Posted by Lucy Baker, June 5, 2008 at 10:15 AM
I recently became the proud owner of a Cuisinart ICE-20 Automatic 1-1/2 Quart Ice Cream Maker. And just in time, too. The weather is getting even warmer, and I've already spent a small fortune at my local frozen yogurt joint. From now on, my frozen desserts will be homemade creations—some classic, some crazy; some super-healthy, some serious splurges; but all totally delicious.
For my ice cream maker's inaugural churn, I wanted to make a simple, old-fashioned flavor. But it also had to be a bit exciting. I wasn't going to settle for straight-forward chocolate or vanilla, but I didn't want to push my luck with a wacky flavor, either. Amazing as Cinnamon-Fig Swirl and Chocolate Stout sounded, I was afraid the recipes might not work, and therefore leave me discouraged.
After much consideration and recipe comparing, I settled on a fresh mint ice cream with semisweet chocolate chunks. I adapted the recipe from designer Isaac Mizrahi's version on Epicurious.com. (The only change I made was to omit the green food coloring. Who needs it? The mint leaves impart a gorgeous, pale green hue on their own.)
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Posted by Adam Kuban, August 23, 2007 at 7:30 PM
The week's earlier Cook the Book recipes have been soups or sides, which is to be expected, considering the book is called Vegetable Harvest
. But how about something a little bit heftier for a main dish? This recipe for chicken breasts gives a nod to the garden in that it uses mint. If you're lucky enough to have planned and grown a potager, like the book's author, Patricia Wells, then you've probably got plenty of fresh mint on hand. For the rest of us, this common aromatic herb is easy enough to find.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, August 17, 2007 at 4:30 PM
Along with all the fresh farm corn our lovely guest brought us this week, was an enormous bag of bright green beans. These were far from effeminate haricots verts. Big Midwestern boys, these were mammoth and nearly bursting at their seams. Honestly, we could have done anything with these beans and they would have been good. But instead of using a plain Jane recipe, we decided to test the limits, albeit in a 15-minute time span.
If you can expect one thing in life, it’s that a Mario Batali recipe will bring the flavor. This one certainly does. Although the mint in the dish sounds suspiciously like the peas with mint that we’d made a couple of weeks back, it is actually the crisp red onions that steal the show here. I was convinced that I’d burned them, even though I had written consent from Batali. Ends up he’s right. Sweet, crunchy red onions are a marvelous thing.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, August 8, 2007 at 1:45 PM
As the week winds on, Eric Gower, the author of The Breakaway Cook, keeps impressing me with the simple but delicious-sounding recipes in this book. I haven't cooked his Pasta with Peas, Sausage, and Mint yet, but rest assured, I'm adding it to my recipe collection and will probably use mango sausage, as Gower recommends, when I cook it (which will probably be for dinner tonight).
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, August 3, 2007 at 4:30 PM
The recipe's title is being a tad modest. Sure, it is peas and mint. But that discounts the ingenious inclusion of Boston lettuce, which just compounds the green on green, with ... more green. You can use fresh peas, but frozen are acceptable, too—and it worked fine for us.
It was actually much better than fine. I served this up with a beautiful cornish hen, but all attention was focused toward the green. At the end of the meal, my fiancée and I were scraping the pan for any loose pea that hadn't made it to our plates. That doesn't happen too often. Tellingly, this great recipe came from Vegetable Love, by Barbara Kafka.
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