SmarterFitter

A few months back I bought an ice cream maker on eBay and have been pining for David Lebowitz's The Perfect Scoop ever since. His photography and recipes on his blog are a frozen dessert lover's wet dream, and his other stories about life in Paris are pretty good too.

Last week, the pining ended - my parents sent me a copy of The Perfect Scoop for my birthday. And after flipping through every custard-filled, chocolate-swirled recipe, my heart settled on one I know and love: chocolate sorbet.

David's way with chocolate sorbet has already been drooled about on numerous blogs such as Smitten Kitchen and Chocolate & Zucchini, so I'll spare you the oggling of an ice cream fangirl. Instead, I'll just get to the chocolate. And let me tell you my friends, this chocolate sorbet means business.

One of the critical steps in making ice cream or sorbet is to let it chill thoroughly before putting into the ice cream maker. Well, this stuff is so rich and chocolatey that after cooling, it's just about as thick as ice cream (and pretty darn good on its own). Its thick creaminess almost makes it hard to believe that it lacks dairy or eggs. The thickness is chocolate talking - I told you this sorbet doesn't mess around.

Best thing about this chocolate sorbet? Eating the super frozen scrapings off the side of the ice cream maker. Second best thing? Eating a big ol' bowl of it, maybe with a few raspberries on top.

I'm looking forward to trying the other recipes in the book, especially his Strawberry Frozen Yogurt and Butter Pecan Ice Cream (a treat for my dad who is coming to visit in a couple weeks). Then again, my next attempt might be one from his blog, a Vegan Strawberry Ice Cream using rice milk. But I better get going - strawberry season is running out. And so is summer.

Chocolate Sorbet

Adapted from The Perfect Scoop

• 2 1/4 cups (555 ml) water
• 1 cup (200 g) sugar
• 3/4 cup (75 g) unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
• Pinch of salt
• 6 ounces (170 g) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a large saucepan, whisk together 1 1/2 cups (375 ml) of the water with the sugar, cocoa powder, and salt. Bring to a boil, whisking frequently. Let it boil, continuing to whisk, for 45 seconds.

Remove from the heat and stir in the chocolate until it’s melted, then stir in the vanilla extract and the remaining 3/4 cup (180 ml) water. Transfer the mixture to a blender and blend for 15 seconds. Chill the mixture thoroughly, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. If the mixture has become too thick to pour into your machine, whisk it vigorously to thin it out.

 

It was hard to title this salad because it has so many good things going on that it's hard to pick out the shining stars and fit it into a title. I guess that's what they call a "high quality problem".

I've been working on this salad for the last few weeks based on two inspiring meals from recent years. One was a lemony broad bean, sugar snap and dill salad had at the Wellcome Collection's cafe run by Peyton and Byrne, a couple of posh chef types who run a bunch of cafes and bakeries around London. The other was an asparagus, pea and broad bean salad with fresh goats curd had on the first night of our cooking course at Chateau Ventenac.

One of the reasons why I liked these salads is that they've helped me come to grips with one of the UK's most common vegetables: the broad bean. Why all the fuss over a vegetable that's so hard to deal with? First you have to pod the beans, then blanch them, then bean-by-bean remove their tough outer skin (optional, but recommended as the outer skin can be a bit tough and bitter), then finally do something with them. Some people puree them into a soup, others eat them on toast. But after all that effort, I want to know that the broad beans are there.

Of course, I probably would never have confronted the broad bean had it never become a staple of the summer season's organic box. We've getting piles of broad beans in our Riverford organic box lately. So with the energy of Peyton, Byrne and Demuth behind me, I set out to create a fusion of the two salads, with a few extra additions of my own.

I like my salads crunchy, so I threw in a few thin-sliced radishes and cucumbers, both from the organic box. I also had a couple steamed potatoes in the fridge, leftovers from the potatoes we harvested a few days earlier from the potato pot. My mint was also looking pretty good so I grabbed a few leaves of that, too. For lack of fresh French goats curd, I used some rich Welsh goats cheese I recently discovered at the Organic Farm Shop in Cirencester.

What I like about this salad is that it defies the stereotype that all salads consist of a pile of leaves. Here, I kept the leaves to a minimum, adding just a handful of torn romaine lettuce leaves to intersperse among the main ingredients. I love the flavour of the dill with the cucumber, goat's cheese and, of course, those broad beans. The mint kicked in a nice summery freshness and you can't beat the crisp spice of a good radish.

This is definitely a salad I'll make again. The only thing I missed was that fresh goats curd. It was soft, like a very thick Greek yogurt, but with the crumbly texture of a feta. I actually crave it. So I've got a litre of full cream goats milk in the fridge, destined for curd. This will be my first cheese experiment, and I can't wait.