Vanilla Chocolate Chip with Blueberry Swirl Ice Cream

I bought again a large container of blueberries at Costco, and after making my blueberry ice cream recipe few days ago, I still had some berries left to make another flavor. I decided to be innovative and try something new. It went something like this:

Makes 1 quart.

Prep Time: 45 minutes

Total Time: 60 minutes

Ingredients:

Blueberry Swirl
•1 cup of blueberries
•1/2 cup of sugar
•1 tsp lemon juice
•1/8 tsp. vanilla extract
•1/8 tsp. ground coriander
•little pinch of salt

Basic vanilla ice cream
•3/4 cup of whole milk 
•1/2 cup of sugar
•2 cups of heavy (whipping) cream

•2 oz (~80 grams) of mini chocolate chips

Preparation:

Blueberry Swirl

1. Dissolve 1/2 cup of sugar in 1/4-1/2 cup of water in a medium sauce pan over low heat. You want enough water to keep it liquidy after it cools, but not too watery to have ice crystals after it freezes.

2. When sugar is dissolved, add berries, lemon juice, vanilla extract, coriander, and salt.

3. Bring to boil then cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until berries begin to burst (about 5 minutes).

4. Remove from heat and in blender puree until smooth. You may also want to strain the mash before cooling (it will harden after cooling)

5. Cool to room temperature, then chill well in the refrigerator.

Basic vanilla ice cream

6. Combine milk and sugar in a medium mixing bowl, and mix on very slow (1 or 2) speed, until sugar is dissolved.

7. Add heavy cream and stir in with a spoon.

8. Pour into ice cream maker, and follow manufacturer directions.

9. 5 minutes before the end of freezing time in the ice cream maker (after about 20 min of mixing) slowly pour in the chocolate chips.

10. Transfer the ice cream into a plastic freezer container. With a knife handle make vertical holes and fill them with the blueberry swirl. Poor any remaining swirl on top of the ice cream.

Blueberry Ice Cream

I'm not a huge ice cream fan. I would not order it for a desert or buy for myself in a store. But now that I have the ice cream maker I like to try make, and eat, different ice creams that I know exactly what they are made of. My mom loves ice creams, and we always have to have some in the freezer when she is here. So this gives me a good practice for when she comes back this winter.

I am still learning the ins and outs of ice cream making, but I was pleased with this recipe. I combined several recipes I found on-line, and the one I came up bellow is the simplest for me. I got two containers of fresh blueberries, so I'll be making some extra to freeze 'till winter, perhaps. I like tart flavors, and this one goes really well with chocolate. It uses coriander, which supposedly mixes well with blueberries. Enjoy!

Makes 1 quart.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

•1/2 - 1 cup sugar (I found 1/2 cup to be too sour)
•2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
•1 Tbsp. lemon juice
•1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
•1/4 tsp. ground coriander
•Pinch of salt
•1 cup of heavy (whipping) cream
•1 cup of Half and Half cream

Preparation:

1. Dissolve sugar in 1/4 cup water in a medium sauce pan over low heat.

2. When sugar is dissolved, add berries, lemon juice, vanilla extract, coriander, and salt.

3. Bring to boil then cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until berries begin to burst (about 5 minutes).

4. Remove from heat and in blender puree until smooth. You may also want to strain the mash before cooling (it will harden after cooling)

5. Cool to room temperature, then chill in the refrigerator.

6. Thoroughly combine berries and cream. Pour into ice cream maker, and follow manufacturer directions.

Ice Cream Maker

I am not a big ice cream fan.
My mom is, big time, but I just don't like the very cold foods and drinks in my mouth.

But, Costco had this Cuisinart 1-1/2-Quart Ice Cream Maker on sale for $25, and I just couldn't pass on it. Plus, I love the color!

I didn't know this about ice cream makers, but you have to freeze the bowl before it could be used. It was a torture to have to wait 24 hours when I wanted to start making ice cream NOW! It came with few recipes, and since I already had ingredients for the basic chocolate ice cream, that was the first batch I made.

It's pretty simple to use. This basic mix took about 10 minutes to prepare, then I left overnight to chill. In the morning I just placed the frozen bowl onto the base, turned it on, poured the mix into it, and in 20 min the ice cream was ready! I transferred it into a plastic container and stored again in the freezer.

Zoran and Emilia were over for dinner last night, and we had that ice cream for desert. YUMMY! Creamy, smooth, and delicious. Ciro would have some too, but since he can't have chocolate, he got the store-bought strawberry ice cream :)

If you have some great ice cream recipes - please send them my way!

Giving Thanks

I love that we have at least this one day to remind us that we have so much to be thankful for. I know I needed a reminder lately.

I like to think that we have started a little tradition, to have my brother and his future wife over for Thanksgiving. They both like to cook, and that gives me an inspiration to whip up some of my favorites, too.

