Vanilla Ice Cream

Really? Vanilla? That’s so…vanilla of me!

This vanilla ice cream was a birthday request from the boy, and who am I to deny birthday requests? I did ask him what he wanted, after all! His reply was vanilla ice cream with some sort of warm chocolate cake. The vanilla ice cream turned out fabulous; the Aztec chocolate lava cake only turned out alright.

Vanilla ice cream is America’s favorite ice cream flavor, with vanilla garnering 29% of the votes, and chocolate coming in second with 8.9%. If you had told me these results when I was younger, I would have called the masses crazy; chocolate is sooo much better than plain old vanilla. Now that I’m older, I do see the appeal of vanilla ice cream. It’s beautifully simple.

Because of vanilla ice cream's simplicity, you can top almost any dessert with vanilla ice cream and make it exponentially better. Apple pie is great, but add a scoop of cold vanilla ice cream to warm pie, and it makes people swoon.

Want to make some crazy ice cream concoction, or new flavor? Start with vanilla ice cream. Vanilla can take fruit, chocolate, jimmies, cookies, candy, wine, beer, tea, flowers, herbs, vegetables, and even meat (?). Anything, really.

The lesson here is that if you memorize a basic vanilla ice cream recipe (with or without the vanilla bean), you can make just about any ice cream flavor you can imagine – even chocolate.

The following recipe is a custard-style ice cream, meaning that it has egg yolks and requires cooking for the mixture to thicken before you churn the ice cream. Custard-style ice creams are rich and creamy.

A simpler type of ice cream to make is Philadelphia-style ice cream (Philly loves to claim things – I've got a whole book on things that happened first or originated in Philly – It's quite amazing), which does not have egg yolks, so does not require cooking. Philadelphia-style ice cream is lighter and chewier than custard-style ice cream. Simply remove the egg yolks from the recipe below, skip the cooking to thicken, and you’ve got Philadelphia-style ice cream; great for when you’re in a hurry.

As I type this, I am making another batch of ice cream. I can feel ice cream coming on strong like it did last summer, so forgive me, and bear with me. I have a list a mile long of ice creams I want to make, including the one I meant to start this season off with, and a vegan ice cream that feel through the cracks last year. I'm (not seriously) thinking of changing the name of my blog to something like Cream Queen, or maybe I Scream, because, believe it or not, I do know that Mac & Cheese is a really stupid blog name. Meh, I’m horrible at coming up with names.

Vanilla Ice Cream

1 cup whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
¾ cup sugar
pinch of salt
1 vanilla bean
5 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• Warm milk, cream, sugar, and salt in a medium sauce pan. Split the vanilla bean lengthwise, and scrape the seeds into the warm milk, and also add the bean. Cover, remove from heat, and steep for 30 minutes.
• In a medium bowl, whisk the egg yolks. Remove the vanilla bean from the warm milk, and slowly pour the warm milk into the egg yolks, whisking constantly. Return the egg and milk mixture to the saucepan.
• With a heatproof spatula, stir the mixture constantly over medium-low heat until the mixture thickens, making sure to scrape the bottom of the pan . This is a “slow and low” process, to avoid cooking the egg and getting cooked egg bits in your custard.
• Pour the custard through a mesh strainer. Add the vanilla extract, and cool before churning.

Urban Gardening 2.0 - Mid-May

This is how our jumbled, tight-for-space garden is looking right about now. Not everything is labeled in the above photo, because the bed really is jumbled. There's a basil hiding between this and that, and a few tomatoes in the back, and even a watermelon over yonder. The watermelon is an insane idea for such a small spot, but we're going vertical with it, or, at least, hope to.

The empty space along the front of the bed used to hold cute, yellow violas that were an impulse buy waaay back when the first flowers were hitting the market, tempting saps like myself. The violas had to go to make room for the veggies.But I'm notoriously cheap (or you could say economical), so the yellow violas got a second life in containers.

Yeah, yellow violas and white geraniums together make my inner designer and outer hort snob retch, but the geraniums were free, and, like I said, I'm cheap! I'll tolerate this combination until something else free comes along. Plants are expensive!

Little baby celery stalks. Aren't they cute?

