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bottomline -- I can't cook!
 
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Name: firstmonsoon
Home: Chennai, India
About Me: I've been curious for as long as I can remember, so it probably figures I'm technically a scientist now. Especially exciting is how this gives me license to go about mixing stuff, stopping in my tracks to take a closer peek at something potentially interesting and read up on totally obscure topics out of huge books and still not be taken for a nutcase. See- it's just my job :)
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Kumkum..
Freeze..
What might have been a beautiful banana smoothie..


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Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Freeze..
..put your hands up in the air… if you want one of these, that is.
Milkshake; - “you can’t make milkshake without ice cream” says one cook I know :)
Chocolate, Strawberry, Butterscotch et al apart, Vanilla goes well with a lot of fruit. On the other hand, fruit milkshakes are actually also nice without ice cream, methinks. Mango, Sapota, Banana are my favorites.

And hmm. Also see this.

Sorbetto : Chill with the ice :) Summer days are especially conducive to freezer-raids.. the kind where you scrape the frosty ice off the freezer walls.. I discovered kinda recently that there’s amuch more hygenic and creative way that people have already figured out, to do the same thing. Used to think a sorbetto was made from crushed frozen fruit juice. But much easier than crushing is just stirring it every so often (whenever I decide to take a break from my xbox game on a weekend) to break the ice up. Eventually all the liquid freezes, and it becomes powdery. That’s when you scoop it out with an ice cream scoop and garnish with a sprig of mint ;)
Granitas : Just like a sorbetto. Only, you don’t need to wait till it’s powdery dry if you’re serving it immediately. If you aren’t, then pop the ’sorbetto’ into the fridge for a while, or blend until slightly slushy, serve in tall glass..

I have tried orange, lemon and tea. Will update if I manage to make any others. Would really like to try out an apple :D

Another ice cream expert says that you’ve got to make sure your ‘fruit juice’ is nice and saturated before you freeze. Fruit puree, more than juice, and Sugar optional, depending on what flavour you use. Fruit juice alsoine, but the fruit part of it melts off into a liquid leaving just white ice, if you don’t gulp it quick enough. I have yet to ask first ice cream expert his opinion, since I haven’t managed to serve him one of these yet.

Wiki links : Sorbetto, Granita, Milkshake

posted by firstmonsoon 10:10 AM   0 comments
 
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Sunday, July 09, 2006
What might have been a beautiful banana smoothie..
.. only it's like having all the ingredients and no blender to make it with.
Wordpress is all very nice and has a host of very beautiful templates, but the reason I prefer Blogger is that I can actually tinker around with them. Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't seem to have tags. Nor the equivalent of Lj-cuts. What a pity. Can't have everything at once, I guess.

So. Wheeeeee camping out all night at the laptop. Shuttling between here and the kitchen and the tv room, where football is playing. I can't believe I missed Wimbledon. For about the first time, mom isn't asking me to shut down (it's 12:27 am now) and sleep at a reasonable time.. and I've even got a driving test first thing in the morning. I'm guessing it's cos she's as much sick with worry as I am, my grandma's in hospital and all I want now is for her to come home.

Entry the first..

If we can have no banana smoothie, we shall attempt a
Gelato!
(especially since there is a lot of extra milk in the house at the mo.. which will anyway spoil if I don't use it up. So I'm justified in experimenting with it. :D )

Needed:
+milk
+flavouring

+freezer
+whisk (though I prefer a fork, actually)
+blender - if I decide to use fruit as flavouring.

Since the only fruit at home today is unripe mango and Sapota, I think I'll rummage theough the fridge for vanilla flavouring.

Will come back and update once done with preliminaries.. I'm not too good at following recipes myself.
---------------------------

Ooookay, it takes about 7 minutes for the milk to boil, so before it does I'll fill you in on what I'm planning to do.

Gelato, from what I've been able to read on wiki, random Gelato-manufacturing companies and a couple of stellar food-blogs, is made from thick milk. Some add cream. I have neither, just ordinary toned milk, so let's hope this works.

Once the milk cools down after boiling, I'll add the flavours (which I got to look for) and put it in to freeze.

The thing with making Sorbettos is that unless you have an ice-cream maker, you've got to keep checking in every 20 minutes or so to see if it's partially frozen, and then stir it to break up the ice into smaller crystals. Hopefully this works the same way with milk.

Excuse me, time to monitor the milk.

-------------------

Perfect timing. 6 minutes give or take half, for a litre of milk to begin to boil. Will keep that in mind.

The only flavouring I could find was orange. Now come on, who ever heard of orange flavoured milk??!

I decided to add an Indian feel to it finally, with ground elaichi and saffron (the box said 'best quality spanish saffron' but still :) )
Kulfi-Gelato.
Yay for Italy-India. Same colours as far as the flag goes, and if this site is reasonably accurate, same colours as far as behaviour goes too :D

I also added
+Sugar

and left it to cool.
As a side note, here's an opportunity to understand the principle behind shell-and-tube heat-exchangers for fluids - the fluid in the shell and the fuid in the tube are circulated independantly, separated by the material of the container, across which heat is transfered. The fluid to be cooled is circulated because you want to make sure that the heat from all parts of that fluid is drawn away, instead of just one portion or one layer. The fluid that is doing the cooling is circulated because you want to make sure that when a part of it gets heated up from the heat that comes in from the hot fluid, is drawn away replacing it with cooler fluid to draw away more heat.
Makes sense? :). Anyway.
Soon, I'll pop it into the freezer and go back when I get bored of staring at the computer. Meanwhile I'll hunt up what I can find of the small number of other things I've managed to cook. Ciao for now.
posted by firstmonsoon 11:57 AM   0 comments
 
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