[Sca-cooks] Dessert board

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jul 29, 2006, at 11:48 AM, Johnna Holloway wrote:

> Stefan li Rous wrote:
>> Why use just plain whipped cream for this? The period "snow" is nicer
>> is nicer, in my opinion.
>>
>>
> Whipped creme beaten intensely stiff and kept on ice and in coolers  
> will
> hold up for a number of hours in intense heat.
> I don't see any mentions that "snow" keeps as well.

Hmmm. I should probably keep my mouth shut, but then since very few  
people actually follow the recipe for "snow" (beating, skimming,  
beating more, skimming more, rather than merely beating cream and  
whites separately, and then combining them, or eliminating the whites  
entirely), I wonder how well Swiss meringue (this involves adding a  
boiling syrup in a thin stream to the beaten whites, instead of  
straight sugar, and while it isn't strictly "cooked", it is believed  
by some to be more stable) would hold up folded in with whipped cream...

> Maybe we should hold a "global warming" or isn't the summer too hot
> discussion about what works and doesn't work
> in this heat. Michigan is headed for records next week and I know the
> west has been suffering for weeks already.

Well, my cherry experiment ended on a bad note, with the cherries  
sort of oxidizing in the cooking process. At one point they acted  
like they were deciding to stick, but hadn't really committed to it,  
and they definitely did not burn, but the whole thing assumed a  
slightly brownish shade and a sort of sherried flavor that made the  
whole suspiciously similar to prune puree.

For those who may have missed the beginning of that particular  
experiment (I don't know if I mentioned it here or in private e- 
mails), the Mysterious Brownout in northwestern Queens a week or so  
ago (which lasted for just over a week for us) and worked havoc on  
some, but not all, electrical systems, led to the discovery of a  
large amount of sticky red fluid in the bottom of the freezer, which  
we at first assumed to be coming from the steaks cut from two whole  
strip loins and one rib-eye,  but which on closer inspection proved  
to be juice from about 25-30 pounds of sour cherries, thawing in the  
bottom of the freezer.

We figured that we might need to process those cherries in some way,  
to make more room in the freezer and enable us to rearrange things  
and create an improved air flow, and what we decided on was a sort of  
Genoese cherry paste.

<sigh>

What we have instead is quite a few jars (approximately two gallons)  
of sour cherry jam that looks and tastes like bad lekvar.

I should probably throw it out...

Adamantius