Silverbrow on Food

Banana & sour-cherry ice-cream

I first made this recipe from a combination of necessity and desire.  Necessity to use up some sour-cherries that I'd had to buy in bulk from Bea, and desire because banana and sour-cherry ice-creams are two of my favourite flavours. 

I think it was at Persicco that I was introduced to great banana ice-cream that tasted of bananas rather than nasty sweets and Matteo at Scoop got me hooked on the wonders of amarena - a fior di latte based sour cherry ice-cream. 

One change you might want to make - and I think I will next time I make it - is to roast the bananas first.  David Lebovitz does this in his book and although I wasn't keen on the consistency of his roasted-banana ice-cream, the flavour was delicious: sweet, caramel, banana gorgeousness.

Makes about 1L

• 3 bananas
• 250g pitted sour-cherries
• 70g brown sugar
• 150g caster sugar
• 1tbp butter
• 300ml full fat milk
• 300ml double cream
  
• 4 large egg yolks

First you need to make the sour-cherry compote.  I like to keep the compote as sour as possible, so I follow a very simple method of heating the cherries with 50g of caster sugar and a splash of water.  The cherries will gradually release juice and lose their structure.  You may want to add more sugar to taste, but remember the overall ice-cream will be relatively sweet.  Puree the compote and leave to cool thoroughly in the fridge.  You won't want it melting the ice-cream later on.

Slice the bananas, sprinkle with the brown sugar and roast them in the butter until they're brown and glistening, this can take up to 20 minutes. Mash the bananas and set aside.

Whisk together the egg yolks and 100g of caster sugar.  You want them to be light in colour, quite thick but not frothy.

Heat the milk - don't let it boil - and pour over the eggs, but be sure to keep stirring so the eggs don't curdle.

Rinse the pan you've heated the cream in. Put the custard (egg, sugar and milk) into the pan and reheat. Keep stirring it.  It's ready once it coats the back of a wooden spoon.

Let the custard cool completely.  It could take up to an hour.

Stir in the cream to the cooled mixture.

Combine the mashed bananas with the cream mixture and place in your ice-cream machine and follow your machine's instructions.

Add the cherries as you decant the ice-cream from the machine into the tub you'll be freezing it in. Layer the ice-cream with the very cold compote.  I tend to add enough compote each time so that it covers the surface of the tub, then add another layer of ice-cream and so on.

Strawberry ice-cream

I always feel a twinge of guilt using great fruit in anything other than its natural state.  It feels sacrilegious to poncy up what is already pretty close to perfect.

But, a glut of very good strawberries has got me over my squeamishness, they were either going to rot away or be thrown away. What with the recent heat-wave ice-cream was the only thing to do. 

My recipe is an adaption of inspiration from a few other recipes: primarily David Lebovitz's Raspberry Ice-Cream (p93 The Perfect Scoop) and Rosemary Moon's extra-rich vanilla recipe (p21 Ice Cream Machine Book). 

For good measure, I tweaked the bastardised recipes further by chucking in a punnet of gooseberries.  I'd love to say that I alighted on the idea myself, but in truth I was watching HFW's latest series and they had a spot on strawberry jam making.  The lady (no doubt from the WI) showing Hugh how to do it, suggested using gooseberries for their sharpness, instead of the more normal addition of lemon juice - an ingredient I'd originally been planning for this ice-cream. 

This was a thoroughly delicious ice-cream, with clear, sweet strawberries being nicely offset by the sharp gooseberries and rich cream. 

I think possibly next time rather than adapting Rosemary Moon's ice-cream recipe to allow me to use up the double cream I had knocking around, I should have either gone for a straightforward custard base ice cream (fewer eggs) or a traditional gelato (no or at least little, cream). 

Finally, I made this in my Gaggia Gelatiera. It's a great piece of equipment, but I note hard to get hold of now, but there are other machines available.

Makes about 1L

• 750g strawberries, hulled
• 150g-200g of gooseberries, topped & tailed
• 175g caster sugar
• 300ml full fat milk
• 300ml double cream
• 6 large egg yolks

Macerate the strawberries in 100g of sugar for 1 hour.

Heat the milk but don't let it boil.

Beat the egg yolks and remaining sugar until pale and slightly thickened and pour onto the hot milk.

Return the mixture to the clean pan (to prevent the custard catching & burning), stirring continuiosuly as you heat it gently.

Once it coats the back of a spoon remove from the heat and cool.  It can take up to a couple of hours to cool thoroughly.

Stir the cream into the mixture.

Puree the strawberries and gooseberries.  If you want your ice cream totally smooth then pass the puree through a sieve.  My preference is to have the bits still in.  There may however be an argument to say you should pass the gooseberries through a sieve - and possibly peel - but not the strawberries.

At this stage it's important to make sure all the ingredients are cold, so that the ice-cream machine can churn as easily as possible.  If they're not all cold, wait for them to cool.  Combine the strawberries and the creamy custard and churn in the ice-cream machine as per your machine's instructions.

It's worth noting that in his recipe for Raspberry Ice Cream, David Lebovitz recommends that to preserve the flavour of the fruit, the ice-cream should be churned within 4 hours of making the puree.

Eat My Globe

"I love it when a plan comes together." So said Col. John 'Hannibal' Smith, one of the greatest tacticians of our age.

Plan's can be complex things, things of beauty even, rarely however are they as simple as Simon Majumdar's: "Fuck it. I'm off to eat" - I paraphrase, but that's basically what it boils down to. 

Instead of winning a battle, Simon's plan resulted in his first book Eat My Globe.  According to my current reading material, simple is good, and frankly Simon's plan seems splendid to me. There is obvious clarity of thought and purpose, with a definable and importantly, achievable, goal.

