lime Archives | smarterfitter

This week is Holy Week, or as I’ve decided to call it, Holy Mole Week, because yesterday saw another one of my epic gatherings at Orchard Cottage, this time for a Mexican fiesta party featuring tamales, mole sauce, black beans, salsa and for dessert: chocolate cake and ice cream.

My original plan was to do chilli chocolate brownies with vanilla ice cream, but a chocolate tour in Camden with Jennifer Earle and Kavey Favelle introduced me to Artisan du Chocolate and their Lumi milk chocolate bar. Lumis are ripe limes boiled in salt water and sun-dried, giving the the chocolate a fresh tanginess. Given that my meal plan already involved lots of chilli and rich flavour from the mole sauce, I loved the idea of adding a fresh element to the cake, rather than more chilli. Plus, lime was totally fitting with the Mexican theme.

As for ice cream, I debated whether to make lime sorbet, coconut ice cream or avocado ice cream, and in the end decided to make all three, it what is now infamously known as “the trio” (a phrase I apparently kept repeating all night long, following many bottles of Prosecco – I still maintain that the phrase has a nice ring to it).

All of the ice creams in “the trio” were good, really good, but the avocado was absolutely outstanding and perfect with the cake.

I made the ice cream on Kavey’s suggestion, who did an avocado ice cream on her blog last year. I was ultimately drawn to David Lebovitz’s recipe in The Perfect Scoop for its inclusion of sour cream and lime, both of which sounded perfect for my cake. But the avocado ice cream didn’t need the cake at all (though it didn’t hurt): this ice cream totally stands on its own. It’s creamy but fresh-tasting at the same time, especially with that little hint of lime. It was so good that Patrick secretly stashed some extra avocado ice cream in the freezer so that we didn’t eat it all at once. Because we would have.

5.0 from 1 reviews

Avocado Ice Cream

Author: David Lebovitz

Ingredients

3 medium ripe avocados (about 675g)
¾ cup (150g) sugar
1 cup (240g) sour cream
½ cup (125ml) heavy cream
1 Tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice
Big pinch of salt

Instructions

Cut open the avocados, remove the pits, and scoop out the flesh.
Combine all ingredients in a blender and puree until absolutely smooth.
Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

I’m including the avocado ice cream in Kavey’s Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream round-up under the fruit theme (yes, avocado is a fruit!).

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I think I’ve discovered my new favourite thing to do with pollock: turn it into ceviche.

Pollock is all the rage at the moment as a sustainable alternative to cod. I got into pollock thanks to Rosalind Rathouse at Cookery School who uses it to make beautiful fish cakes and goujons (fish fingers for grown-ups). Her Fish and Shellfish class futher taught me how amazing poached pollack works with black butter sauce (but what wouldn’t be good with black butter sauce?).

Pollock is relatively inexpensive compared to most fish, but also, relatively flavourless. This makes pollock a good candidate for high flavour preparations like curries, fish tacos and, as I discovered this week, ceviche.

Ceviche is interesting – it’s an ancient method of preparing fish originating from South America where the fish gets diced and “cooked” by letting it marinate in citrus juice or other acidic liquid. Although no heat is applied, the fish obtains the colour and texture of cooked fish thanks to the interaction of acid in the citrus and protein in fish. To quote McGee, “the high acidity denatures and coagulates the proteins in the muscle tissue, so that the gel-like translucent tissue becomes opague and firm: but more delicately than it does when heated.”

Yotam Ottolenghi has a recipe for smoked corn and avocado ceviche using sea bass, one of my most favourite fish but also one I reserve for “special occasions”. Wild sea bass (the good stuff), is expensive, and when I have it, I like to cook it simply so I can really enjoy the flavour of the fish, not hide it in lime juice and spices.

Instead, I made his ceviche recipe with pollock, and I think it’s up there with one of the best fish dishes I’ve ever made. I served the ceviche on a crispy corn tortilla (which I achieved by heating a corn tortilla on an oiled frying pan until it was browned on both sides), with a dollop of fresh wasabi I recently acquired from The Wasabi Company. Total win.

Recipe: Smoked corn and avocado ceviche [guardian.co.uk]

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Avocado Ice Cream

Ceviche Revelation