pizza-licious

A few Saturdays back, we had a pizza experimentation night.  And by "we" I mean Asmi was inspired by a recipe she found here and wanted to use us as her taste-testers.  I was, of course, happy to oblige!  Asmi, domesticated goddess that she is, made everything from scratch: the paneer for the pizza, the pizza sauces, and the naan itself.  As you recall from prior experiments, I love home made naan.  I also love home made paneer (oops.  I just realized I never posted about my home made paneer experiment.  Sorry.) because I love how crumbly it is, and the overall taste is (obviously) not processed at ALL.  You can make home made paneer into the cube shape like you get at Whole Foods, but I've never tried that.  And, really, home made paneer is not time consuming at all!  You just have to boil milk, throw in some vinegar or lemon juice, let it curdle, strain it through cheese cloth, and put something heavy on it and let it relax.

Instead of going into detail about what Asmi made, I decided to let her guest blog again!  Thanks Asmi!

Just a little bit o' butta...

Who likes Sunday nights? You have to think about going back to work on Monday morning.  You are probably tired from an overloaded weekend social calendar.  Plus, there isn't anything that great on tv to watch to relax before packing your gym bag for the next morning.  Well, lucky for me, this past Sunday, I was able to beat the Sunday night blues by a lovely family dinner at the Palace.  You've seen our extravagant feasts before, here and here, for example.  This week was a southern themed affair.  All I can say is look out, Paula Deen.

Even More Fondue!

More fondue! To ring in the new year (now that we are all back in NYC), Becca, Alyx and Nicholas came over for dinner.  Alyx made two fantastic loaves of bread (I believe it was a recipe from Jim Lahey) for us to eat with our fondue.

I made a three cheese fondue...and this time the special ingredient was a tomato onion chutney.  In addition to Alyx's crusty and just slightly salty bread, we also dipped tortellini! So YUM!

Blood Orange and Limoncello Sorbet

I currently love Italy.  Pasta, Prada, blood oranges and, of course...limoncello.  I had some fondue guests (Becca, Alyx and Nicholas) on Saturday and wanted to make something seasonal for January.  Now that the holidays are over, candy canes, sparkles, and egg nog are out.  I remember the first time I bought a blood orange.  I didn't realize it what it was until I peeled it open and was mildly horrified/intrigued.  WTF kind of fruit was this one? Then I looked at the discarded rind and saw the produce sticker on it.  OH.  Blood orange.  No wonder!

New Years Eve Dinner

 My family and I usually go out for dinner on New Years Eve (often includes lots of foie gras and lots of champagne), but this year we decided we wanted to cook at home.  My mom wanted to try out an authentic Hyderabad biryani and stuffed mushrooms.  I wanted to try making some kind of citrus dessert and some kind of champagne dessert, as citrus is in season now, and, well, champagne is always in season. 

So on the menu for New Years Eve, we started with some gruyere, bread crumbs, and black truffle stuffed mushrooms, Hyderabad biriyani, citrus ice cream and a champagne bread pudding.  And in all honesty, I think it beat most, if not all, of the New Years Eve dinners I have had.  Now, if only we could transport my kitchen to a dock in Moorea and New Years would be complete.

The Best Vanilla Ice Cream Ever

In my spare time, I search for ice cream recipes.  Though I do love vanilla, I usually search for something more exciting.  UNTIL I found a recipe through food and wine - I was intrigued because the recipe didn't use eggs but claimed to be fluffy and yum.  I'm always game for trying something fluffy and yum.

Vanilla Ice Cream, recipe from Food & Wine

Serves Jyoti only and no one else

Ingredients

• 2 cups whole milk
• 1 tbsp. and 1 tsp. cornstarch
• 3 tbsp. softened cream cheese
• 1 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 tbsp. light corn syrup
• 1 vanilla bean, seeded and scraped
• 1/8 tsp. kosher salt 

In a large bowl, prepare an ice bath.  In a separate smaller bowl, mix 2 tbsp. of the whole milk and the cornstarch.

In another large bowl, whisk the cream cheese until smooth.

In a large saucepan, combine the remaining milk, heavy cream, sugar, light corn syrup and vanilla bean and seeds.  Bring the mixture to a boil and cook over moderate heat until the sugar dissolves and the vanilla flavors the milk, about 4 minutes.

Turn off the heat and gradually whisk in the cornstarch mixture.  Return to a boil and cook over moderate heat until the mixture slightly thickens, about 1-2 minutes.

Gradually whisk in the hot milk mixture into your whipped cream cheese, whisking to combine until smooth.  Whisk in the salt.  Set the bowl in the ice water bath for about 20 minutes (I left mine for about 30 minutes).  I then put my mixture in the fridge to chill for about 30 minutes.

Pour the mixture into your chilled ice cream canister and churn for about 45 minutes.

Ending Notes: Um.  BEST VANILLA ICE CREAM EVER!  We've had my egg nog and sweet potato ice cream in our freezer since Thanksgiving, but this vanilla ice cream hardly lasted a few hours!

Sidenote: Apparently I hit my quota limit for photos and now have to upload through photobucket, which seems to really destroy image quality.  I will find a solution to this, so in the meantime I apologize for the crappy looking pictures.

Holiday Dinner

Our version of Christmas is putting up a tree and exchanging gifts, but we did want to make something fancy schmancy for dinner.  I browsed my mom's Gourmet cookbook to see what type of game we could eat that wasn't turkey.  Squab, quail, duck...and of course we had to include foie gras! Yes! My favorite! So we decided to prepare foie gras, risotto, and cornish hen.

For Christmas, my sister gave me a little lump of black truffle, so we wanted to determine a way to incorporate this into our meal.  We decided to make a mushroom risotto dusted with black truffle, and cornish hen marinated in a black truffle sauce.  My sister wanted to make a lavender creme brulee as dessert since my mom recently purchased a lavender plant, so we had a really delectable meal ahead!