Turkish Coffee Ice Cream with Rosewater Raspberries

Some recipe ideas always seem to take longer to come to fruition than others.  Take, for example, this Turkish coffee ice cream.  It's a recipe idea I've been turning over in my head for quite a few months now.  It started out way back in early 2011, when my good friend Nadeen and I were brainstorming ice cream flavors that we wanted to make together (she suggested Earl Grey with condensed milk, which for some reason, led me to think about Turkish coffee--food association works in mysterious ways).  Then, when Nadeen moved away (sadness!), she kindly bequeathed me with a generous bag of Turkish coffee, so for months, I've had all of the ingredients to make said ice cream just sitting in my refrigerator, waiting.  But, I've just never been able to think up the right dessert for which to make this ice cream--until now!  Finally!

Enter, the raspberry.  Actually, back that up.  Enter the French Laundry, where I had the pleasure (or the great fortitude and honor?) to go last Friday night.  I think the French Laundry in and of itself deserves a special, dedicated post, so I won't share too many details right here.  But suffice it to say for now that the word "delicious" barely does it justice.  Anyways, one of the dessert courses (yes! there were multiple dessert courses--though not enough of them, in my humble opinion) had a few lightly glazed raspberries sitting delicately on the side, and perhaps they got into my subconscious somehow because that night, as I was sleeping off my intensely satisfying food coma, I dreamt about Turkish coffee ice cream... with raspberries.  (It really says something about how good that meal was, since usually good food can inspire me to cook, but rarely do I get inspired even in my sleep!)

Raspberries ended up being the perfect pairing for the Turkish coffee ice cream, especially after they macerated in a dash of rosewater, lemon juice, and a light sprinkling of sugar.  The raspberries were delicate and summery and fresh, with a touch of the floral brightness from the rosewater, which was exactly what the rich and dark ice cream, heavily spiced with cardamom and teeming with the extra fine coffee grounds that's so characteristic of Turkish coffee, needed.  Ah, sigh--add in a touch of warm weather, and the slanted light of a summer sunset....  (P.S. why is it already mid-August?!)

I promise--more to come on the French Laundry soon.  In the meantime, enjoy the Turkish coffee and raspberries!  (Nadeen! I wish you were here!)


Read on for recipes....

Midweek Macarons: Coconut Rose Chocolate Macarons

As a linguist (*ahem*, my day job), I hear this question a lot: "How many languages do you speak?"  It's a common misperception that all we linguists do is learn to speak a lot of languages all day, and allow me to put this to rest right here and now: I am not a polyglot.  Our job as linguists is not to study languages but to study language, which is the first lesson we teach to anyone who takes Linguistics 101, and while many-a-times, this might involve having to learn languages, it most certainly does not require it.  In fact, even if I know something about a language, that doesn't mean that I can speak, write, read, or understand it at all, though I could probably tell you what the language's syllable structure is, or how the language might order words in its sentences--you know, pretty useless little things that wouldn't come much in handy if I actually had to hold down a conversation.

But, all this is not to say that we linguists don't do some really. cool. stuff.  Take, for example, one of the professors in my department, Dan Jurafsky.  Dan works primarily on computational linguistics, but one of his awesome side projects is writing about the language of food.  (which, frankly, is so genius, I'm jealous that I didn't think of it myself!)  Dan's written before on things like the origins of "ketchup" or what defines "dessert," and he has a paper coming out soon about the role of language in potato chip advertisements.  And he teaches what I've heard is an awesome undergraduate seminar on the subject.

So, of course, one day, I approached Dan with THE hot linguistics and food question of the current day: macaron vs. macaroon.  Which one is it!  (and how in the heck are you supposed to pronounce the difference?)  Raise your hand if you've ever pondered this question!  *typing while raising one hand in the air.*

Thankfully, Dan was totally enthused about investigating the origins of the macaron/macaroon, and he's just posted his essay on the subject, after a few months of in-depth research.  Apparently, the macaron/oon is related to a whole slew of desserts and foods of the almond or egg white family--from gnocchi to marzipan--and has traveled, in its various forms, through so much of Europe and the Middle East--from Persia to Italy and France--before making it to the US and becoming the coconut macaroon.  But, even with its long history, the debate is still open as to whether we want to call the Parisian macaron/oon that we're so crazed about these days a macaroon or a macaron, to distinguish it from the once-popular coconut macaroons.  Only time will tell!  Oh, and the best part of Dan's article is that he discovered that the macaron/oon/oni might actually be related to the macarena.  Heeeeeeyyyyyy, macarena, a ya!  (OMG, I can't believe I still remember that dance....!)