Bad flowers - mizuna (L) and arugula (R) are bolting. These annual greens are on their way out. Sad face.

Good flowers - tomatillos are in our future. Happy face!


Urban Gardening 2.0 - Late April
Urban Gardeining 2.0 - Late March
Urban Gardening 1.0

Chabaa Thai Bistro

We met a couple of friends on Main Street in Manayunk for dinner at the highly praised BYOB Thai restaurant, Chabaa Thai Bistro. This was my first time on Main Street, Manayunk, and I have now seen firsthand the drunken frat boy stereotypes that are rumored to rule these parts. The rumors are true!

Duck into the tiny, warm Chabaa Thai to forget the world around you, but get a reservation first! The downstairs of Chabaa Thai is tiny. A slightly larger, but still small dining area is upstairs.

Our server was friendly, and even recognized our friends who have dined there maybe four times previously. The white wine we brought along was plunked in a tableside ice bucket, which we only appreciated a week later when we did not get such a luxury at a couple of other BYOB’s.

For a starter, I wanted the shrimp and tofu fresh spring rolls (sans shrimp), but the rolls are pre-made, and cannot be made to order. Boo, hiss!

Instead, I ordered the garden salad with crispy fried tofu, dressed with a light, tangy peanut sauce. This salad is large and should be split. The salad consisted of tomato, cucumber, shredded cabbage, shredded carrot, broccoli, lettuce, and tofu.

I’m still on my quest (it’s slow going) for a Thai restaurant with Pad Thai and Massaman curry made to my liking. Chabaa Thai does not have Massaman curry on the menu, so no matter how good their Pad Thai is, Chabaa Thai can never be my regular Thai place for those times when I waver between my two favorite Thai dishes.

A large pile of noodles hides behind the veggies.

How is their Pad Thai? It’s a damn shame they don’t have Massaman curry, because their Pad Thai is my favorite so far.

I ordered the garden Pad Thai, beautifully presented with a wedge of lime, mango, lettuce, scallions, shredded carrots, purple cabbage, and red pepper to the side of a generous pile of perfectly sweet and tangy noodles.

If I had know that the vegetarian Pad Thai came with so many veggies, I would have skipped the salad starter. I also should not have eaten the entire dish, but it was just too good to stop at pleasantly full!

Our friends also ordered the garden Pad Thai and the crab Pad Thai. I think Chabaa Thai knows their Pad Thai is good, because they have many to order – chicken, beef, shrimp, seafood, salmon, scallop, king prawn, crispy duck, vegetarian, and one particularly interesting Pad Thai wrapped in an egg crepe.

The boy ordered the Penang curry with fried tofu, onions, and peas. While not Massaman, Penang curry might be my next favorite Thai coconut curry, and Chabaa Thai’s Penang curry is medium bodied (I hate thin sauces), and comes with a nice heat.

Not sure how often I’ll be in Manayunk, but if you find yourself on Main Street, Chabaa Thai is not to be missed!

Chabaa Thai Bistro
4371 Main St., Philadelphia, PA, 19127
215-483-1979
Mon., 5-9 p.m; Tues, 5-9:30 p.m.; Fri. 5-10 p.m.
Sat. 1-10 p.m.; Sun. 1-9 p.m.
BYOB

Thanks, But No Thanks

Whoa! There are two vegetarian dinners this Tuesday, May 13 in Philly. It’s like a dream come true…except I’m not going to either one because, well, I’m a snot.

First, there’s the vegetarian beer dinner at Jose Pistolas, but I hate beer with a capital H! Swallowing beer evokes the same gag reflex as breathing deeply whilst standing inside a festival port-a-potty. Thanks for thinking of us veg-heads, but next time make it a tequila dinner!

Then there’s the wine dinner at Horizon’s (scroll down), the vegan fine dining heartthrob of Philly. They’re serving wine from Chadsford Winery, my least favorite Southeastern PA winery. Were they to serve Va La wines , I would have been there two weeks ago camping out for tickets. Plus (this is where I really become a snot), the label on the featured wine has the mug of some long-haired dude (WMMR's Pierre Robert, who's a vegetarian, and probably a nice guy) on a tie-dye background. Men with long hair and tie-dye also evoke the same gag reflex as beer and overflowing port-a-potties.

