Banana-Tamarind Spring rolls with Coconut Ice Cream and Caramel Sauce

Battle Tamarind and Brown Sugar!

Tamarind is something that I associate with Thai food, so I decided to try a dish inspired by my one of my favorite Thai desserts, the fried banana. It all starts with...

Coconut Ice Cream

If you can't tell yet, I'm a gigantic fan of coconut milk. I could drink it straight, but that's generally frowned upon. So let's freeze it instead!

• 6 egg yolks
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• Big ol' pinch of salt
• 2 cans (27 total ounces), unsweetened coconut milk

 In a large bowl, whisk together egg yolks, sugar, vanilla, and salt until thoroughly combined. Slowly whisk in the coconut milk, then transfer to a 2 quart pot over medium-low heat, stirring constantly. Heat the mixture until it reaches 180 degrees Fahrenheit (or until it thickens enough to coat the back of the spoon; it should give off whisps of steam, but not be boiling), then put into a container to chill for a minimum of 4 hours (overnight is best).

Freeze the mixture using the directions on your ice cream machine. This recipe might be a little big for smaller tabletop ice cream makers; after overrun (air incorporation) I had about a quart and a half of ice cream.

Caramel Sauce

A little word of warning: I make caramel sauce the hard way (because I'm lazy and it takes fewer steps). If you are fast and loose in the kitchen you can use these directions, otherwise this looks like a great recipe which will get you similar results.

• 8 Tbsp unsalted butter*
• 3/4 c. brown sugar
• pinch of salt
• ~1/3 cup milk*
• 1 tsp vanilla

Melt butter over medium heat, then add the brown sugar and salt. Whisk constantly until sugar is completely dissolved and starts to foam up. Carefully and slowly add the milk, while whisking like a mad (wo)man. I generally add a splash, whisk like mad, add another splash, whisk again, etc. until it looks about right. You want a smooth, thick sauce that has a nice sheen to it. Don't forget that the sauce will thicken as it cools, so don't make it too thick to start out.

*I never have heavy cream on hand, and it's too expensive to buy a pint just to use a couple tablespoons. If you do happen to have it on hand, you can cut the butter and use heavy cream instead of milk. Otherwise, the added butter is needed to keep the milk proteins from curdling.

Banana-Tamarind Spring Rolls

A while back I decided to make Pad Thai, and the recipe I used needed 1 Tbsp of tamarind concentrate. Since then I've used exactly 0 of the stuff, so I'm glad to finally get some use out of it!





The night before

• 2  bananas, diced (quarter the banana along the length then slice)
• 1/3 cup tamarind concentrate
• 2 Tbsp brown sugar

Mix together all ingredients and store in fridge overnight.

The day of

• 32-ish wonton wrappers or 8-ish spring roll or egg roll wrappers.

This is the easy part or the hard part, depending on your skill level. As a midwestern White suburban American, I have little to no experience in making wrapped/rolled/stuffed foods so mine always turn out... interesting. I played around with wontons vs. spring rolls, and ended up choosing the latter. The wontons probably have a better ratio of inside stuff to outside stuff, but I couldn't make them without making a huge mess, and it was sometimes hard to get enough filling inside.

Anyways, fill your skins with an appropriate amount of filling (I didn't have any problems with air bubbles expanding and popping, but the marinade oozes out when you are trying to close it), then seal with water (or the leftover egg whites from the ice cream recipe). Fry at 350F until golden brown. I got criticized last time for my lack of photography, so here are some action shots (side note, my camera now has cooking oil, egg whites, and tamarind sauce all over it):




(Notice my misshapen wrappers)


(Notice my misshapen egg rolls)

Serving

To serve, place a big ol' scoop of the ice cream in a bowl, slice two spring rolls in half (or use four wontons) and place fancily around the outside, then drizzle everything with brown sugar. Pretend that because it has fruit it must be good for you, and eat a second serving as well :)

Asian Peppered Cucumber Salad

It's that time again, FoodieFights Battle Cucumber and Black Pepper. This week I've decided to go with something I hardly ever do: a side dish. Not only that, but it's a vegetarian side dish. Hold on to your hats people, as I bring you:

Asian Peppered Cucumber Salad

• 1 medium to large cucumber, skin on
• 1 small clove garlic, grated or very finely minced
• 1 tsp fresh ginger, grated or finely minced
• 2 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp honey
• 2 Tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 2 Tbsp sweet Thai chili sauce
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• Bunches o' fresh cracked black pepper
• 1 scallion, thinly sliced

 Thinly slice the cucumber, or, if you are lucky enough to have a nifty attachment to your mandolin, slice into very fine strips, as shown in the picture below. If using the mandolin, avoid the seedier areas of the cucumber, because you might get mugged. Also, they mostly just smash up instead of slicing nicely. Place the strips or slices in a colander for about a half hour to drain any excess moisture.

