Champagne-Pear Sorbet

Ok, so I've been a bit AWOL of late, its been almost a month since my last post! But to make the long story of why very short, work > blog, so unfortunately that comes first.

But now I'm back (at least for a while...) and I've got a recipe that I'm really excited about. Anyone who's ever been to Columbus, OH, and many who've never even come close, know the name Jeni Britton (or at least the Jeni part). For those who have no clue who she is, take a moment to check out her day job. The site unfortunately does little justice to the general awesomeness that is Jeni's ice cream, sorbet, or frozen yogurt. Ms. Britton likes to push some boundaries when it comes to her creations, a current 'seasonal flavor' is celery while a standard 'signature flavor' is thai chili. So after a recent visit, I decided to try my own hand at a unique yet totally awesome frozen treat.

The key to making this type of endeavor pan out on the first attempt is to start with a flavor pairing that already works well. I don't know how or why it popped into my head, but fancy dinner desserts seemed like a good place to start. Having gone on a few cruises in my currently short lifetime, I thought about when they had the 'dessert tray', which erroneously had a plate of fruit, cheese, and nuts next to the crème brûlée and triple chocolate cake. Now that I'm older I realize adults consider a glass of champagne with an assortment of nuts, cheeses, and fruits to be a worthy dessert, and they're actually right. Since I planned on using champagne, a sorbet was a natural fit over an ice cream. And pears are just hitting their season, so like Ms. Britton I figured I'd work with what's naturally abundant.

Now, a simple champagne and pear sorbet is pretty pedestrian compared to Red Beets with Lemon & Poppy Seeds, so that's where the nuts and cheese come into the picture. Having just bought a bunch of walnuts to make candied walnuts for salads, those were a natural addition. For the cheese I decided a mild crumbly blue would provide come interesting contrast to the rest of the flavors, as well as a dose of salt to intersect the sweet and tart flavor of the sorbet itself. But cheese in a sorbet? And blue cheese!? I had to do some checking with others to make sure I wasn't going crazy. After sampling an n of 3, and getting back overwhelming statistical evidence that it sounded yummy (p<0.001), I went for it... and boy am I glad I did.

Champagne-pear sorbet with walnuts and blue cheese:
1 bottle champagne (nothing fancy...)
1.5 lbs. pears (pref. bosc)
1 cup sugar
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2-1 cup crumbly blue cheese

1. Pour the champagne into a container big enough to hold the pears when chopped up.
2. Peel and core the pears. Chop into smaller pieces and put into the container with the champagne. The acidity in the champagne will help prevent browning and infuse some flavor into the pears.
3. When the pears are all chopped, let them sit in the champagne for 5 minutes and then pour the champagne into another container. Take 1 cup of the champagne and add to a small pot with the sugar. Bring to a boil and hold for 5 minutes, then cover and turn off the heat to make a champagne simple syrup.
4. Put the pears into a food processor, blender, or food mill and purée. When done, add the pear purée, champagne, and champagne syrup to a container and put in the fridge till well chilled.
5. Add the sorbet base to your ice cream maker and process like always. When finished, mix in the walnut pieces and blue cheese crumbles thoroughly! Pack into containers and harden in the freezer (although eating it immediately is really really good).

The final product. You can see bits of the cheese (in white) and the faint darker tan of the walnuts.

Pick out the dark walnut pieces and use them for something else; blue cheese crumbles shouldn't be bigger than a pencil eraser.

As I said, no need to buy anything fancy. I would suggest a brut or extra brut if you have really sweet/ripe pears.

So, there you have it. The perfect fancy after dinner dessert, made into an even more perfect sorbet. I will admit, that before I made this, I wasn't too sure of how it would turn out. I mean, goat cheese in ice cream is one thing, but blue cheese in a sorbet can go horribly wrong. Fortunately my culinary intuition (or is it insanity?) was right. If the cheese really is putting you off from trying this, do yourself a favor and try this: make the the sorbet as given, and only add some nuts and cheese to half the batch. The champagne pear sorbet itself is great, especially right from the churn when the acidity of the champagne is still at full power. The nuts and cheese just give it that little push into uniquely awesome, its a recipe that Jeni Britton would be proud of... and I'm sure you'll all love it too!