So, thanks to everyone thinking of me, and sending me the links to these events, but I’m bowing out.

Fakin' It Like A Local

Everyone proudly yammers on about eating locally produced food. Well, here are a couple of local foods expressly for the fake-meat lovin’ vegans in the Pennsylvania area.

When friends told us about Ray’s Seitan, a locally produced seitan that they buy in bulk off the back of a truck in some sort of illicit street deal, I wanted a hook-up. First, they said to go to Essene, my regular Queen Village health food store , to buy a container to see if I like it (also sold at Whole Foods and elsewhere). Pushers!

Yes, I do like it! Can I get five kilos street side, ‘cause $4.49 a tub is pricey compared to the canned Chinese blow I’ve been getting.

If you’re not from Pennsylvania (I’m not), you probably have no idea what scrapple is. Let's just say it’s pig parts and cornmeal, usually sliced and fried up for breakfast. Kinda like liver mush if you’re from the South (eaten it!), or pâté if you’re French (eaten it, too!). Ain’t never had scrapple, don’t know what it’s supposed to taste like, but the PA people love it.

Vrapple, a locally made vegan version of scrapple, surprised the hell out of me flavor-wise (this is a good thing). It’s subtly sweet and nicely spiced – like a spicy sausage with a bit of maple syrup mixed in. The texture is a bit grainy from the cornmeal. Is this what scrapple is supposed to taste like?

I would not be mad if all the Philly brunch spots decided to get PA-proud and vegan/veggie vigilant and offered Ray’s Seitan and Vrapple on their menus.

Raw Beet Salad with Goat Cheese and Apple

I won Jamie Oliver’s cookbook, Cook with Jamie, from Serious Eats, and it arrived a few weeks ago! (Yes, won! I can't believe it! This calls for one more exclamation point!)

This cook book, a couple of concert tickets, and a bouquet of Tootsie Pops are the extent of what I’ve won in my life from entering contests and playing bingo. I’m not the luckiest person, so I won’t be buying a lottery ticket anytime soon, and this recent winning guarantees that I won't be winning anything for the next three years – at least!

I think Serious Eats is, hands down, one of the best food sites out there, but I’m a little concerned about the state of their office space (my cookbook was covered in thick dust when I pulled it out of the padded shipping envelope), and wonder if a janitor made it into this year’s budget . No matter the filth, can’t beat free!

I’ve never watched Jamie’s cooking show, but I’ve caught him a few times on The Today Show before heading off to work, and he seems to be a very likable, chill dude that doesn't have a whisk up his ass. (Lots of people think he's cute, and he is, but I don't like blondes. Nor do I have crushes on people that aren't real to me.)

Cook with Jamie is a cookbook that covers the basics of cooking, and sticks to simple, fresh dishes. As Jamie states in the introduction, he thinks this cookbook should have been his first.Sliced beets before getting matchsticked.

My first dish from Cook with Jamie is the raw beet salad. Can you believe that I had never eaten a non-pickled beet until six years ago? It turns out I adore cooked beets, and eat them every chance I get. Now, can you believe I’ve never eaten raw beets until I tried this recipe? (There is a slight chance I was slipped raw beets at some point and didn’t realize it.) Turns out, I love raw beets, too.

This raw beet salad is very similar to coleslaw, which is up there at the top of the list of my favorite comfort foods. If you like the tang and crunch of coleslaw, but want to wow the crowd with color, I’d pull this recipe out.

Just like Jamie recommends in his book – substitutions, and a bit of this and a bit of that to suit your taste – I altered the recipe according to what I had on hand and my taste. It still turned out fabulous!

I used goat cheese instead of feta, green apple instead of pear, omitted the sprinkling of pine nuts, and changed the dressing to suit my love of tang and dislike of oil. (If you must know, the original dressing called for: 3 ½ tablespoons lemon juice, 10 tablespoons olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste)

Raw Beet Salad with Goat Cheese and Apple
Adapted from Cook with Jamie by Jamie Oliver
Serves 4

4 beets, different colors if possible, washed, peeled, and cut into matchsticks
2 green apples, peeled, cored, and cut into matchsticks
7 ounces goat cheese
3 tablespoons lemon juice
3 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar
5 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste
small bunch of fresh mint

• In a small bowl, mix lemon juice, vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper to make the dressing
• In a large bowl, pour the dressing over the beet and apple matchsticks.
• Individually plate the salad, and crumble goat cheese on top, and sprinkle with mint leaves.

