Frozen Raspberry Cheesecake

Enough with the US election. Obama is probably going to win and Romney is boringly predictable and will soon be forgotten. Here’s something for the future, a really easy recipe that’s better than anything you can buy.

• 250g mascarpone
• 125ml cream
• 500g frozen raspberries (fresh will do but frozen gives you a head start)
• 125ml sugar

Whip the cream lightly. Poor the sugar over the raspberries and work in the mascarpone: if too hard, let the raspberries thaw a little. Then work in the cream, making sure the sugar is well mixed.

That’s it. Serve as is, or put it back in the freezer to set a bit more. If you leave it overnight in the freezer, you may want to bring it our half an hour before serving.

Technically, it needs a crust to be a real cheesecake but it’s good enough just like this.

Pumkin and rhubarb pie with Lime Mousse Ice Cream

In another of my rare forays into cuisine (for another, see my trick for making gelato), here is a crossover of my own creation: pumpkin and rhubarb pie. This makes 2 pies (20cm) or 4 smaller (10cm) ones.

Pie crust
4 cups flour
200 ml macadamia oil
2 teaspoons sugar
6 tablespoons chilled water

Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly then gradually incorporate the oil, adding a little extra four if necessary to get a crumbly texture. Add in the iced water as you go. Roll it into a ball, wrap in waxed paper and chill it for 2 hours.

Rhubarb stage
1 bunch rhubarb (500g), trimmed, cut up
2/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons water

Cook the rhubarb mix over medium heat until it’s all softened, and drain off the runny syrup.

Pumpkin mix
4 cups pureed cooked pumpkin
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cm fresh ginger, finely chopped
2 well beaten eggs

Mix the pumpkin ingredients, and add to the cooked rhubarb.

Pie stage
Grease the pie dishes and crumble in the crust mix, spreading it to an approximately even layer. Add the filling.

Cook at 230°C for 8 minutes, then reduce to 160°C and cook for about 40 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.

Lime Mousse Ice Cream

By popular demand, as an accompaniment, here’s how to make lime mousse ice cream, based on a mousse recipe from The Silver Palate Cookbook, with measurements translated to metric. I also reduced the fat content and slightly adjusted the technique to allow for the fact that freezing holds it solid.

50g unsalted butter
5 eggs
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup fresh lime juice (4-7 limes depending on size)
grated zest of 4-5 limes (depending on size)
300ml cream

Melt the butter in a double boiler. Beat the eggs and sugar, and add to the molten butter. Continue whipping the mix over medium heat until it turns to a custard (about 8 minutes), i.e., starts to thicken. Do not overcook, otherwise you'll get sugary scrambled eggs.

Remove from heat and add the lime ingredients. Cool to room temperature.

Whip the cream to the point where it switches from light and foamy to thick, and fold into the custard mix, taking care not to flatten the aeration out.

Chill well, then freeze in an ice cream maker (not absolutely critical: it will not set very hard with this much fat content).

Lazy Sunday Cuisine

A lazy wet Sunday: what’s for lunch?

I have some nice organic tomatoes from a farmer’s market, a little left over Regianno Parmesan and some supermarket spinach and ricotta tortellini (the fresh kind, not died). On a less lazy day, I’d crank up the pasta machine – but not today. For dessert I have about 200g of good fair trade dark cooking chocolate, and some milk and eggs in the fridge.

To get started, how about a nice sauce for the pasta? Let’s see what else I have and put it together (enough for two serves):

• a splash of olive oil
  
• a shredded clove of garlic
  
• bottled herbs (basil, parsley) – it’s raining, I’m not going to the garden this once
  
• a sprinkling of macadamia halves
  
• 4 smallish tomatoes
  
• a hint of red pepper seeds
  
• finely shredded Parmesan
  

The trick with a tomato-based sauce is to squeeze out the juice and seeds. This way you don’t have to cook it down so much and end up with a fresher taste. Start with heating the oil, toss in the garlic then the tomato, herbs and spices. Then the tomato has almost fallen apart, add in the macadamias.

At this point, you may want to add in a splash of good red wine: not too much, you’ll want to drink the rest.

Once the sauce is making good progress, cook the pasta. The brand I’m using (a local one, San Remo) is not half bad if you ignore the package directions to cook to death for 6 minutes. My rule for any filled pasta or gnocchi is (based on instructions from an Italian cook): “cook them until they give up” – when they float to the surface and turn upside down. This time, it’s about 2 minutes. The result: a good chewy texture, and a filling that still has plenty of taste. Australians (judging from the package instructions) share the South African and British taste for flavourless mush.

Toss the pasta in the sauce, add Parmesan and you’re ready to serve.

On to dessert. This needs a little planning ahead of time. I like to make meringues at the same time as I make ice cream because you can use the egg yolks for the ice cream. There are a few simple basics for making good meringues:

1. never use chilled eggs: let them warm to room temperature
   
2. use a copper mixing bowl: this seems to result in getting a stiffer texture much faster (I doubt very much a little copper is toxic: think of what they replaced lead with in water pipes)
   
3. cook at low heat (90°C or 190°F for the neoliths): you are drying the meringues more than cooking them
   

Here’s another interesting trick I discovered. I recently found brown caster sugar in a supermarket and bought it wondering why you’d want something like that. The answer is, you get extra crispy meringues that whip up easier. The colour is a pale gold rather than snowy white, but they taste great.

