Chokecherry milkshake

When I was a kid growing up in southern Alberta, my mom would convince the neighborhood kids to help her pick chokecherries or Nanking cherries by offering up rewards. In retrospect, we probably weren't super-helpful. Did she enjoy our company? Was she teaching us a lesson in the value of labour? Probably both.

But her favorite reward for us was a fresh cherry milkshake.

Cherry milkshakes are pretty easy to put together. No quantities required. Just:

ice cream
milk
chokecherry syrup

I loosely fill our blender with ice cream. Then add milk to about half full. And add about ¼ volume syrup.



Yup, this is all very rough. Too much milk, and your milkshake is runny. Too little syrup, and it's not flavourful enough. Practice. Taste. Even your failures will be pretty tasty.



Most importantly, serve these to a child in your life. And watch their face light up. This flavour is available nowhere else.

By Bbq Dude

Lemonade

It's been *hot* in southern California the last few days.  To survive, homemade lemonade.

1 ¼ cup lemon juice (from 4ish fresh lemons)
4 ½ cups water
1 cup sugar

Mix one cup water with the sugar. Heat and stir to dissolve the sugar (this is simple syrup).

Mix the lemon juice with the remainder of the water and the simple syrup. Serve over ice.

Nothing beats homemade lemonade. Ridiculously more flavourful than purchased lemonade (and if you have homegrown lemons - even better).

A lazy Saturday calls for...

...eggnog!



My wife and I have been having a Christmas party as long as we've been together. The first year we had it, my graduate advisor brought an intensely flammable eggnog. It was rich and frothy, not too sweet, but filled with flavours of nutmeg and honey. She claims the only time she hears from her former students is at Christmas time when they call and ask for the recipe for this eggnog. I cleverly wrote it down that first year (so she never hears from me), and it's now a tradition around our home to serve this delightful stuff.

This is the flavour of Christmas in a cup. Delicious, rich and creamy. Indeed, I spend 11 months of the year dreaming about this eggnog. If it were traditional to drink this year-round, I'd be a much larger man with a much smaller liver. (Disclaimer: This recipe has raw eggs in it. If you're not willing to risk the relatively small risk of Salmonella, don't make it. Indeed, if you have any underlying health condition that would make Salmonella a life-or-death event, all you should do is look over these photos, and drool over the eggnog. No raw eggs for you. Be sensible.)

Alright, I generally do a 2x to 3x recipe for a Christmas party with 30 guests:

2 eggs

4 cups whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
honey to taste
1 cup dark rum
1 cup brandy
lots of fresh ground nutmeg

Separate the eggs. Beat the yolks until yellow and foamy.

You're going to make an emulsion, so you want a nice foamy egg yolk. While mixing, slowly add the booze. If you add it too fast, you'll curdle the yolks.

Beat in the milk. (Or in a triple batch, beat in about half of the milk - you'll have to add the rest of the milk in a separate, larger bowl).

Once all the milk is added, add the honey to taste, mixing well to ensure that it dissolves properly. I tend to aim for a barely sweet mixture, as overly sweet eggnog is too cloying for me. But again, you're adding it to taste.

Beat the egg whites until they hold stiff peaks. Beat the heavy cream until they hold light peaks. Fold into the eggnog. Grate in lots of fresh, whole nutmeg (to taste). It really makes a difference, as freshly grated nutmeg is not at all bitter. Then leave the grater out for people to grate more fresh nutmeg on their drink.

I used to be concerned about how long you can store this stuff, and would dump it if I had leftovers more than a few days after the party. However, Michael Ruhlman claims that homemade eggnogs improve with age (up to two years), so now I'll hold onto it for as long as it takes to finish it (never more than a few weeks).

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to one and all. I hope you find a lazy Saturday or two over the holidays, and find your own way to enjoy it.

Indian Chai

You've probably had chai, before. Bitter, bland with a mild scent of allspice, it's truly appalling stuff as imagined by the likes of Starbucks or steeped out of the little, flavourless teabags of Bigelow. This is not that chai.

No, this chai recipe was smuggled out of an Indian restaurant in the Bay area of California, then handwritten by a close friend who guarded it for years. For years, she shared the chai with us when we visited, and we would gulp it greedily. Indeed, some of my fondest memories of Houston are of sitting in her kitchen while talking and mainlining chai. This is good stuff, bright, sweet and complex. It's simply delicious.

When we left Houston, we begged the recipe from here. And I present it here:

4 C whole milk
2 C water
3 tbsp sliced ginger (or ½ tbsp powder)
2 tbsp mashed green cardamom pods + 2 shakes cardamom powder
20 cloves
1 ½ tbsp dried basil
1 tbsp cinnamon
½ tsp lemongrass
½ tsp fresh black pepper
1 ½ tsp vanilla
4 tsp Assam looseleaf tea
9 heaping tsp sugar

Prepare the spices.

Mix them with the milk and water and bring to a light boil. Add the tea, and boil gently for two minutes. Now strain out the spices. (Note, leaving it to settle for a few minutes after sieving is useful to get some of the spices to settle out, as a slight sludge will form).

Add the sugar and vanilla, and stir in. Serve in large mugs. Huge, even. Large servings are completely appropriate here. And anything you don't drink while hot, will be great over ice.