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together all the other ingredients except the scallions. The mixture should be salty (from the soy), sweet (honey, chili sauce), tangy (vinegar) and spicy (chili sauce, pepper), but not too much of each. I didn't measure how much pepper I added, but it was quite a bit; you want enough to have a distinct flavor. Add the scallions and cucumber and let the whole mixture marinate for a few hours or overnight.

Note: there is a pretty generous marinade/cucumber mixture, which leads to an intensely flavored, but somewhat saucy, end product. If you wanted to keep the flavor, just drain off the extra marinade before serving (it could, perhaps, be used as a stir fry sauce base). Otherwise you can cut the marinade in half, or, if you've been making the recipe as you read and have just now gotten to this part, add another cucumber. Either way, it should still taste wonderful.






(Biggie Size Me)
Serving

Since it's a side dish, I though I might contemplate what this cucumber salad should go along with.The dish has a very bright flavor, which would pair nicely with a fatty Asian pork (Chinese spareribs?) or duck (Peking duck?) dish. It also, despite the heat from the chili sauce, has a nice cooling effect which would go nicely to calm down a spicy Szechuan beef. And of course, let's not forget about sushi! Or you could do what I did and just enjoy it by itself. Anyway you slice it (get it? Because you can sliced in slices or... oh nevermind), I think you'll enjoy it.

Sweet Potato Mousse with Espresso Chocolate Sauce

This week's FoodieFights is Battle Sweet Potato and Coffee. It's a tough battle for me, because while I love sweet potatoes, I hate coffee. In fact, before creating this recipe, I've never even made a cup of coffee before. So my challenge today wasn't so much how to combine sweet potatoes with coffee (I immediately had several ideas) but how to combine them into something that I would actually eat. After considering several ideas, I decided to go with a dessert. After all, most new coffee drinkers drown their coffee with sugar and cream, right?

Sweet Potato Mousse

• 1 sweet potato (about 8 oz), peeled and diced
• 2 oz. cream cheese
• 1/2 c. powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp fresh ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground clove
• 1 cup heavy cream, very cold

Cook the sweet potato in salted boiling water, then drain well and chill. Once the potatoes are nice and cold, add the cream cheese, powdered sugar, vanilla, and spices. Beat on very low speed until combined, then ramp up the speed and beat until smooth and slightly fluffy.

Next, beat the heavy cream until it attains a medium firmness. If you overbeat here, then in the next step you will make sweet potato butter. It actually sounds like that might be tasty, but it's not what we're going for. Fold in about a third of your whipped cream with you sweet potato to lighten it up, then throw the sweet potato back into the whipped cream. Fold well, then whip again at medium speed until it attains a nice mousse-y firmness. Chill in the fridge while you make the...

Espresso Chocolate Sauce

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 healthy pinch of salt
• 1 cup fresh hot espresso (or double-strength coffee)
• 1 tbsp coffee liqueur

In a small saucepan, whisk together the dry ingredients, then slowly whisk in the espresso and liqueur. I've found that if you whisk it into a paste then slowly add more liquid it keeps you from having chunks of undissolved bits of chocolate. Heat the mixture slowly. Boil for about a minute, then let cool. It should thicken as it cools, becoming the consistency of bottled chocolate syrup.


The Reveal

All you really need to serve this is a spoon for the mousse and a big bowl of sauce, but if you plan on serving this to someone instead of eating it all yourself, it's not hurt by a nice sprinkling of candied pecans:



The dessert as a whole is really quite a trip. You are immediately hit with the smokiness of the coffee, which I'm not supposed to like, but I'm surprised to find that I love it. Next comes the creaminess of the mousse with a delicate but definite hit of sweet potato, and it's rounded out with the deep, dark sweetness of chocolate.

Ice Cream Part I: Maple Pecan and Bacon

Last week's Foodie Fights was Battle Frozen Dessert! I did not get selected to participate, but it was enough to finally get me off my laurels and make some ice cream, something I've been wanting to do for a long time. So, after rewatching the Churn Baby Churn and Churn Baby Churn 2 episodes of Good Eats, I decided to set off and make Philadelphia style ice cream, (i.e. frozen cream and sugar) which seemed like the easiest type to attempt for my first... attempt.

But what kind? Well, I've always had a love affair with bacon, and lately I've been semi-successfully incorporating it into sweet desserts, so why not ice cream? Another combination I really love is pecans and bacon, and maple and pecans, and guess what? I just so happened to have in the fridge some fresh, B-grade maple syrup my brother's girlfriend made, so I figured it was destiny.