Anyways, I thought that all of Dan's research on the macaron/oon/oni/ena should be rewarded with actual macarons.  Since rosewater kept recurring in the history of the macaron, I whipped up some coconut rose chocolate macarons, with lightly flavored almond shells and coconut-rose-flavored dark chocolate ganache inside.  I also couldn't resist breaking out the luster dust, after seeing all of the beautiful watercolor-dyed eggs floating about the internets for Easter.

So, the next time you meet a linguist, I implore you not to ask them how many languages they speak.  Instead, talk to them about macarons.  Or macaroons.  Or macaroni.  Ack.  Never mind.  Just ask them to dance the macarena with you.  ...Or not.  :-)

>>Go read Dan's essay on macarons!<<


Read on for recipe....

Double chocolate espresso pound cake with rose-scented cream cheese frosting

After Christmas, New Years, and the December holidays are over, I'm always spending January counting down the days to Valentine's. Sure, there are lots of people who grumble about Valentine's Day, citing that it's become this Hallmark holiday, but I still maintain a very romantic notion about it and most other holidays (ah, romantic in the 'idealization' sense).  After all, life's too short not to be celebrating the happy things in it! and I'm a firm believer that we should celebrate everything we love on Valentine's Day, not just significant others.  (I'm such a holder of this philosophy that I think, the dork I am, that I even wrote an essay arguing such in eighth grade.)  Finally, when it comes down to it, through all of that lovey-dovey hubbub, Valentine's Day is the holiday of desserts, so what's not to love?

This double chocolate espresso pound cake with rose-scented cream cheese frosting is one of the desserts on my Valentine's Day radar this year.  The combination of rose and chocolate is just so classic that I can't ever really escape it, especially ever since watching Like Water for Chocolate.  The key here balancing the light sweet scent of the rose in the cream cheese frosting with the robust dark chocolate espresso pound cake underneath--my friend who tried the cake called it the perfect "breakfast cupcake," given how dense and buttery but not-too-sweet the cake is.  Oh, and why are these called "double chocolate"?  Because they also have a healthy handful of bittersweet chocolate chips thrown in to the mix.  Despite what Hallmark says, really Valentine's Day is about celebrating chocolate.  (Though I don't doubt for a second that there's a Hallmark card out there that says just that!)

So here's the countdown: 19 days left until Valentine's Day, the holiday of desserts!  What are you making to celebrate what you love?


Read on for recipe...

the Raspberry Rhapsody, and a Summer-to-Autumn Menu

I hereby officially declare that this summer was "the Summer of the Raspberry."  After starting the summer off with a string of raspberry delights and then putting the blog on a bit of a raspberry diet, I just couldn't resist ending the summer returning to this wonderful berry and finishing with a big raspberry bang.

So when a good friend came over for dinner, I presented her with a trio of late-summer raspberry desserts, or something that I like to call the Raspberry Rhapsody.  Or, alternatively, what another friend perhaps more appropriately named it: "Everything Stephanie can think of to do with raspberries."  Yeah.  That one pretty much sums it up!  But first, before we get to the Raspberry Rhapsody, I have to tell you what the menu for dinner was, because I feel like you'll then fully savor the curation of this meal in its entirely, wrapping up with the trio of raspberry desserts.  The whole theme of the night was celebrating the summer-to-autumn transition, perhaps one of my favorite times of the year when the markets are bursting forth with the most succulent late-summer and crisp early-autumn produce.

Summer to Autumn Menu

Tomato crostini

heirloom tomato, garlic, oil-packed anchovies atop toasted sweet baguette

Caramelized onion corn soup

rosemary, cave-aged hand-made raw milk blue cheese, 
caramelized onion jam, fresh local yellow corn

Prosciutto-wrapped roasted potato salad

roasted baby purple, red, and yellow potatoes wrapped in crispy prosciutto 
atop wild arugula with honey mustard balsamic vinaigrette

Fig and carrot pitsa

black mission figs, colored carrots, feta, mozzarella, leek, and green onion

"Raspberry Rhapsody"

Fresh raspberries in paradise green tea jelly

Lemon-rose scented pavlova with raspberry-caramel, 
lemon mascarpone cream, and rosy raspberries

Espresso dark chocolate pots de creme with raspberries and raspberry coulis

Okay, got that?  Now, to dessert.  The Raspberry Rhapsody was an exploration of the amazing versatility of the wonderful raspberry, with its sweet tartness encapsulating the range of tastes from sharp to soft more so than perhaps any other berry.  I really wanted to play on the balance that you can use the raspberry to achieve in desserts.

