Stroke of Genius

It’s been a long time since I’ve made a post, for a few reasons. Firstly, my camera has been elsewhere, which really put a damper on my posting possibilities. Also, I have been relatively busy outside of work. Mostly, though, I haven’t posted in a while because I didn’t really have anything worthy of posting.

As I mentioned before, Jianken is in the midst of trying to update their menus, which are in great need of an update. My goal for the dessert portion of the menu is to make it one that has more to do with sushi and Asian cuisine. For the past few months, I have been playing with new ideas and flavors that might fit the new menu, but lately it’s felt like I’ve hit a wall: redundancy. I need a new flavor; a new idea; a new technique. Something. That’s when the light bulb went off:

Calpico ice cream. The girlfriend and I were cleaning out our fridge at home and discovered that there was a bottle sitting in there from a visit to the Asian market. For those who have never tried Calpico, also known as Calpis, it is a non-carbonated soft drink that is made from fermented dry milk. It is sweet and tangy like yogurt, but with its own distinctive flavor. What is even better is that Calpis is a uniquely Japanese product. It was first produced in 1919, and gained wide popularity because in its concentrated form it doesn’t need to be refrigerated. Calpis is as prevalent in Japan as Coke, or Kool-aide is in the US.

At first, I planned on making a Calpis sorbet. I have seen it as a shaved ice flavor, and figured that sorbet would be the next logical step, but I found that in order to keep the sorbet smooth once churned, the product had to be cloyingly sweet. It needed some fat to tone down the harshness of the calpis.

What I ended up with is technically an ice-milk. Ice-milk (at least how I define it), is a frozen dessert that is churned like ice cream or sorbet, but unlike ice cream, it contains no eggs and is thus not a custard. Ice-milk should ideally be less than 10% total milk fat. It has a texture that is more similar to sherbet or sorbet than ice cream. The crème fraiche in the recipe rounds out the flavor a bit more.

Calpis Ice Milk

Yield: ~ 1 liter

75g Sugar 50g Glucose powder* 550g Milk 250g Calpis 140g Crème Fraiche 2sht Gelatin° *Glucose powder can be substituted for an equal amount of regular sugar with similar results °Gelatin is optional

1) Combine Sugar, glucose powder (see note), and 100g milk in a small sauce pot and heat until sugar is dissolved and the milk is starting to steam. 2) Hydrate gelatin, squeeze out the excess water, and add to milk mixture. 3) Combine the remaining ingredients and homogenize with an immersion blender or wisk 4) Allow to cool for at least 4 hours in the fridge before 5) Process in ice cream according to manufacturers’ instructions 6) Allow to harden in freezer for at least 2 hours

I have found that I like the combination of bitter and acid, so I tend to pair things like dark chocolate and oranges, so it seemed natural to pair this with bitter matcha. Matcha rice pudding, Calpis ice-milk, and stewed cherries with brandy. Of course, its not cherry season, or they would be fresh cherries, but I did find a frozen product that was still remarkably sweet and full-flavored.

Pistachio? Pistachio!

Whenever I swing by my parent’s house, there is a bowl sitting out in their living room filled with roasted, salted pistachios. I can plop myself down in a chair and blow through a handful of the little nuts before I even notice. For some reason, though, I have a certain disconnect with the salty little morsels in the bowl on their coffee table, and the nut so often used in European pastry.

It’s amazing to me that pistachios aren’t a bigger part of the American identity. We produce a lot of them. As of 2005, we were a close second to Iran in production, the majority of which comes from California. The nut, which is actually a drupe, originated in the Middle East, and was introduces to the United States in 1904. It thrives in airid climates, making places such as Iran, the Mediterranean, and southwest US ideal places for pistachios to grow.

Pistachios have a wonderful fruity flavor that is very well suited to sweet applications. While in the US they are generally bought, shell-on and roasted, for consumption as a snack food, there are occasionally places that sell them raw. If you can’t find them in a local store, there are plenty of internet sources that sell them.

Financiers (pronounced Fee-Nan-See-Ay) are another of those French confections that have fallen by the wayside of modern pastry. They are little cakes, generally made with almond flour, egg whites, sugar, and my favorite ingredient of all time: brown butter. Traditionally, they would be baked in little rectangular molds that would make them look like little gold ingots, hence the name financier. The cakes that ensue are enigmatic: light but chewy, airy but moist. Like the macaron, they are something that one can easily get hooked on.

As I said, financiers are traditionally made with almonds, but I don’t see any reason why one couldn’t use another nut in their place. A quick search through Google, and I found that I’m not alone. The only snafu I had was that I needed to make my own pistachio flour. In the end, it may be something that is worth buying pre-ground. In order to get the pistachios ground finely enough, I put them in a food processor to get them roughly ground, and then spread them out on a baking sheet in a LOW oven to dehydrate them for about 6 hours. I then put them in the freezer to get them rock hard before finally mixing them with 50% of the weight of sugar and putting them to the food processor one more time… As I said, it may be worth the investment to just buy the flour pre-ground. In terms of molds, you can certainly find financier molds, but its not strictly necessary. I used a flexipan with diamond shaped cavities, and was happy with the result. Also, mini muffin pans would work well.

Pistachio Financier adapted from Stephane Glacier M.O.F

Yield~ 30 cakes

250g Butter 300g Powdered Sugar 150g Pistachio Flour* 260g Egg whites 100g Flour 25g Honey *If you are making your own, subtract the sugar added during grinding from the total sugar amount

1) Place butter in a small sauce pot over medium heat and brown until golden and nutty-smelling. 2) Add the honey to butter mixture and allow to cool 3) Sift together dry ingredients 4) Whip egg whites to soft peaks 5) Fold in the dry ingredients, followed by the browned butter 6) Place in piping bag and pipe into molds that have been sprayed with baking spray. 7) Bake at 400° for 12-15 minutes, rotating one in between

What would go with pistachio financiers? Well, anything. In fact, it was only sheer willpower that kept me from eating the entire batch. Of course, they would be delicious with a cup of tea, such as Earl Grey, or English Breakfast. They also would be good dipped in chocolate or served with preserves. For me, I used them to sop up the remnants of a tasty coconut rice pudding with a scoop of banana-pineapple sorbet.