Maple Bacon and Pecan Ice Cream

• 4 cups (1 qt) half and half
• 2 cups (1 pt) heavy cream
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1/4 cup maple syrup (B-grade is better for this as it has a richer flavor and is less sweet; whatever you do, don't use maple flavored syrup.)
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground clove
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

 Slowly heat all ingredients except the vanilla to 170F (or if you don't have a thermometer, heat it until you see one single bubble), then cool slightly and add the vanilla. Place in an air-tight container and store in the refrigerator. You need it to at least get down to fridge temp, but it will be even better if you keep it overnight.

• 1 1/2 cups (6 oz) pecan pieces
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 3 Tbsp white sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground clove
• 2 Tbsp maple syrup

Melt the butter over low heat. Just when it starts to brown add the pecans, stirring often. (This is when the professional chef flippy technique comes in handy; using a spoon just kinda lands nuts everywhere). Cook for about 5 minutes, or until the nuts are well toasted. Be careful as it's easy to burn them, and nobody likes burnin' their nuts! (Sorry, couldn't help myself).

Add the spices and sugar, stirring and/or flipping to evenly coat, then spoon in your maple syrup. Keep everything moving until you have a big sticky mass of pecans and yum, then spread out on parchment paper to cool.

• Bacon!

I used 7 pieces (3.5 oz? I have no idea) maple-cured bacon and it seemed to be the perfect ratio of bacon to non-bacon in the final product. Lay the bacon out on a foil-lined pan and heat slowly (300-ish) until the fat is rendered and it's nice and crispy. The particular brand of bacon I used was sweet but not salty, so I added a healthy pinch or two of salt before baking. Crumble into pecan-sized pieces, then place the bacon and pecans in plastic bags to await ice cream day.

Ice cream day!

Dump your ice cream base into your favorite ice cream maker. Mine's pretty big sized, so if you only have a 1 qt machine you may have to do it in two batches. After about half the time (15 minutes for me) add the pecans and bacon. When it's soft serve consistency (or when your machine (if electric) or slave (if manual) starts making whining noises), quickly (if you're making ice cream it's probably hot outside!) scoop into a freezer-safe container and freeze for a couple hours. Then the best part: eat it!

After scarfing down way too much of this stuff, I found out that it's even better (if you can believe it) covered in chocolate syup. And I don't generally like chocolate syrup.

Enjoy!

After thoughts

 There is one little detail I didn't mention above. When I was heating my milk, it started to look like overcooked cheese soup. Oh noes! Brown sugar (and possibly maple syrup) are pretty acidic, and acids denature milk proteins, causing milk to look like overcooked cheese soup. I did some research on the subject (even finding a nifty food science book on the internet), but don't really know how to avoid this problem. The only thing I found was perhaps if you heat the milk before you add the sugar, the rate of curdling should slow down. But I haven't tried it yet. The final product turned out more than excellent, so it ended up not being a problem. Guess I'll just have to make several more batches and experiment!

Mac & Cheese: The Formula

As a kid I never really liked macaroni and cheese. The stuff in the blue box just never did it for me, and for a long time I thought that's what mac & cheese was supposed to taste like. And then one day I had the real stuff; that was the day my lifespan decreased by a decade or so. But it's probably worth it now that I know the amazingness which is mac & cheese.

Oh and bonus, it's super easy to remember the recipe, since everything is in amounts of 2.

Basic Macaroni & Cheese

• 2 c. macaroni (or any small pasta you have in your pantry)
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 2 Tbsp flour
• 2 c. milk
• 2 c. sharp cheddar cheese

Cook macaroni in salted water until almost al dente.

In the mean time, melt butter in 10-inch oven-safe saute pan (I love my cast iron pan for this), then add flour. Stir for about a minute to cook out the starchy taste, then slowly add the milk, stirring constantly. Let the mixture simmer until it gets thick. Add the cheese, stirring until melted, then season well with salt and pepper (I like lots of pepper). Stir in the cooked and drained pasta, then pop into the oven for about 10-15 minutes. (I also like to add a cup of cheese to the top, but it doesn't fit into my nifty little 2 pattern.) Serves 2 as a meal (...or 1 if you are really hungry) or 4 as a side.

The variations

The great thing about this recipe is it's so easy to adapt. You can use the butter to saute vegetables or meats (mmm.... bacon) then add your flour straight to the sauteed stuff. Proceed along the rest of the recipe as normal. Some combinations I've made:

• Bacon. I guess it's not a combination so much but bacon makes anything better. The first mac & cheese I made myself had bacon and instead of cooking it in the oven I used the smoker. Love.
• Bacon, onion, mushroom: like above, but for the sophisticated pallet. 
• Grilled corn, peppers, onions make a nice summer side dish.
• Hot dogs, chili, mustard and onions make chili dog mac & cheese. Oh. My. Goodness.
• Chorizo, red pepper, onion, cumin, hot sauce, for a mexican flair.