Sonam

I participated in 8 Days of Eats, South Street’s version of Restaurant Week, by visiting the unfortunate pharmaceutical-sounding Sonam, a self-proclaimed “global dim sum” restaurant (read eclectic small plates) on the east end of South Street.

Previous participation in such restaurant weeks has proven that vegetarians don’t get that much of a break during what is meant to be a money-saving way to dine at restaurants. This is because vegetarian dishes are usually the cheapest on the menu. The same rang true for our experience at Sonam. We saved $7 between the two of us (one vegetarian and one pescatarian), or the equivalent of one of Sonam’s cheaper small plates. The fact that Sonam is BYOB is what really saved us money!

On to the dishes…

We started with the S’mores, three wheat cracker sandwiches filled with fig reduction and goat cheese marshmallow. These were awesome! The goat cheese marshmallow is really just a nub of goat cheese mimicking a marshmallow. Sweet, but not too sweet. I’m stealing this idea at some point in my hors d’oeuvre-making life.

Naan bread with a bright and tangy roasted red pepper dip (my fav), and an earthy sunflower seed dip (the boys fav). Not the most exciting dish in the bunch, but besides the edamame and the cucumber noodles, which we didn’t order, we were running out of vegetarian and fish dishes on Sonam’s small, but thoughtful menu.

Hamachi nachos with avocado puree, pico oil, and mixed sprouts. The boy felt the fish could have been sliced a little thicker.

Cold soup duo of white gazpacho and crème fraiche in a cucumber cup, and Asian pear and sake soup in a pear cup. Loved these! I wish I had eaten the ginger spiced pear cups before popping the cucumber cups, because the unexpectedly spicy gazpacho ruined my palate for a brief bit.

Baramundi in rice papillote with artichoke puree, orange segments, mint, Myer lemon vinegrette, and a crispy fish chip. The boy loved this dish! The rice papillote is akin to a dumpling, and is an edible play on paper-wrapped fish. The acidic Myer lemon vinegrette made the dish.

I had to order the Mexican mac and cheese with queso blanco, pico de gallo, diced avocado, corn tortilla crust and sour cream. I’m a mac and cheese purist, and this is not really mac and cheese, but noodles coated lightly with a mild cheese sauce and topped with a taco salad crust. A nice Mexican-flavored interpretation of mac and cheese.

These bread pudding waffles topped with vanilla ice cream and strawberries sound ho-hum, but they might have been the best and most filling thing we ate all night! The waffles are made out of bread pudding which is made out of croissants. Enough said!

The crème brulee duos at Sonam are changed out nightly. On this particular night, lemongrass and coconut crème brulees were on the menu. When I mentioned to our server that I’m not a huge fan of coconut, she offered that the kitchen would make the next day’s white chocolate and espresso crème brulee duo. The creme brulees had a grainy texture, one more so than the other, and the white chocolate crème brulee had a bitter caramelized sugar top.

All in all, we enjoyed sampling the menu from Sonam, with about half of our dishes coming out real winners.

I like the fact that Sonam leisurely staggered our plates, and took notice of when we finished each plate. We never had more than two plates on our table at once.

After our one and a half to two-hour dinner, we paid our bill, and lingered about ten minutes to finish the last sips in my wine glass. We were then offered complimentary limoncello by our ever pleasant server, if we would vacate our table and sit in the lounge area so a waiting party could have our table. I found this odd, but, having never worked in a restaurant, I really don't know why this happened. The dinner was long not by our doings, but the kitchen's. The party beside us was there longer than us, and was at the same point in their meal. There were other open tables. Who knows? We took the limoncello!

Sonam’s site says they change their small menu seasonally, but they’d be wise to change it more frequently. We pretty much went through all of the vegetarian and fish plates, and even a party of three or four omnivores could sample Sonam's entire menu in one sitting.

The small plates may leave you hungry, though, if you don’t order at least the number of plates the two of us did. I woke up at 5 a.m the next morning when my stomach tried to eat itself!

