Sometimes there are things in this life that you have to eat no matter what the consequences. You have to block out the nasty knowledge you have about fat and heart disease and go back to your childhood,
where, in my case, you could find print ads with doctors endorsing
cigarettes. Holy Smokes!
The other day, my husband took me to Williams Sonoma to buy the latest model Cuisinart. That’s for another article by the way because it is a cook’s wet dream.
What we hadn’t planned on was purchasing an ice cream maker; also made by Cuisinart. The little devil was $60 and there was a cute cookbook we bought, as well. The recipes went from labor intensive, (custard based gelato), to simple, (ice creams and sorbets). Of course, my daughter Hannah and I had to attack the custard one. I rationalized that it was about time my beautiful 15 year old learn basic custard. We chose a cinnamon and brown sugar ice cream because those were pantry staples.
The whisking and the tempering and the straining all went as planned, then Hannah lost interest and went into the living room to watch Family Guy because I’m Mother of The Year. The mixture had to sit in the refrigerator for 2 hours or overnight. Like a watched pot, I took the bowl out of the fridge after two hours exactly. Hannah had moved on to Gossip Girl because I’m a saint and should be writing parenting books.
During summer, I take every opportunity to make ice cream or sorbet. (If you look in my freezer, you'll find a reserved space for the ice cream maker container.) There really is no better time to make frozen treats than on the hottest summer days. And who wants to bake anyway? (Though I still bake summer pies and cakes.) Sorbets are my favorite because they're easy to make and full of fruit flavor. And you can pretty much make sorbet out of any fruit. There's no custard to cook as with ice cream, and in most cases the fruit goes in raw—keeping the best fresh flavor.
My husband Leo loves ice cream. I like it, but he loves it. For a
wedding present, we received a wooden ice cream maker that like the old
fashioned ones, needed to be filled with ice and rock salt, but unlike
the old fashioned ones, could be plugged in and churned the ice cream
without the 'elbow grease.' Once every few years, we'd pull it out and
impress ourselves by making a batch of lovely vanilla ice cream, but it
was always a big production for the results. About 6 or 7 years ago,
as a birthday gift for my ice cream loving husband who almost always
has a quart of vanilla in the freezer, I bought a double Cuisinart
automatic ice cream machine. It consists of a motorized bottom,
plastic churners and plastic covers with two metal containers which I
keep in the freezer at all times.
I’m quite sure it’s in the genes. I know I got the ice cream-loving gene from my dad who got the gene from his mom. It’s that gene that forces me to direct my husband miles out of our way just to visit an ice cream store that makes their own ice cream. That same gene has been known to cause cravings that send me to bed with a spoon and a pint of my favorite frozen cream. I can eat ice cream morning, noon and night and never get enough. I can’t help it – it’s in my genes.
For most of my dad’s young
life, he lived above and worked at Felcher’s, his parents’ candy store/
neighborhood lunch counter, tucked between P and G's Bar and Grill and
Simpson's Hardware Store on Amsterdam Avenue between 73 and 74th
Streets. Christopher Morely, imagined the man of the future while
watching my dad as a tiny boy play in front of that store and
immortalized him in his novel Kitty Foyle.