OK, so the ice cream. The basic idea is to make an egg custard, let it cool, chill it, add whipped cream then churn in an ice cream maker.

Here’s an example:

• 400 ml milk
  
• quarter cup of sugar (double this if not adding something sweetened)
  
• 3 egg yolks (reserve the whites)
  
• 200g good dark chocolate (fair trade please: if you are going to die of death by chocolate feel good about it)
  
• 200 ml good whipping cream
  

Shred the chocolate. I do this by slicking it finely: it shreds as you slice.

Whip up the egg yolks, gradually adding the sugar, until you have a light consistency.

Scald the milk in a microwave (2 minutes in mine; it needs to be just short of boiling). Add some of the milk into the egg mixture, mix well and whisk into the rest of the milk. Heat again in the microwave for 2-3 minutes, watching for the point where it starts to froth up. Stop and whisk vigorously as soon as this happens, and repeat until you have a thick custard. If you take it too far, you end up with sweet scrambled egg, so take care.

At this point, patience is called for, otherwise you might as well decant into mugs and serve as the world’s best hot chocolate. If you can resist, put the custard aside to cool off, then refrigerate it. Lunch is developing into an all-day affair.


While you have nothing else to do, work on the meringues:

• 3 egg whites
  
• 125 g sugar
  

Whip the egg whites to a froth, then gradually add the sugar. Whip until the mixture can hold its shape, then drop about half a tablespoonful at a time onto a nonstick baking sheet in a baking tray (I use the baking sheet as anti-crunch packing when I store the meringues, and reuse it a few times for future batches). Put in a cool oven (90°C) on the middle shelf for 3 hours, and leave in the oven after turning off the heat to continue drying.

Back to the ice cream. Once it’s thoroughly chilled, whip the cream fairly stiff, fold it in then put the mixture in an ice cream maker (mine is hand-churned). Work the machine the usual way. Although ice cream is one of the few things I eat from frozen, it’s best eaten fresh.

Easy Low-Fat Gelato

How do they make low-fat gelato at Italian ice-creameries?

Most home ice-cream recipes are relatively high in fat, because this makes it easier to set the ice-cream to a nice texture. If you use an ice-cream machine it also works better with a high-fat mixture. If you make ice-cream by hand, the lower the fat content, the more you need to take the mix out of the freezer as it sets, and give it a thorough beating to stop it setting solid.

There are two things you need to do to get the right texture: aerate the mix, and prevent icicles forming.

Here (in a change of pace) I present a relatively easy technique for making low-fat gelato, with a new wonder tool I discovered, which you can buy at most kitchen stores.

To start, you need some fruit. Frozen fruit works really well. As illustrated here, I'm using about 500g (about a pound for the neolithics) of freshly hulled strawberries. Frozen actually works better; I should probably have put them in the freezer a few hours for the best result.


Next step: add sugar. My approximate measure is to about half the height of the fruit. You can judge this to taste. Too little, and the mixture is likely to set too hard. But you can regulate that by adjusting the milk content.



Next, add milk. I add slightly less than covers the fruit. You need to judge this as it can vary for fruits. Too much, and it sets too hard. Too little, and you have something more like a sorbet; maybe not such a bad thing. I have a little too much in this mix. What kind of milk? As pictured here, I am using low-fat soy. Just about anything vaguely like milk works. I've used soy, oat and rice milk, with equally good results.



At this point, I start using the wonder new tool: a potato masher. This turns out to be a good combination of the features you need. It can crush fruit, it can aerate the mix, and it can mix in the sugar. If you are starting with frozen fruit, it will be hard going at first, until the coolth transfers to the milk, and the fruit thaws slightly. Once that happens, start mashing more vigorously. Your aim is to break up the fruit, while mixing the sugar in thoroughly and adding enough air to soften the overall texture. Do this right, and it will set reasonably soft without stirring during the freezing stage.



In this case, I have slightly too much milk in the mix, and need to do a bit of stirring in the freezing phase. In the end, I lost patience and let it freeze hard. It was still not too bad; to serve, I had to shave it off rather than take scoopfuls.



Even with the sort of mistakes you can make, you still end up with a result that tastes a lot better than factory ice-cream and you know exactly what went into it.



Some may say there is a bit of justice in the fact that I had to do a bit of stirring. Read the rest of my blog to see for yourself.



If you use a plant-based milk, you can make a pretty good totally vegan dessert. Who says only carnivores have fun?

One warning: since you are using uncooked ingredients, you should not keep this gelato as long as you would keep a factory frozen product. Freezing doesn't kill most microbes; it does however slow their growth. So if there are some bad bugs in the original fruit (which I hope you remembered to wash), freezing won't kill them. But I've never had to keep one of these much longer than I'd have kept the fruit in the refrigerator, so I have not had a problem with proliferation of frozen microbes.