The fresh raspberries in paradise green tea jelly offers the unadulterated raspberry experience.  It's simply raspberries at the peak of their late summer season (they peak twice, so I hear, once at the beginning of the summer and once at the end) suspended in delicately light green tea jelly.  I used Lupicia's paradise green tea, which I absolutely love in desserts because it's this wonderfully fragrant blend of green tea, rose, safflower, marigold, and cornflowers without being perfume-y at all.  The subtle flavors of the tea were the perfect accompaniment to the raspberries magically floating in the jelly.

Then we have the antithesis of the light jelly dessert: espresso dark chocolate pots de creme with raspberries and raspberry coulis.  While the jelly was supposed to be delicate and airy and reminiscent of light summer breezes, these pots de creme were meant to be a forecast of the dark, broody, and let's-huddle-up-under-a-mass-of-blankets-beside-the-fire-and-drink-hot-chocolate days that are ahead of us.  The incredibly rich and bitter 80% dark chocolate and espresso custard--with raspberries baked inside!--is set off by the tartness of fresh raspberry coulis.  And trust me, if you want something terrifically sinful, this. is. it.

Finally, to round off the trio was the perfect balance between creamy and rich and light and airy: a lemon and rose-scented pavlova with raspberry caramel, lemon mascarpone cream, and fresh rosy raspberries.

Oh, its name is a mouthful, for sure, but you won't be able to get enough mouthfuls of the actual dessert!  (trust me, I could barely keep my hands off this one long enough to photograph it!)

(see?)  The hints of lemon and rose flavors are quite subtle in this one, but it really allows the raspberries to shine through in the sweetened raspberry caramel and unperturbed fresh raspberries layered between the crunchy meringue and lusciously thick mascarpone whipped cream.  It doesn't matter how many words I use in the attempt to describe this dessert.  All I need is one: NOM.

Anyways, this is been quite the epically long post, but before I end (and get to the recipes, darn it!), I hope you'll humor me for a tiny bit longer, because I wanted to share how incredibly perfect this dessert was, in a completely nerdy way.  You see, the definitions of rhapsody in the Oxford English Dictionary are as follows (a tad edited in length by me):

rhapsody, n.

1. An epic poem, or a part of one, of a suitable length for recitation at one time.
2. The joining together of miscellaneous unconnected literary pieces, esp. poems
3. An enthusiastic of ecstatic expression of feeling; an instance of this.
4. A free musical composition, usually emotional or exuberant in character and in one extended movement

Now, as you will notice, my Raspberry Rhapsody was quite (1) epically raspberry; (2) a joining together of several raspberry desserts; and (3) an enthusiastic expression of an exuberant love for raspberries.  To top it all off, the friend I had over for dinner studies poetry and music (making her the perfect audience for a rhapsodic dessert), so when I finally looked up the etymology for rhapsody (something that, as a linguist, I'm quite prone to do), I couldn't help but smile to know that I'd put together not only a tribute to the Summer of the Raspberry but also a completely aptly named one!  Ah, now both the linguist and the dessert lover in me can rest in peace in raspberry heaven.


Read on for recipe....

Thyme for Watermelon + Strawberries

If there's anything that is quintessentially "summer" for me, it's watermelon.  Once I have my first watermelon, I know that summer is finally here.  (Similarly, the disappearance of watermelons from the markets marks the end of summer for me, too--but that's sad and months away, so why worry about it now? ;-))

My family used to end all of our summer dinners with a big bowl of chopped watermelon, ice cold from the refrigerator.  Usually we would eat it plain, but sometimes, as a treat for me, my mom would give me a bowlful of Chinese sour plum powder in which to dip my watermelon chunks, and I absolutely loved that!  Though Chinese sour plums are a bit of an acquired taste for most, I just loved the juxtaposition between sweet and sour and salty between the mouth-puckering powder and the juicy watermelon.  So, as I started cooking, I started looking for the sweet and savory interplay that I loved from the watermelon + sour plums in other forms, of which one of my favorite is the watermelon, strawberry, and thyme salad with balsamic vinegar and ricotta salata.

Alright, so before everyone thinks I've gone bonkers to mix strawberries and watermelon into a savory dish, let me try to first convince you that I'm not crazy.  After all, salty+sweet has always been a great combo in savory dishes (and especially Asian ones): case in point, sweet and salty pork, or sweet walnut prawns, or the beloved orange-flavored chicken.  I even believe that the whole current let's-put-bacon-on-our-desserts craze is merely a manifestation of our desire to have a full flavor profile ranging from the sweet to the savory in one bite.  And this salad, if I might say so myself, delivers just that.  Between the fragrant earthiness of the fresh thyme leaves, the sour-sweetness of the balsamic vinegar, and the salty creaminess of the ricotta salata shavings, the traditionally saved-for-dessert strawberries and watermelon really come into their own, with everything else helping to bring out the sweet juiciness of the fruit itself.

