door was out of the clip ons, and suggested we try the one two doors down. Both of the first two shops really busy, and we had to wait before it was our turn. The third shop, on the other hand, had no one but the lady on duty, who chatted happily with us about a variety of topics while showing us several different choices on clip ons—some that just clip on, others that both clip on, and then can be raised up out of the way when one goes inside. Some were as is, and others were big and meant to be cut down to better match the size/shape of the underlying glasses, and there were several colours to choose from. Khevron is normally the sort of shopper who prefers to look at all of the options (in many stores if possible), think about it, and then go back and get the one he likes best, and he suggested going away and thinking about it. Laurena and I pointed out that it is a bright sunny day, and that we aren’t going back into town, and that he could just buy them now. While we were chatting the lady insisted that Khevron give her his classes so that she could adjust the arm back where it was meant to be, and after it was fixed he finally agreed to pick a pair of clip ons, and she cut them down to the right size for his classes, and we went on our way. The errands took way longer than I anticipated, but it was fun hanging out and chatting, so I didn’t mind.

Then it was home, eat lunch with David (who had the day off of work, and so had finally made the time to go buy the lists to frame the opening to the office that we made bigger a year or three ago, it looks much better—now it is only replacing the wallpaper, adding a cover over the seam between the hall floor and office floor, and putting up the new chin-up bar and that remodelling project will be complete) and Caroline (somewhat late according to my tummy), get them settled, and then I baked a big loaf of bread with roasted garlic and made a black currant pie for the choir party.

I got the kitchen cleaned back up from that on time to head to the Uni to pick up people for the party. We had about 25 or 30 people who showed up, many of whom took bicycles to the house, so that we needed only Johan’s car (seats four passengers), and mine (seats six, but one of my seats was empty) to get the rest here. We started with making tacos for everyone, and while they were eating I mixed up some yummy ice cream and put it in the ice cream maker to chill while they finished eating dinner.

After they ate the ice cream (except for the serving I set in the freezer to eat today, since I wasn’t hungry at that hour; slight pause in typing while I go get that serving to eat now, having just thought of it) we played a name-memory game: the first person introduces them self and also sys the name of an animal that starts with the same letter. Then the second person repeats the first one’s name and animal, and gives their own name and animal. Each subsequent person repeats the names and animals of all of the preceding (in order) before adding their own. Our choir has many exchange students this year, from countries as diverse as Korea, Poland, France and Germany, so most names were ones that at least some of us had never heard before, adding even more challenge to the game, and most of us were able to remember the animal, but not the name, for some of the people, which meant we had to keep asking. Much to my surprise, some people remembered the names but not the animals. Our list included (and I am forgetting more than half of them, but I could remember more last night):

Dragon
Leprechaun
Panda
Tiger
Jaguar
Ant
Fox
Raccoon
Guppy
Albatross
Antelope
Komodo Dragon
Lemur

Then we spent a nice long time singing along with karaoke videos on youtube, taking care to include songs in every language spoken by someone in the group. While we were singing a couple of wonderful people (at least Gustaf (guppy) and Tanja (Tiger), as I saw those two working as I returned to the living room from the loo) put leftover food in the fridge and washed the things that didn’t fit in the dishwasher. Then we switched to a game—divide into three teams and the first to start singing a song that start with (or the verse or the chorus starts with) a specified letter gets a point. After a bit we ran out of letters and switched to “includes a specific word”, and Gustaf opened a book from the shelf and chose words at random for us to use.

As midnight neared the driver of the other car announced that he was going to he heading home and anyone who wanted a ride with him should come now, and everyone else stood up too, and we all left at once. Since we only had five in my car who needed a ride Khevron came along for company on the return trip (not that it was very long—Porsön is only 4 minutes from here). Then I took time to tidy up a bit more and play dulcimer before yoga and finally going to sleep a bit after 01:00. We have not made any specific plans for the weekend. Khevron and Lareena are here for a full week, so they have time to relax and do laundry and check messages, etc. I have lots that needs doing (like progress on the next grant proposal, packing for the SCA event next weekend and the subsequent trip to Durham, preparing my entry for the bardic competition next weekend, doing an English language check on a phd thesis of one of our students, and getting the fitting done on my new self-supporting undertunic (which has been ready for that step for a couple of weeks now, but if I want it next weekend I had best get to it). But it would also be nice to join K & L on adventures…

Two of the people asked for the pie recipe, so I will share it here too.

Svartvinbärspaj

Crust:

150 g butter
1.5 dl sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract (I used homemade: split open vanilla beans, put into a bottle with brännvin and leave it till needed. Add more brännvin as needed till it quits tasting of vanilla)
1 egg
4.5 dl flour
3 tsp baking powder

Cream together the butter and sugar, beat in the egg and vanilla, add the flour and baking powder and press into a large pie-plate (if the dough is sticky add flour to your hands as needed when pressing it).

Filling:

4 dl Turkish yoghurt
1 dl sugar
1 T vanilla extract
2 eggs
6 dl frozen black currents, lightly chopped (while still frozen) in a food processor

Stir together the yoghurt, sugar, vanilla, and eggs, blend in the berries, pour into the crust and bake at 200 C (or 150 with forced air) for 20 to 30 minutes or until the filling is mostly set.

