Hello world,
I know I know. We neglected to mention we were shutting off the blog for for a few weeks. It’s because Hanne and I had planned on posting over the break. We spent a week and a half in Edmonton with family and friends and had a big plans on posting recipes for the Christmas food Hanne and I grew up eating. But instead of spending time in our parent’s kitchens we were on the freeway between their homes and balancing schedules. Married life is tough, I tell you.
Excuses! Both of our families had new ice cream machines and a few SiS requests for us, so we fine tuned our stout ice cream and corrected a major mistake on the pumpkin one. Really though, if anyone out there was gullible enough to put 14 teaspoons of salt in their ice cream instead of a 1/4 teaspoon, you got what you deserved. Just desserts. Heh heh.
We also had big plans for the second half of our trip in Los Angeles.
But there’s no internet on the beach.
Our camera is gagged on gigs of photos of great food. We also hauled a suitcase full of citrus, booze and various ingredients back over the border to Montreal. So we’re now set to get back to work on SupperInStereo.
Did you miss us? Not as much as these guys did:
Above is Sophie-Cat making sure the duffel bag stays empty. The second picture is of Presto Petman, who attached himself to my leg for the better part of the afternoon. Worked for both of us. He got to feel that he was preventing me from leaving him (ever) again and I got to kick back for a couple hours with some new books and a dry martini Hanne made.
The martini recipe is from the back of this Fee Brothers bottle. The flavour of Orange Bitters comes from the oils of orange skins. It smells like orange soda and tastes like mandarin orange peel. The citrus taste cleaned up the mouth smack of the last drop of old vermouth that was sitting on our bar since before we left. Recipe goes:
1 oz. Gin
1/2 oz. Dry Vermouth
3 dashes of Orange Bitters
CHEERS!
6 comments
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January 7, 2008 at 12:56 am
Victoria
Happy New Year and welcome back. I HAVE missed you but am glad you had such a good time. I actually have a bottle of those orange bitters so tomorrow night I shall try them in a martini and skip the Tipsy Onions I usually use. Check out the recipe for a Pegu. It’s sort of summery, but the orange bitters would not be out of place there. I got myself a compressor ice cream maker for New Year’s and made the chocolate ice cream from The Perfect Scoop on Saturday night. My chocolate was 85% so the ice cream was very chocolatey and not too sweet. Actually it was divine. I followed the directions as far as the ingredients were concerned, but I have a “Miracle Ice Cream Technique” that can be adapted for any ice cream, and as long as you have a stand mixer with a paddle, you can make basically fool-proof custard for your ice cream. I am going to try your stout ice cream next. Anyway, I look forward to following your food adventures in 2008.
January 7, 2008 at 10:25 am
hannehanne
Victoria,
Happy New Year! We’ll look forward to following your food adventures this year too. I love the orange bitters, they’re so interesting. What have you used yours for?
How do you like your compressor machine? Those are so fancy! And what’s this miracle technique? I’d love to hear it! Are you going to blog about it? I’m usually good with custards, but every so often I let it heat too far and then, well, you know… it’s not good. Like Carlo said, we’ve fixed up the stout ice cream recipe. The updates should be there, but if not… we replaced the chocolate with cocoa powder and reduced the cream. Works well.
January 7, 2008 at 11:43 am
Victoria
I do like the compressor machine, which I got on the recommendation of a friend. She’s is a good cook and about as unplugged as one can be in the kitchen so anytime she recommends an electric appliance, I sit up and take notice. I got the Cuisinart model that retails at Williams-Sonoma for $299 US. I always make a purchase this large from W-S if I can because they really back up what you buy there, and if there’s a problem, I don’t want to be dealing with some difficult discount house. I had been looking at much more expensive Italian models, but this one has a canister that comes out, thus making clean-up easy. The only criticism I found for it is that when it’s working, it’s noisy. I opted to go for it anyway, and the noise didn’t bother me. It certainly would not make me choose a different machine. The ice cream was great right out of the canister (soft) and fine the next day out of the freezer after I let it soften for 5 to 10 minutes (harder). The “miracle technique” is http://www.vicsrecipes.blogspot.com/2007/01/miracle-ice-cream-technique.html . As for the orange bitters, I most recently used them in a Pegu, which is made as follows http://www.vicsrecipes.blogspot.com/2007/12/pegu.html My friend Walter still prefers a true margarita ( http://www.vicsrecipes.blogspot.com/2007/08/margarita-reux.html ) to this, but I think the Pegu is good too. It would be a fun way to begin a pseudo-Indian dinner. By the way, I lapped up all of my Eve and need to make some more.
January 7, 2008 at 8:33 pm
hannehanne
Ha, sorry… you can see that I’ve not been keeping up with my blog-reading. I’m going to head over to your site tomorrow to check all this out.
Isn’t that Eve cocktail delicious? I keep meaning to make more too. Soon, soon. I’m always torn between past favourites and the promise of something new and exciting, so I sometimes neglect recipes.
January 8, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Victoria
The Eve is really superlative. Seriously, it’sone of the most interesting things I found out about in 2007 (yikes, I almost said 2006). By the way, I love your blog logo - and I love your blog.
January 10, 2008 at 3:05 pm
hannehanne
Victoria,
You just made Carlo’s day. He worked so hard on that logo. I love it too. I’m so glad you like the Eve. I’m glad I found it too. When it came across my feed reader, I just knew instantly that we had to try it. Whoever invented that drink is a genius, I think.