This dish is also an insanely easy one to make and a perfect appetizer salad for a summer BBQ or picnic.  The longer the watermelon and strawberry chunks marinate in their light dressing of balsamic vinegar and thyme, the more the flavors really meld and combine, so preparing this the morning of a party or BBQ and then sticking it in the refrigerator until service really helps to make this dish even better.  All you have to do at the last minute is top the salad with some fresh shavings of ricotta salata, and voila! an easy yet super-unexpected way to start your meal.

Of course, this is a dessert blog, so I couldn't very well leave you without a way to end your meal, too, right?  To take a cue from my family's post-dinner watermelon-eating, nothing is better than watermelon except ice cold watermelon.  So, it's sort of no wonder that, ever since making watermelon sorbetto last summer, I've loved the idea of watermelon in ice form.  I also really liked the pairing of fresh thyme with watermelon and strawberries in savory form, so I translated it into a dessert: watermelon and strawberry granita with thyme-infused whipped cream.

Granita is one of my favorite things to make around the beginning of summer, which coincides (quite unfortunately), at my school, with finals week.  Since I'm stuck indoors furiously writing final papers when the weather is just starting to hit 80 degrees with no clouds outside, I always hanker for a bit of summer indoors as well.  Enter the granita, the perfect dessert to make when you're stuck inside, because, though it's ridiculously easy to make, you do have to baby-sit it for about six hours at a time, stopping every thirty minutes to scrape up the ice crystals forming around the edges of the pan until you reach a lighter-than-air and ultra-fluffy ice.  (Thirty minutes being about my attention span anyways, so it works out to have forced breaks from work to stir--and sneak tastes of--the in-progress granita.)

As much time as it takes to make granita, this one is well worth it.  The strawberries and watermelon make a refreshingly delicious ice--especially to eat on those hot summer nights sitting outside on the porch, and the hint of rosewater that I mixed in adds a slight and sweet mysterious aroma to the whole thing.  The thyme whipped cream on top makes the whole thing turn out like a sophisticated, grown-up version of my favorite orange creamsicles, with the herbal creaminess melting lusciously into a spoonful of flaky ice.  Try also freezing the cream right on top of the granita, which makes for an excellently creamy and cold summer treat.

So, with this watermelon, I now officially declare summer here!


Read on for recipes...

Raspberry Rose "Hidden" Chocolate Tart, and the National Food Bloggers Bake Sale!

These two weeks have been some of the busiest I've ever had in my life.  I'm not kidding.  It's sort of been one thing after another after another after another, my head is spinning so fast that I question whether or not I still have a spine, I've eaten all of two proper meals over the past ten days, and collectively over the past several days, I've probably gotten fewer hours of sleep than I can count on my fingers and toes.  But, it's not over yet!  Ah!  So, today I present you something from my archives taken a month or so ago, though I haven't gotten around to posting the recipe until now:  the raspberry rose "hidden" chocolate tart.

Now, by "hidden" chocolate, I mean that there's a soft, decadent layer of dark chocolate ganache hidden beneath all of that pastry cream and fruit.  It's the tart that you should eat when you don't want anyone to know that you're getting your daily chocolate fix.  :-)

While the pastry cream in this tart is just your good ol' pastry cream, the tart crust is actually where the interesting stuff is at, because it's filled with crushed dry rose buds and rose extract, letting out this amazing aroma of flowery goodness.  Then, I dare you to pile raspberries that have been tossed in warm raspberry-apricot jam as high as you possibly can on the tart!  Trust me, you won't regret this combination of rosy crust, bitterly dark chocolate, ultra-creamy filling, and tartly sweet delicate raspberries.  I wish I had one now.  Oh, that would just make life so much more bearable.  (Bonne maman has a great raspberry apricot jam that I used for this tart, if you can find it!)

Oh yeah, and then I suddenly ran out of raspberries when I realized I had piled too may on the big tart...  My bad!  But, blackberries in the same context taste just as good:

So! I wanted to tell everyone about how I'm going to end my crazy busy two weeks this weekend--with being part of the National Food Bloggers' Bake Sale in San Francisco!  That's right.  You've drooled over the pictures and recipes, and now those of you in the area can have a taste of the blog.

