if you are wondering just how many times during the past few months i started to compose a post, only to abandon it halfway through the process, the answer to that question is eleven. hopefully this one will not end up being not-quite-lucky number twelve. i may eventually get around to finishing one (or more) of those drafts, but for now they will continue to exist as what my people in the knitting world refer to as WIPs, because what i clearly need right now is even more works-in-progress to ignore. speaking of which...
it was my intention to have that stupid-bright-green sweater from last time completed when i got around to composing my next post, but i have barely touched that thing since eleven half-posts ago. my interest/attention was drawn elsewhere, and i decided to go with that flow. my crafting energy has been (mostly) focused on spinning and dyeing yarn, because the thirty storage cubes full of yarn i already have is clearly not enough to get me through the apocalypse. makes perfect sense, no?
we have also been eating lots of super-yummy food, which is always a wonderful and scary thing. i lost my zeal for cooking earlier in the year, so this has been something of a reunion with a long-lost friend.
i had lunch today followed by a mid-afternoon scoop of rum & raisin ice cream... which i made completely from scratch! feel free to applaud. i totally deserve it.
i should point out that rum is a major commodity in the economy of most of the Caribbean, and wherever the diaspora may take us, we always regard our rum as a near-sacred ingredient... which is my attempt at justifying what may be the booziest rum & raisin ice cream in recorded history.
no exaggeration, i soaked the raisins in rum for about three days before getting started, then i tossed in an extra glug—for good measure—before adding the raisins to the contents of the ice cream maker.
the chief danger with using a large amount of alcohol in ice cream is that it lowers the freezing point (meaning that it requires more coldness for the ice cream to become solid). use too much booze, and you can easily end up with a mixture that insists on acting like a milk shake.
my rum & raisin ice cream, however, is well-behaved. it has a lovely, silky texture that borders on sheer perfection. if you squint a bit you can see tiny specks of ground cinnamon in the mix. so ridiculously tasty!
the animator was less excited about the end product. as i have probably noted (countless times) in the past, he is not a fan of the taste of most forms of alcohol, and this stuff is definitely not shy about its alcohol content. he enjoys boozy eggnog between December and January, then he spends the rest of the year making faces if i offer him anything that contains a noticeable amount of alcohol... like when i asked him to taste the ice cream for a second time.
me: you want to try it again?
him: i don't know. it was pretty strong the first time.
me: it's been sitting in the freezer for a couple days now, so the rum has had a chance to equalize and mellow a bit. those pockets of raisins should taste less intensely boozy than when you tried it right out of the ice cream maker.
so he took another taste... and he made a face that i know all too well.
him: it tastes very good, but it's still way too strong for me. use a lot less rum next time, then i can have some.
then i just looked at him with as much pity as i could muster on such short notice.
me: you poor thing!
i should note that this sudden urge to make ice cream came about after i went digging around in the fridge one day, looking for some random thing at the back of a shelf, when i discovered that we had three cartons of eggs... in a household of two people who only occasionally eat eggs. so, i did the breakfast-for-dinner thing a couple-few times before deciding that i never want to see another egg (i was too lazy to get myself a larger plate from the cupboard).
i used up the last of my precious reserved duck fat in what has to be my tastiest attempt to date at making a French classic, cassoulet... which is just a posh-sounding term for a stew of white beans and whatever bits of meat you happen to have hanging around.
purists would probably insist that a proper cassoulet absolutely must contain duck confit. i keep promising myself to make a truly authentic cassoulet one of these days. however, i was not about to venture out mid-pandemic in search of a duck (which you can also find already-confited in most supermarkets around here), so i had to make do with the last of the fat from a duck we roasted a few months before. if you have never eaten food cooked in duck fat, you have not lived. and, yes... i have officially been living among the French for way too long.
in addition to the duck fat, this cassoulet also contained a few sausages, whole cherry tomatoes, chunks of butternut squash, and speck (which is a prosciutto-like smoked pork belly that shows up a lot in the Croatian food the animator has introduced me to). the combination of the starch from the beans and the gelatin from the speck gives a rich, velvety texture to the sauce in this stew. this was a seriously enjoyable meal.
there was also a bit of culinary disaster involving a dish of chicken and potatoes in what was supposed to be a rich, herby cream sauce. it tasted great, but the texture of the sauce was all wrong.
this is a dish that he usually makes, but i decided to give it a try this time around. turns out, he forgot to tell me one critical step, which he remembered after i had just finished screwing it up... for the second time... that week.
him: i can go to the store and get more stuff if you want to make it again soon. you know what went wrong, so it'll be perfect next time.
me: i already stopped caring, because i am never making this dish ever again.
i used a couple eggs from our surplus in the production of this wonderous thing.
the was the latest variation of my go-to upside-down cake. the fruit changes with the season, and the sponge cake is very forgiving, making for an ideal template for improvisation.
this cake is especially easy if you use an ovenproof skillet. it begins with brown sugar melted with butter, this will become the sticky topping on the cake.
i had some bananas hanging around, so i decided to use that as the fruit.
next came the batter, which i put together in a separate bowl while waiting for the sugar to melt. i use about half of the sugar that was called for in the original recipe, as there is plenty of sweetness in the gooey fruit topping. i included a bit of freshly grated ginger and lemon zest in the batter this time around, and i poured it right over the banana pieces.
then into the oven it went...
i used a darker brown sugar this time around (because that is what i had, because... pandemic) , and i was nervous that it might be burnt on account of how dark the caramelized sugar was around the edges. [random aside: that bit of red is an oven mitt slipped over the handle of the super-hot skillet while it sat for a bit after coming out of the oven, because i do not want to lose the skin from the middle of my palm by accidentally grabbing a hot pan handle... again. true story.]
ten minutes later, and it was time to flip if out of the pan. tada!
it may look a bit overdone, but it was perfect.
the fruit keeps the sponge layer moist, and the ginger and lemon zest is a delicious counterpoint to the caramelized banana. and, it happens to be totally wheat-free, so i can eat as much as i want without resorting to a week of taking antihistamines. best of all, that is two less eggs cluttering up my refrigerator.
