Lavender-honey ice cream

So we're toodling through the Little Italy farmer's market, and lo and behold, we encounter a vendor selling fresh lavender.  It smells awesome.  Unlike many flowers, lavender isn't super perfumy.  Perfumey?  Perfumish?  Whatever.  So for $2, I find myself in possession of a lifetime supply of fresh lavender (or at least, more than I can ever use in the few days until they deteriorate).  What to do?  How about lavender-honey ice cream, from David Lebovitz' The Perfect Scoop:

½ cup honey
¼ cup fresh lavender flowers
1 ½ cups whole milk
¼ cup sugar
pinch salt
1 ½ cups heavy cream
5 large eggs

Remove the eggs from the fridge, and bring to room temperature.

Pull the lavender flowers off the stems (this is accomplished quite easily by running your fingers down the stem from top to bottom).  Measure out the flowers.



Heat honey with ½ lavender, just until bubbles start to form in the honey.  Remove from the heat, and let sit an hour or so to extract some of that tasty lavenderness.  It looks kinda grotey, but it's tasty.



Put the cream in a bowl.  Rewarm the honey a tad (just to make it runny), and pour it through a sieve into the cream.  Squish those lavender chunkies with a spoon or spatula to get out as much tastiness as possible.

Meanwhile, warm the milk sugar and salt until the sugar and salt dissolve, and the milk is hot.  Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites, and beat the egg yolks into a lovely bright yellow foam.

Add the warm milk to the yolks, a wee bit at a time, mixing constantly.  You're making an emulsion here, so to keep it from breaking, you have to add the milk slowly (particularly at the beginning).  I always find this part hard to photograph, (basically impossible if I'm alone in the kitchen), so see older posts on ice cream for pics of this part.  It's basically the same for any custard.

Put the egg yolk mix back on the stove, and heat, stirring constantly over medium-low heat.  This part is easiest with a thermometer (keeps you from curdling the custard). Heat to 175°F. Never stop stirring. At 175°F, the custard should have thickened nicely, shouldn't have curdled, and will be ready for the next step.  Immediately pour the hot custard over the lavender chunkies, into the cool cream.  Mix, and add the remainder of the lavender.



Cool in the fridge overnight.  Sieve out the fresh lavender, and run through your ice cream maker, using the directions for your machine.  For the KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment this means that you've frozen the attachment for at least 24 hours.  Then, you slowly pour in the sieved ice cream mix into a the machine while the beater is stirring on low.



Churn for 25ish minutes.  Then scoop into a cold container, and cure in the freezer overnight to finish hardening it.



I served this with a wee drizzle of honey on top.



What a nice flavour.  The honey smoothes out the lavender flavour, making it a nice, mild dessert.  This might be the best ice cream yet.  And the lavender is such an unusual flavour, that it manages it be striking and mild at the same time.  Very nice, and perfect for a warm summer's day.

Happy Summer.

Wordless Wednesday: Green zebra tomatoes

Beer-can chicken

Warning:  The following post contains pictures of raw chicken.  If there are small children, or anyone who is immunocompromised, please have them step away from the computer before you scroll down.

This is my post about smoked beer-can chicken.  Modified from my favourite bbq book, Serious Barbecue.  The marinade:

½ cup canola oil
½ cup water
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp Japanese soy sauce
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp prepared mustard
1 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 tbsp ancho powder
1 tbsp coarsely ground black pepper
1 tbsp kosher salt
6 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
1 medium white onion, chopped
1 serrano, chopped

Mix the marinade ingredients.  Place in a ziploc bag with the chicken.  Seal and refrigerate overnight.  If you can remember, mix the marinade a few times during the 18ish hours you have it in the fridge, so all that delicious goodness gets all over the chicken.

When you're ready to fire up the grill, light your fire and remove the chicken from the fridge.  Pat it dry.



Heat the grill up to 300 °F. Meanwhile, crack open a can of beer.   I use Budweiser, which I find unfit to drink. But really, the beer can is there for two reasons.  One - a stand to hold up the chicken.  Two - a chicken humidifier.  None of the beer actually gets on the chicken, so it matters not one whit what kind of beer you use.  So go ahead, use something loathsome and cheap, like the King of Beer. Pour off the top 10% of the can. Mount the chicken on the beer can, and set it on the grill.  Plug a meat thermometer into the breast.



There's not much you can do to make a mounted raw chicken look attractive.  Not much at all.  Sorry about that.  I do take a small amount of joy to see the outside of that Bud can getting raw chicken juice all over it, though...

Close up the grill.  Maintain the heat at 300 °F, smoking with hickory or applewood.  Melt some butter, and prepare a brush out of some thyme sprigs.  Brush on some butter periodically during the cook.



Meanwhile, prepare the glaze:

½ cup orange marmalade
¼ cup honey
2 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp fresh squeezed lime juice
1 tbsp chopped chives
1 tbsp chopped parsley

Mix the ingredients in the glaze.



Nuke the glaze in the microwave for a minute to melt it, and stir.  Continue checking on the chicken, brushing it with butter every fifteen minutes or so.



Look at that colour!  Yum.

When the chicken reaches 155 °F, brush the chicken liberally with the glaze.



Look at that!  Okay, close up the grill for 10-15 more minutes, until the chicken breast hits 165 °F.

While it's finishing off, prepare the cutting board:

1 tbsp finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 tbsp finely chopped chives
1 lemon
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

Chop the chives and parsley, spread it all over the cutting board.  Zest the lemon all over the board.



When the chicken hits 165 °F, gently remove it, and set the can somewhere the chicken can rest without being disturbed by cats, dogs or small children.  After all, that beer can is full of scalding hot beer.  So, you know, be careful.



After 15-20 minutes, when you're ready to carve the chicken, squeeze the lemon over the cutting board, and drizzle with olive oil.  Serve immediately.

The skin on this chicken is a real sweet treat.  The chicken meat underneath doesn't seem to pick up the marinade much (not surprising, really), but the dressing on the cutting board makes up for that.  This is a really nice way to prepare a chicken on a Sunday afternoon.

Served with:

Tokyo vending machines

I *love* Tokyo.  This is a food city.  I would just wander around, then look for a small restaurant with the longest line, inevitably leading to deliciousness.

Tokyo also has beverage vending machines everywhere.  Not surprising, given that it's about 96% humidity and pretty damn warm this time of year.  It's gotta be a public health issue to keep folks hydrated.  And what fun, most of the things in the machines are unrecognizable to an ex-pat Canuck.

The vending machines are tucked into all kinds of weird corners.  Check these ones out, on the driveway to a parking garage.



The vending machines are filled with all kinds of crazy things. What to try first?  How about this milk tea:



A nice, refreshing tea.  Cool and sweet, but not American-style super-sweet.

Or soymilk tea.



Richer in flavour, more like a mild version of chai, but still very refreshing.

Then there was this H2O drink.



Don't be fooled. This is not water. I bought it when hot, sweaty and exhausted, and guzzled it thinking I had purchased water. It was some mild fruity thing. But try as I might, I did not find this refreshing. Dehydrated as I was, I drank half of it, and dumped the rest. That mild fruity flavour was revolting.

But, you know, weird stuff in vending machines?  Neat.