The bake sale is part of a big, national Great American Bake Sale to benefit Share Our Strength, which is dedicated to ending childhood hunger.  I'm so excited to be a part of this awesome event, so if you are in the area, please, please come out and help show your support, in addition to getting awesome baked goods:

Saturday, April 17, 2010

12-3 pm

Omnivore Books

3885 Cesar Chavez Street

San Francisco, CA 94131

I'll be making some of my special dark chocolate tarts, but I won't tell you ahead of time what flavors I'm making.  You'll just have to come to the bake sale to find out!  And, as extra icing on top of the cake, Rose Levy Beranbaum will be speaking at 3pm in Omnivore Books, so it's seriously like THE ultimate dessert afternoon.

I hope to see many of you on Saturday!  Also, as a heads-up, I'll be posting a super, super, SUPER special blog post coming up later this week that you will. not. want. to. miss.  So, stay tuned!  I've been working on this surprise for quite a while now, too.  *smiles smugly*


P.S. To all of you who have commented on my blog recently--Thank YOU!  I've been so busy that I've barely had time to keep up with email, let alone responding to the comments, so I'm sorry if you've asked a question or sent in a suggestion, and I have yet to respond.  I will--in due time!


Read on for recipe...

Rose and Basil-Dark Chocolate Macarons

I'm back! from my conference this past weekend, and does it feel good to be back in the kitchen again!

Okay, but before we get to those bite-size pieces of deliciousness, allow me to catch you up with what I've been up to for the past week.  (If you're interested--otherwise, skip to the food pics, I won't take offense.)  This past weekend was the annual national conference for my "day job," and all the linguists of the States (and elsewhere, too) flocked to the sunny Baltimore, Maryland.  This was a particularly big weekend for me, because I had my first talk at said national conference, and it was in a special session organized by the leaders in my subfield.  So I had myself pretty much shut up for the past couple of weeks working on the talk.  Once *that* was out of the way, I tried to see a bit of the city.

Bokeh at Baltimore's Inner Harbour

Unfortunately, we were in a pretty dead area (with no convenient transportation available), and the pub food that was so ubiquitous around the conference area was just downright horrid.  So, no fun food news to report from the weekend.  But, I did get to go to the Walter museum, and on the way, we checked out America's first cathedral/basilica, which we randomly ran into.

The Walter museum was actually one of the best parts of the weekend!  There were awesome exhibits of 16th through 18th century Italian art, arranged in chronological order, so that you could really get a sense of the development of styles throughout the centuries.  This one was a particular favorite of the group of linguists I was with:

Allegory of Grammar

Laurent de la Hyre, 1650

Anyways, despite it being fun to be around all of the people from my field, it is nice to be back in (warmer) California--and back in the kitchen (read: not eating gross, oily, fried bar food every day).  I was so glad, in fact, that I decided to use up the leftover egg whites in my fridge by making macarons (most definitely the antithesis to pub food).

Rose macarons

with dark chocolate-basil buttercream

Now that Christmas and New Year's are over, it's time to look forward to Valentine's Day!  (Yes, it's never too early for the next holiday, in my book.)  So, if roses are supposed to mean that someone likes you, and chocolates are supposed to mean that someone loves you, what about rose macarons with dark chocolate-basil buttercream?  If someone made these for me, personally, I'd probably hop into their arms with little hesitation.  ;-P

In all seriousness, though, the initial inspiration for these macarons did not come from thinking about Valentine's Day.  These are actually inspired by the movie, Like Water for Chocolate.  Now, if you haven't seen the movie yet, I highly recommend it!  We were assigned the film for a Spanish class that I'm taking this quarter, and so I watched it the night I returned from Baltimore.  Long story short, the film (based on the novel) is a long love story, punctuated by different foods that reflect the main character's various emotions throughout.  In one scene where she tries to woo an unrequited lover through her cooking, she makes this roasted quail with rose petal sauce that just looks downright divine.

Ever since then, I've been craving rose myself.  Then, a scoop of rose-vanilla ice cream from Ici in Berkeley today only helped to intensify rather than satisfy my craving.

When I was baking these, the whole house smelled of roses.  It was absolutely wonderful and fragrant!  To go with the macarons, I whipped up a quick dark chocolate buttercream, and to help balance the buttercream with the rose macaron, I added in some freshly-dried basil powder to the chocolate buttercream.  The basil, which you can't really place when you eat these, lends this great earthiness to the buttercream, which helps to keep it on the less-sweet side and compliments the flowery flavor of the rose perfectly.

Quite a nice way to unwind after a weekend of travelling, no?  :-)

Read on for recipe...