Sonam
223 South Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147
215-922-3092
Sun., Mon., Wed., Thurs., 5-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 5-11 p.m.; Tues., closed
BYOB

Srsly!

Could everybody's brother and mother's brother not schedule festivals, sidewalk sales, garage sales, barbecues, concerts, and other fun events in May. I can't get to them all! And I want to. There're like six more months of pleasant weather ahead of us (and, no, it does not get hot here). Spread the fun out, people!

Alright, rant over. I'm getting my party started!

Philippine Bread House

Perhaps I meant to go to the Philippine Bread House and Restaurant the other day when I got lost in search of a Filipino sandwich and came out empty-handed at Ciavelita’s . Well, The Philippine Bread House doesn’t have sandwiches either. (Where did my mind come up with that notion?)

What the Philippine Bread House does have is homemade Philippine cuisine lined up on the front counter in Corningware blue cornflower casserole dishes (it doesn’t get any more unpretentious), but this bakery/restaurant more famously bakes up sweet, Spanish-influence Filipino breads on the premises.

The Philippine Bread House just outside of downtown Newark, Delaware on Kirkwood highway resides in an old Taco Bell building, and is a little over a month old, but their New Jersey location has been around for a while and has its share of devotees.

Philippine cuisine is not vegetarian friendly, so I could not sample the lunch offerings from the casserole dishes. I sampled the breads, and let me just say…nom nom nom. I ate so many yummy sweet rolls that I had a tummy ache (in a good way). Pandesal - soft, subtly sweet rolls traditionally eaten for breakfast. A bag of twelve costs $1.75! These are great alone, but would be perfect with jam or in bread pudding.

Ensaymada – soft, sweet bread topped with butter, sugar and mild white cheese. Um, cheese? Yes! It was so good; I nearly fell on the floor, but was already sitting on the floor.

Ube cake – just like the ensaymada, but with a ribbon of dark purple ube. The ube doesn’t have much flavor, but the purple sure is pretty.

Cheese roll – sweet, football-shaped roll topped with sugar and butter, and a ribbon of cream cheese inside.

All are fabulous, but the winner is the ensaymada. I wish I worked in an office so I could bring in a huge tray of ensaymadas and be everyone’s hero!

The Philippine Bread House and Restaurant
1020 Capitol Trail, Newark, Delaware, 19711
302-455-1211
daily, 7 a.m.-7 p.m.

Avocado Ice Cream

Not a single craving for ice cream came knocking this winter (bizarre!), so I did not break out the ice cream machine, or even purchase a pint of ice cream from the grocer. But, folks, the ice cream machine is officially back in action!

The desire for ice cream began about a month ago, when I wanted to make ___ ice cream (can’t say; it might still be coming), but couldn’t find the main ingredient. I tried to make ice cream last weekend, but forgot half of the machine in Wilmington (doh!). This weekend the ingredients and the machine came together, and it happened – avocado ice cream!!

I do love the Vietnamese avocado shakes so, so much. And when I was in Mexico I was eating avocado everyday, wondering why I don’t eat it more often (it’s fattening). This past weekend presented us with a Mexican brunch, so avocado ice cream was my contribution to the meal, and kick off to the ice cream season.

Yes, it tastes like avocado – but with sugar and cream. If you've ever ventured into the realm of non-traditional ice cream flavors, you already know that anything tastes spectacular mixed with sugar and cream, then frozen.

The sour cream adds a tangy note that's not present in the Vietnamese avocado shakes. If I were to make it again I might skip the sour cream, and just sub in more avocado. Just a thought; still yummy, though.

There’s no egg custard base to cook; just throw the six ingredients in the blender, and then in the ice cream machine. Painfully simple.

Hee hee! The avocado-green blender really is avocado-green.

Avocado Ice Cream
Adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz
Makes 1 quart

3 ripe avocados, pits removed and flesh cut into chunks
¾ cup sugar
1 cup fat free sour cream
½ cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon lime juice
pinch of salt

• Put avocado chunks and the remaining ingredients into a blender, and blend until smooth.
• Pour blended ingredients into an ice cream machine, and churn until frozen.
• Store in freezer.