I just checked, and while I have posted may of the ice cream recipes I have done in the seven years since we bought the ice cream maker, I never posted this one:

Vanilla Ice Cream #3.2
(first made 27 June 2015)

300 ml cream
300 ml milk
4 egg yolks
0.5 dl sugar
2 T home made vanilla extract

Whip the cream. Blend the egg yolks, sugar, vanilla extract, add the milk, stir in the cream, put into the ice cream maker till done.

As I was getting ready to leave the SCA event this weekend I stopped by the kitchen, and saw the pile of left over food being packed up to take away. I noticed that they had a 1 liter carton of whipping cream, which surprised me, since I didn't know that one could get cream in packages that large. C. tends to use a fair bit of cream, so I asked the kitchen crew if they wanted the cream. They said that they didn't, they don't tend to use that much at one go, so I took it home. 1 liter of cream was enough for:

*My friend Å to drink ~200 ml with his breakfast (he stayed here after the event on Sunday night, rather than driving the hour north to Kalix and then turning around the next day to come back to the airport in Luleå to fly south.

*adding some to a serving of rice flour and almond microwave pudding

*adding some to a serving of instant microwave bread pudding, using a sweet saffron bread roll

*500 ml in a meal that C. cooked

*and a batch of ice cream.

Today's ice cream was inspired by recipes for fior de late geleto:

Butter, Oat & Almond fior de late

Dissolve 1/2 dl sugar in 1/2 cup milk*
Stir in 12 g butter and 2 T oat flour

Pour the above into 300 ml cream, add 1 dl almond meal, and enough additional milk to bring the total to 500 ml. Chop 1 dl of almonds, stir in, and pour everything into the ice cream maker.

This freezes quite quickly, and makes 8 silicon muffin cups worth of ice cream to put into the freezer later, and quite a bit of the stuff that sticks to the bottom of the freezer to enjoy eating right away (I guess about two more muffin cups worth).

I did the math--these amounts mean that only 7% of the ice cream by volume is sugar. I like it that way. Another 21 % is almonds, only 4% is the oats, and the rest is dairy. Good thing that I saw my personal trainer this morning and go to gymnastics tonight...



*hey--when one moves continents multiple times one has lots of different scale measuring cups ready to hand, so it is easy to grab whichever type when inventing a new recipe. Deal with it.

I was hungry for ice cream today for the first time in a long time (the home made strawberry ice cream we made last September wasn't finished till February, and I have had no ice cream since then). I was also in the mood to experiment, just a little, and did a variant on my favourite oat-almond ice cream. This time, since we had just come back from the store, where we had purchased a container of skyr (the Icelandic variety of yoghurt, which is higher in protein and lower in fat), I decided to use that. I was running low on various types of almonds, so the amounts given are how much I had left of each. I was also feeling low energy and couldn't be bothered separating eggs, so this one has no egg yolks, and I opted to use the toasted oat flour, rather than grinding oats like I usually do. Note that these days I use a hand-crank grater to grate my almonds, rather than chopping them small in a food processor like I used to do--I use a lot of this, so I grate up a fair bit at a time and then when it is used up grate some more.

Skyr, toasted oat and almond ice cream

2 T melted butter
1/3 cup grated almonds
1/3 cup almond flakes
1 tablespoon almond slivers
2 tablespoons toasted oat flour
1/2 dl sugar
400 grams skyr
250 ml milk

Mix them together, one at a time, in that order, stirring well after each addition. Add only a little of the milk at a time and stir it well in before adding more. Freeze in an ice cream maker.

This batch thickened up fairly quickly; it made enough to fill nine silicon muffin cups, and there was a 1 to 2 mm thick layer frozen to the bottom of the ice cream maker, which I ate straight away. Yum! Only a hint of sweetness, a hint of sour from the skyr, a hint of the toasted oat flavour, and enough almond flavour and crunch to keep me happy.

Last Thursday we finally made time to mix up another batch of home made ice cream. This time we made what may be my all time favourite flavour, ever. ( Almond, Oat and Butter Ice Cream  )

The amount of sugar is low enough that one hardly notices it, which is all good in my world; I haven't much of a sweet tooth, but do acknowledge that a bit of sugar is handy in an ice cream for reasons of texture. Almonds are, without a doubt, my favourite nut, nearly everything tastes better with butter, and the little bit of oats give a nice, subtle flavour and I suspect does good things for the texture, too.

Should any of you try this please let me know what you think and how it works for you. (Sorry for the mixed measurements--his measuring cups are in deciliters, and mine are in cups, and we used both. Google tells me that there are about 0.4226 cups in every deciliter, so that is somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 cup of sugar, and less than 1.25 cups each of milk and cream.)

After folk dance class tonight we decided to mix up ( a raspberry ice cream. )
Saturday's ice cream never really thickened up in the ice cream maker--even after a hour it was only kind of freezing, but it was also the first batch we'd made and we weren't certain what to expect. This one froze, in only 35 minutes it was quite stiff and sort of forming a ball around the center of the beater bar. This seems to have resulted in a much better texture ice cream, though it being rather late now, I'll have to wait till tomorrow to be interested in having a bowl full. I did, however taste it tonight to see what I think of the result. This batch used less than half of the sugar as Saturday's batch (unless you count the fact that berries have their own sugar, but even so there was probably less sugar total), and as a result tastes much better. Both archinonlive and I don't care as much for sugar as we do cream, so while this one might be right, we are also willing to try it with even less sugar some other time. The creaminess of this one is, unsurprisingly, quite nice. The proportion between berries and cream seems good. Perhaps we should try blueberries next time, just to see how it goes.