A week before we started throwing some ideas out about the menu. We liked all, so we didn't cut any of them from the list! The two of them came over the night before, and we spent good 4 hours in the kitchen on Wednesday evening. The plan was to have dishes ready for dinner, so we were pretty much cooking for another 6 hours on Thursday. It was so nice to do it with dear company, chatting, helping each other, listening to music... It was such a pleasant day! And the weather was unusually warm, it the 80s, until it dropped down to 50s in a matter of couple of hours in the afternoon.

In the end, we made 14 different things, all from scratch! It was a mix of traditional home cooking, fancy vegetarian dishes, and traditional Thanksgiving food. Our menu included:
- Celery Root and Chestnut Soup With Brussels Sprouts
- Prosciutto wrapped asparagus
- Organic Turkey
- Gravy
- Cranberry-orange sauce
- Harvest-Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms
- Fresh French green beans sauteed with organic carrots
- Fingerling baby potatoes
- Perl onions in bechamel sauce
- Baby spinach, strawberries, and almonds salad
- Red wine vinegar, master seeds and dill dressing
- Cucumber, green onions, yogurt salad
- Ferrero Rocher cake
- Tart cherries pie
- Merlot (Cupcake) wine

Cheese Making

My brother recently picked up a new hobby - making cheese! And he's quite good at it.

He likes good eats, and favors trying out new things. When he recently moved to an area that has many healthy/natural/organic/local-food stores, assortment of cheeses caught his taste. The natural progression, for my brother at least, was to start making his own cheese.

It took him a while to find a place that sells non-homogenized, low temp.-pasteurized milk, the best, if not the only, kind that will produce cheese (I won't pretend to know anything about cheese making). A North Central Texas dairyman Mark Ganske, who's now doing business as "Way Back When Dairy," would bring his dairy products at the downtown farmer's market, which is where my brother first found out about them. They used to sell their milk at one local store, but it often wasn't available. Just this year, the Wheatsville Co-op started carrying the "Way Back When Dairy" non-homogenized milk, so every 2-3 weeks my brother gets few gallons of milk or few pints of heavy cream from them.

He also had to acquire all sorts of gadgets: several brew kettles, molds, utensils, cheese cloths, food-grade plastic mesh, griddle and containers, thermometers, build his own press, get a mini fridge, cheese making book...it's quite a production!

He started with soft cheeses, feta and cream cheese, and gradually moved to hard and aged cheese. So far, he's made: feta, Neufchatel, cream (several kinds), Camembert, Emmental, Gouda, Parmesan, Swiss, and Cheddar. Some of these take just a few days, but others more than 6 months until they are ready. Now that he is staying at my place for the summer, I got to sample some of his creations. Um, um, yummy!

What’s Cooking?

The Easter meal menu:
- chicken noodle soup,
- pork tenderloin
- “pekarski” baked potatoes,
- “Vasina torta” cake, and
- chardonnay.

And it smelled and tasted even better than it looks.

Hm, hmm yummy!



Happy Easter, everyone!

Is This What Nesting Is Like?

I went a little overboard with cooking last night. :)

I usually go grocery shopping on Saturday and then try to cook two meals on Sunday afternoon that last me through the week. I had visitors this Sunday, and didn't get to cook, so I decided to do it on Monday evening, because I had some extra time and knew I won't have it on other weeknights.

I still had one serving left over from the previous meal: sauted, or caramelized onions, baby carrots, green zucchini, and brussels sprouts, with thin veal schnitzel in a mushroom sauce, and cucumber and green onion in sour cream salad.

Since I already thawed ground beef and some left over stuffing mix the day before, I had to make the stuffed yellow zucchini that I had planned to make this weekend. The left over mix was not sufficient, so I had to add a bit more with the thawed ground beef mixed with rice, carrots and spices. That went into the oven for about 45 min.

But, I wasn't in the mood to wait and eat that for dinner last night. There were narrow sides of the zucchini left over that were not good for stuffing, so then I decided to use the zucchini to make pizza sauce. I saute the onions and garlic, then blend them in a mixer with tomatoes, zucchini, a little bit of bell pepper, catchup, spices and water. This then simmers for about 30 minutes. After it cools down, I pack it in jars and freeze the sauce.

But, I wasn't in the mood for pizza either, and didn't want to wait for the sauce to be ready and cool enough. The logical next move is to make something that I DO want to eat. I was craving some pasta. While the water was heating up to boil the pasta, I prepared the topping/sauce. First, I sauted mushrooms to get the water out, and added some vinegar to get the odor out. In another pan, then sauted onions and added chicken cubes. After they were brownish, I mixed them with mushrooms. When this was almost cooked through, I added sour cream to make a nice saucy consistency. This is then mixed in a bowl with some mayo, and topped over pasta. Salad: cherry tomatoes.

This all lasted just over an hour. I got the dinner that I wanted, and now have food for over a week. (and my hands still smell like garlic :()

Hungry, anyone? :)

Images of Christmas

Merry Christmas!