Ice Cream Mondays

Last night was more relaxed than Sunday night, and the kitchen was cooler. The air wasn’t fixed, but the ovens were off and we were making Ice Cream, so everything was vastly more enjoyable- if your kitchen turned into an ice cream shop you would be feeling pretty good too. We began by making sauces for our ice cream. Each group made a different sauce, which were later circulated so that everyone could use every sauce…but I’m getting ahead of myself. My partner and I made a port wine reduction sauce. I’m not sure how we managed to get the worst flavors two days in a row- Ginger ice cream and Port Wine Sauce? What about caramel, chocolate fudge, strawberry? At least I didn’t have to eat any of it. Next we made Pizzelles (pih-zels). These are basically fancy ice cream cones. Imagine making thin (in this case) hazelnut flavored waffles with pretty floral designs. You have just imagined Pizzelles- congrats!
As we used the special iron press to make the pizzells, chef took each team aside to turn their Crème Anglaise into Ice Cream. He showed us how to use the machine, how to tell when the ice cream was ready, how to taste every batch as it came out…The machine is amazingly fast, it makes the custard into soft serve like ice cream in under ten minutes. They’re just like the machines used on Iron Chef! The weird thing was, Chef didn’t clean the machine between most batches. He went in flavor and color order so that vanilla was first, Ginger was second, cinnamon third, and so on, ending with chocolate and praline flavors. The chocolate team complained about the coffee flavor from the espresso ice cream, but the only one Chef cleaned up after was pistachio. Wise move. Side note- only two people in class liked our Ginger ice cream- and Chef wasn’t one of them. (Not to worry, it was put to good use- more on that later.)
The Pizzelles were a bit unwieldy, hardening before we could mold them into any cool shape. Unless you count flat circles as cool shapes (after four failed attempts, you would). They smelled darn good though, buttery-nutty-sugary waffles, soon to be topped with ice cream and hot fudge sauce. And port wine sauce.
Once all of the ice cream was made, we put them into the blast chiller for about a half hour to harden as Chef gave us a demo on how to plate ice cream if you want to be fancy about it. He swirled and dotted and painted on the plates with all of the different sauces (except the port wine sauce) and made really beautiful designs. He needed some ice cream to use for his demo, and I hastily offered up Ginger- no use in wasting some else’s delicious chocolate ice cream. Then it was our turn.
While Chef made it look easy, plating ice cream is difficult. His Pizzelles were delicate bowls, mine circles. I ended up smashing two scoops of ice cream between two of my flat Pizzelles, and voila! Gourmet Ice cream Sandwich! I drizzled chocolate fudge sauce on top (poor man’s decoration) and sprinkled some chopped nuts. I may be surprisingly bad at plating ice cream, but I’m resourceful in my un-talent. The biggest problem I had with plating was that the ice cream kept melting, ruining any nice design I had on my plate. Ice cream belongs in cones or cups, or maybe in a sandwich. I don’t think it’s meant to be pretentiously plated- leave that for the petit fours.
Once the ice cream was cleaned up, we unmolded our cheesecakes! Chef did the first one-poorly. He ruined a classmate’s cake because he didn’t run his knife along the outer edges of the pan. Rookie mistake Chef! After that we all managed to turn our cakes out beautifully, and I gave my cheesecake to the poor soul whose cake was ruined, so all was well. I simply decorated my mascarpone cheesecake with strawberries. It didn’t melt.
-Sandwiching Sarah