His book is not great for those dieting, those prone to hunger, those prone to lust, envy, greed. Frankly, I wouldn't advise reading it unless you are doing terrible things to a perfectly charred steak or bottle of single malt.

I knew the book was about food, and I knew that it was about Simon's travels around the world.  If nothing else I'd read all about it on his excellent blog, Dos Hermanos.  However, I was expecting the book to be about what the yanks might call 'fine dining'.  I expected that when in Chicago he'd be tucking into Alinea not Hot Doug's, I expected at least a mention of the Fat Duck in the UK and elBulli in Spain.

Instead the book is predominantly about meals with families or street food.  Almost directly as a consequence, it's a book about people and an absolute delight as a consequence.  Don't get put off thinking this is all about high falutin' food, it's not.  It's about great food, greatly enjoyed - with the odd exception of Brazil.

I did have some frustrations with the book, there seemed to be a few typos, but I guess that is a result of this being the first edition. Also in places Simon goes into great detail about how he ended up doing what he was doing, whether it was pre-planned or serendipity, but in other places he's remarkably vague.  For example, whilst he waxed lyrical about spending time with Adam Balic in Australia, he skips around who his two dining companions were at Chez Panisse.  Given that this book is largely about people and his obvious excitement to be eating at Chez Panisse, the ommission was glaring.

But these are minor niggles and essentially this is a beautiful (if hunger inducing) travelogue.

My last gripe is simply that the book I want to read is Simon's view on food (and people) everywhere. I want him to see more of Brazil than just Salvador because I reckon he'd love it. I want to hear his thoughts on Damascus Gate, I want to know if there's a good meal to be had in Utah and I'd be really interested in his perspective on elBulli.

It seems that the likes of Matthew Fort, Jay Rayner and Nigel Slater better take heed of that nipping at their heels.

The world's coolest cookbook?

This does look promising.

Phat fat

I can barely contain my glee (or whatever the no doubt more apt German/Yiddish word is) that on the day crap like this is written, I get a call from Foyles telling me my copy of Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes is ready to collect.

Butter is not the root of all evil. It is not the reason we're careening towards an obesity epidemic. Eating crap, most of which has sod all to do with anything as fresh or natural as butter, is to blame. But laying into chefs - even painfully annoying celeb chefs - who are trying to get us to eat better food, is far easier than blaming poverty, bad legislation, naivety and stupidity.

Would the do gooders please sod off or add something useful to the debate.

The Fat Duck Cookbook - not quite as big

Bafty cruggers those publishers.  Whatever Jeff Jarvis might say about the doomed middlemen and the end of the publisher, you can't fault them for their marketing smarts.

Bloomsbury were responsible for publishing one of the most beautiful books last year, Heston Blumenthal's The Big Fat Duck Cookbook. It is stunning, I've waxed lyrical about it before and can't recommend it highly enough as something that looks good and is a fascinating read.

The only problem is, there's no way you're going to cook from it.  It's enormous and expensive - currently £100, not the £60 I snagged it for - it is not a cookbook you want splattered with your culinary efforts.

But, and this is where they show their cunning, Bloomsbury are publishing The Fat Duck Cookbook for £26.25.  It is a pared-down version of The Big Fat Duck Cookbook.  According to the publisher it is still in hard back, but without the slip case, guilded edges and ribbon.  It's due out in October.

So those of us who've forked out a fortune on the original and covet it but won't let near it anything more culinary than a glass of wine, can now buy this version and pretend that one day we might actually cook from it.  As I say, sheer genius - I mean that with only the merest hint of irony.  I'll be buying it without question.

What to buy

With the magazines full of what to buy your nearest and dearest food obsessive, I thought I might as well get in on the game.

If you're serious about cooking, the best way to improve it is by learning from the experts.  I loved my day with Dan Lepard, he's repeating the sourdough course in January.  Or, how about a master class with two Michelin starred chef Eric Chavot, at The Capital.

I like the idea of Square Mile Coffee's six or twelve month coffee subscriptions.  For a one-off charge of £45 or £90 respectively, they will send you every month a 350g bag of coffee beans.  This is one for the coffee connoisseur: they only send out beans, and the beans are roasted for filter brewing rather than espresso.  Or a cheaper option for the coffee lover is a tasting event.

During the course of the year I got a bit too excited about the raft of high quality books due to published and generally I haven't been disappointed.

Although, unfortunately you can't get The Big Fat Duck Cookbook for £60 any more, it is available at £80, a decent discount to the £100 coverprice.  If you ask me it's great value for money.  I emphasise the word me in the last sentence.  I know a lot of people think I'm insane for saying that.  But for me, it is well worth it.

I'm slightly sceptical about A Day at elBulli and not sure I'd have bought it if the great man hadn't signed it with a little dedication to Silverbrowlette.  Grant Achatz's book Alinea has done a better job of living up to the hype, although the website associated with it, Mosaic, has underwhelmed.

A great bargain at the moment is Thomas Keller's new book Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide which Amazon are selling for £20, a whopping 60% discount to the coverprice.  You can get Keller's seminal tome The French Laundry Cookbook for £20 as well.  A little more expensive at £28 is Bouchon. It's bouef bourgignon recipe is still my favourite.

This year saw the publication of the softback edition of Made in Italy: Food and Stories one of my favourite books. It's great value at £12.99.

Aiden Byrne's Made in Great Britain was a bit lower profile than some of the others published during the year, but is beautiful.  I imagine it's the type of food available at his new gaffe.

Another great purchase this year has been Indulge: 100 Perfect Desserts. I haven't yet got round to writing up about my tarte tatin, but suffice to say it was one of my proudest culinary achievements this year.

For more ideas take a look through the little shop I've setup with Amazon where I've even created departments for your shopping pleasure: essential reading; my full library; Jewish cookbooks; food writing and kitchen kit.