New recipe to be out next week, so until then...
Cheers,
Mike :)

Nut butter bonanza!

Salmonella in peanut butter shipped all over the world. Its been in the news a lot lately. While I am certainly amazed, like many of you out there, at the severe regulatory lapses that allowed this to happen, I'm not entirely surprised either. Having worked with a number of food scientists and taken courses on food microbiology, I accept that my food is no where near as idyllic as its made out to be. But still, what are you supposed to do when you desire an Elvis Special (fried peanut butter and banana with honey)?

I would be a pretty bad blogger (esp. food blogger) if I didn't tell you how to make your own. But I'm not just going to tell you how to make peanut butter, I'm going to tell you how to make pretty much any nut butter! Ok, ok, all the recipes are essentially the same and there's only one technique and piece of equipment you need. Tell you what, I'll throw in a bonus recipe, hazelnut/chocolate spread (a.k.a. Nutella) to make up for the lack of complexity in the others. Although its precisely the lack of complexity that makes me wonder why more people don't make their own nut butters in the first place. I guess the potential for a million dollar lawsuit pay-out is just too irresistible in these uncertain economic times.

Standard Nut Butter:

~1 lb nuts of choice*
salt as needed

Wow, that was a short list. Now to tackle that asterisk. Depending on the nut you choose, you'll need to do some prep. Peanuts and cashews in a can can be used straight. Almonds are best blanched and then toasted. Hazelnuts should be toasted in a pan till the skin turns dark and starts peeling, then transfer to a towel and rub the rest of the skin off (you don't need to remove all of it, just most). I haven't tried walnuts, pecans, macadamias, and some others, so those will have other pre-processing needs.

1. Place the nuts in the bowl of your food chopper and process into a fine meal like you see below (In this case I'm using cashews).

2. Keep processing in 2-3 minute runs. You'll notice that the meal will begin to clump along the edges of the bowl like in the picture below. Simply scrape down the sides as this happens.

3. Keep processing in longer spins, ~5 minutes at a time so not to burn out the motor in your processor. The combination of the heat and chopping/griding will cause the natural oils to come out, bringing the meal together into a ball that will spin around the blade.
4. Eventually, the ball will begin to disintegrate and in a couple more minutes you'll have a creamy nut butter. At this point you can add salt to taste. If you want a chunky version, throw in some raw nuts and process a bit more.

Now for what you really wanted...
Hazelnut/chocolate spread:
1 lb. hazelnuts, toasted and de-skinned
1/2 cup cacao nibs
1 cup powdered sugar, possibly more
2 tsp. vanilla extract

1. Grind the nuts in your food processor till you get fine crumbs. Add in the cacao nibs and process till you reach the smooth and creamy stage. The oils from the hazelnuts and the cacao butter will make the mix very viscous.
2. Add in the vanilla and process to incorporate, then add in the powdered sugar, one tablespoon at a time, scraping down the sides of the processor bowl often.
3. Depending on the creaminess you desire (Nutella is pretty thick) you may need more or less powdered sugar. You want your spread to still be fairly viscous, so don't add more than another 1/2 cup. When its at the point you want throw it in a jar or other container and put in the fridge over night, this will firm it up.

Cacao nibs. You can pick them up from Whole Foods in their bulk section. If there's no WF near you, you can get them off the internet, like here: Amazon.com Grocery

So, the texture isn't as smooth as real nutella, but it sure does taste great. The first day you take it out of the fridge it will be fairly solid and hard to spread, but don't worry, it gets better a day later.


So there you go, my super secret easy method for making your own nut butters at home. I know there are a ton of other methods listed out there on the internet, but most of those tell you to use some form of oil to get the desired consistency. In my experience, most nuts have enough natural oils that any extra oil is unnecessary. However, depending on the state of the buts nuts you purchased (i.e. the pre-bagged ones you find in your local grocer's "baking" isle) then you may actually need to use the oil. In those cases, the nuts have been around long enough that the natural oils are gone and need to be replaced. Ideally, you should use the same oil as the nut you're using (almond oil for almond butter, for instance) but failing that, neutral flavored oils such as canola or vegetable work best. Just don't use more than 2 tbsp. per pound of nuts. If you think you need more than that, then I'd say your batch (nuts) weren't good in the first place and you should just pitch it and move on.