Shades of White: Sugar High Friday #31
Sugar High Friday #31 is on the horizon. The theme? All white stuff! And what, pray tell, did we make so presciently just a few days ago?
Why, David Lebovitz's French-style Vanilla Ice Cream, from his fabulous new book The Perfect Scoop, of course!
"Vanilla ice cream?" you ask. "That's it?"
Yes, but it is David Lebovitz's vanilla ice cream. It requires six eggs, copious quantities of cream and slightly less milk. It is, in short, superb.
Normally I would not waste valuable taste buds on an ice cream flavor so ...well, vanilla. I tend more towards the triple-chocolate-caramel-fudge-nut-brownie-ice-cream-topped-with-marshmallow-and-raspberry-sauce approach.
But we had just made an apple pie. Nothing goes better with an apple pie than vanilla ice cream. NOTHING. (Pipe down, all you sharp cheddar fans out there.) When we tasted a bit of the final product straight from our beloved Il Gelataio Junior, Randy's face became suffused with a beatific, rapturous glow.
"It's perfect," he said.
It also provided us with an excuse to use up some of our huge stash of vanilla beans. Our kitchen is awash in them. Two large clumps resembling bundles of miniature firewood rest in plastic on our shelf, next to trashier foodstuffs such as a stale bag of El Ranchero tortilla chips and Safeway brand microwave popcorn. Because of their abundance, they are accorded little respect in the hierarchy of ingredients in our kitchen. We give them away and invent uses for the rest. We haven't bought vanilla extract in a year (vanilla bean + vodka = extract).
How can we afford to live so high on the hog? Who do we think we are, smothering ourselves in vanilla beans when they cost $7 a pod at the local spice shop?
We are cheap. And we like the internet. And now it is time to let you in on the secret. We're going public with our source.
Just promise you won't tell.
Why, David Lebovitz's French-style Vanilla Ice Cream, from his fabulous new book The Perfect Scoop, of course!
Yes, but it is David Lebovitz's vanilla ice cream. It requires six eggs, copious quantities of cream and slightly less milk. It is, in short, superb.
Normally I would not waste valuable taste buds on an ice cream flavor so ...well, vanilla. I tend more towards the triple-chocolate-caramel-fudge-nut-brownie-ice-cream-topped-with-marshmallow-and-raspberry-sauce approach.
But we had just made an apple pie. Nothing goes better with an apple pie than vanilla ice cream. NOTHING. (Pipe down, all you sharp cheddar fans out there.) When we tasted a bit of the final product straight from our beloved Il Gelataio Junior, Randy's face became suffused with a beatific, rapturous glow.
"It's perfect," he said.
It also provided us with an excuse to use up some of our huge stash of vanilla beans. Our kitchen is awash in them. Two large clumps resembling bundles of miniature firewood rest in plastic on our shelf, next to trashier foodstuffs such as a stale bag of El Ranchero tortilla chips and Safeway brand microwave popcorn. Because of their abundance, they are accorded little respect in the hierarchy of ingredients in our kitchen. We give them away and invent uses for the rest. We haven't bought vanilla extract in a year (vanilla bean + vodka = extract).
How can we afford to live so high on the hog? Who do we think we are, smothering ourselves in vanilla beans when they cost $7 a pod at the local spice shop?
We are cheap. And we like the internet. And now it is time to let you in on the secret. We're going public with our source.
Just promise you won't tell.
posted by cindym at 10:34 AM
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