everyday experiments with food
After they mentioned lemon verbena on Masterchef a hundred times, I finally decided to buy a plant when we moved to Melbourne two years ago. We made ice cream and tea. Over the first winter i thought the plant had died. It can back and flourished!
Lemon verbena smells and tastes amazing. Dried leaves in hot water for tea. Fantastic ice cream.
Thank you to David Leibovitz for this recipe. It’s a winner.
Go and get yourself a plant.
I’ve finally made salted caramel ice cream for the first time. Boy, we’ll be doing this again! Yum!
After looking at a number of recipes, I used this one from Taste, which is based on a recipe by David Leibovitz here. However I didn’t make the praline and just added extra sea salt into the caramel instead. Next time!
A pancake. I’m no pancake expert and it has wrinkly edges. Next time use a smaller pan!
Fresh granny smith apple straws soaked in lemon juice. This tartness was needed to counterbalance the ice cream.
Apple straws rolled in flour and cinnamon and deep fried. These went a bit soggy. Wondering if I could have dried them in the oven a bit first or just cooked them right at the end.
Apple skin baked at 100C until starting to brown (at least 45 mins).
As with the previous ice cream recipe, the apple textures work well. This was a great combination.
Tonight I used my new silicon moulds to make matcha ice cream with a deconstructed apple crumble inspired by contestant Arum from Masterchef. Arum’s recipe is here.
The Matcha ice cream started with a packet of Matcha ice cream powder. The powder already had sugar and emulsifier in it.
I made a custard with 500ml cream, 1/4 cup milk and 3 egg yolks whisked with 1/4 cup sugar, and then mixed this through with the Matcha powder.
The ice cream is on a baked crumb made with brown sugar, rolled oats, desiccated coconut, flour and melted butter.
I pickled some fresh apple slices in lemon juice. Stewed some apple slices in sugar and water, then strained off the syrup and added balsamic vinegar to make the sauce.
Baked some apple peel strips in the oven at 110c until they went dark brown.
Added all of this along with some toasted coconut flakes and toasted black sesame seeds.
Very happy with the result.
Today I’ve made this lovely looking Orange and Pomegranate cake from Diana Henry.
The recipe is on her website here. This explains the cake part. It is a fantastic cake.
My adapted recipe below is for the ice cream.
It is supposed to be very moist, like a pudding, so I’m serving it with some home-made lime, ginger and coconut ice cream. I took some inspiration from here, but I added and changed things. We had a bottle of wild lime syrup….