SC - OT - Pseudo-Medievaloid Cookery Saves the Day

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Hullo, the list!

Having taken a day off from Nearly Everything including (gasp!) blowing
off fighting practice, I'm faced with the prospect of dealing with
another Typical Environmentally Confused Early Summer Day in New York
(i.e. temperature and humidity both in the mid 90's in early June), I
ask myself what Brian Boitano would do in a situation like this. Failing
that, I ask myself what Le Menagier would do.

Well, duh!

He'd make hippocras ice cream, of course, from the scads of leftover
ground hippocras spices he has lying around his kitchen! In keeping with
this idea, I located a pint of heavy cream and beat it up a bit with six
large egg yolks. I began stirring this up with my stainless steel mixing
bowl over a pot of simmering water, until the mixtured thickened and
coated the back of my wooden spoon. For various complex reasons, I made
this stuff without sugar, and added three tablespoons of a horrible
chemical that sweetens roughly the same as sugar in similar measurement
units (so most people should probably just throw in three tablespoons of
sugar), as well as a teaspoon of vanilla extract (having no vanilla
beans in the house and on the grounds that this is hippocras ice cream,
not hippocras). And, of course, about a tablespoon of ground hippocras
spices, in the proportions given by Le Menagier and available on HG
Cariadoc's website... .
  
After cooling to more or less room temperature, I was able to freeze the
stuff by placing my mixing bowl in another mixing bowl filled with
cracked ice (figure about two-to-three pounds of ice wrapped in a
largish kitchen towel and whacked several times with a wooden mallet)
mixed with about a pound of Kosher salt. I had to stir and scrape from
the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula every minute or so, for
about half an hour, until the custard was ...ahem... stondyng, after
which I was able to put the bowl in the freezer to firm up to a more
scoopable consistency. 

Ideally, I'd garnish this with candied spice seeds, possibly grains of
paradise, but all I have is anise and I'm not sure it'll go.

I'm serving this with cold, sliced, poached pork loin with a tonatto
sauce that I haven't made yet, marinated, grilled zucchini, a salad as
yet undetermined, and some kinda Swiss peasant bread my lady wife brings
fairly frequently. Oh, and, I suspect, big Sicilian semi-ripe green
olives. I have no advice on wines, but since I'm the only one is the
family who drinks wine anyway, as a rule, I may do this the easy way and
suffer through a small, chilled bottle of Belgian Whit de Bruges. Many
of my favorite wines are beers. 

Thank you, Menagier, for showing me The Way!

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com