Blackberry Chili Syrup with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

I made this ice cream two weeks ago to share with Joey’s family after he blew everyone’s socks off at the performance of his composition. We all went back to his house at the conclusion, and family from here and North Carolina sat around eating dessert and drinking wine and whiskey while Joey chatted about his impending move to Solitude, New England and played us another song on his marimba (it was not wholly unlike a more clothed version of the nights that defined my co-op experienced in college). Joey convinced me that his family does not like “hot,” though he loves it, so Tory and I sat in the corner draining the jar of spicy blackberry sauce and concocting other ways to use it (with bourbon! in oatmeal! on cheesecake!) and wondering whether one could subsist on spicy blackberry sauce alone.

Today my friend Guy expressed similar enthusiasm about his ideal diet staple when he said that his ice cream maker has revolutionized his eating habits. He claims to pulverize everything in a blender, chill it, and churn it, and while I’m sure he didn’t mean salad, he most certainly meant cantaloupe, mint, and cayenne pepper, pecans and cardamom, and any number of combinations that could convince most to disavow themselves of solid foods; there was talk of creamy cashew ice cream being next. My ice cream approach has worked in the other direction—start standard but pair with something plucky—and while this week’s recipe may seem vanilla at the start, it is totally delicious and doubly so with this spicy blackberry sauce. 

Blackberry Chili Syrup

Inspired by 101 Cookbooks

Makes about two cups

This syrup is quite hot! A teaspoon poured into seltzer gave me the sneezes, but gobs on top of ice cream were perfectly tempered. I’ve also mixed this with bourbon and seltzer, eaten it with yogurt and granola, mixed it with salad dressing, and poured it on a cookie. It mellows out in the fridge a bit, but why would you want it to? Hello, year-round staple.

3 dried aji cereza or guajillo peppers (If you can find them, the aji cereza peppers are the way to go since they're already fruity and fragrant. I've seen them at the bodega down the street and at Whole Foods.)

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

1 cup natural sugar

1 1/2 cups water

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

4.5 ounces fresh or frozen blackberries

1.  Trim the stems from the peppers and tear them into pieces; add peppers along with their seeds to a medium saucepan with the sugars, water, and lemon juice. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat, and, stirring regularly, continue boiling until the mixture reduces to about two cups of syrup, 20 to 30 minutes.

2.  Add the frozen berries to the boiling pot, and cook for an addition few minutes, no longer than five.  Remove from heat, and carefully puree the syrup, either with a hand blender, regular blender, or food processor (I used the later). Strain the syrup through a fine-mesh sieve, and store in the fridge in covered jars. It should keep for several weeks.


Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

Adapted from David Lebovitz

1 cup whole milk

3/4 cup natural sugar

A pinch of salt

1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise

2 cups heavy cream

5 large egg yolks

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1.  In a medium saucepan, heat the milk, sugar, and salt over low. Scrape the vanilla beans into the pan, toss the pod in, and continue cooking until mixture is warm. Turn off the stove, cover, and let steep for one hour.

2.  Set up an ice bath by placing a medium bowl in a larger bowl filled partially with ice and water. Add the cream to the medium bowl, and set a strainer over the top. In a separate bowl, mix the egg yolks and set aside.

3.  Reheat the milk mixture in the saucepan over low, and slowly pour some of the warmed milk into the egg yolks to temper them, whisking all the while. Add the tempered yolks and milk back to the saucepan, and continue cooking mixture over low, stirring and scraping the bottom with a heat-resistant spatula the whole time. When custard is thick enough to coat the spatula—six to ten minutes usually—remove from heat and strain into the cold cream, discarding the vanilla pod. Stir the mixture until it’s cool, then add the vanilla extract.

4.  Cover and chill overnight, then process according to your ice cream maker’s directions.Once the ice cream reaches your desired consistency (I usually put mine in the freezer for an additional hour or two), scoop it out and cover with heaping spoonfuls of the blackberry chili syrup!

Vanilla Bean and Whiskey Pudding Tartlets

My sister’s apartment is sort of an apocalyptic mess. She has three rolling pins I can never find, always appears to have some sort of meat carcass in her fridge waiting to be cooked into stock, and on my most recent trip to Pittsburgh, also had an ice formation in her freezer that I think she left there because it looks like, well, a certain male bathing-suit part. Her apartment is scattered with clothes, children’s books, crafting things, leftover art, and library DVDs, and also, she keeps ceramic figurines of ambiguously rendered farm animals in her plants (the donkey-cow-pig, for instance). There are wool sweaters in the freezer too, and the contents of a jumbo box of Nerds spilled across her coffee table.

Oh hai! I'm just a stack of pans, chillin' in the freezer with an icy phallus.

My cataloguing of her domestic detritus might not show it, but my sister is flat out my hero. The Atlantic published an article in May noting that 93% of the happy and healthy adults Dr. George Valliant measured in his lifelong psychological study on happiness had had good relationships with a sibling when younger. Well, from partnering to steal all the neighbors’ sample boxes of cereal, to getting the pride kicked out of me in every single board and card game ever, to catching tadpoles and crawdads in New Hampshire and jumping into slimy lakes and an eel-filled quarry in Maine, we have the kind of relationship reinforced by frozen wool sweaters, moldy dishes, and other things that take the sort of roundabout way to get where they're going. And when not preserving phallic ice sculptures or eating Vietnamese soups full of MSG, sometimes we make things in the kitchen. This time, it was failed butterscotch tartlets that turned into a serendipitous, vanilla-whiskey mistake, which I think sounds just about right, all things considered.

To keep the inside of the freezer warm.

Sometimes Whole Foods just, aherm, gives vanilla beans away.

Vanilla Bean and Whiskey Pudding Tartlets (with Chocolate Espresso Beans)
Adapted clumsily from Baked! New Frontiers in Baking

This recipe was supposed to make butterscotch tartlets, but they came out vanilla-y. I might not have cooked the caramel long enough and that's what did it, but I was using raw sugar, so it looked a little "amber-colored" from the get-go. Whatever I did wrong, these still tasted really excellent, and the whiskey adds a great punch to the vanilla. If you want to limit the butterscotch taste, simply do not caramelize the sugar. You might wonder what the point of going to the hassle of crusts is. I still wonder. In the end, they add some buttery goodness, and butter is nearly always the right decision, so if you can handle the additional steps, I say go for it.

Oat Wheat Tart Crust
1 cup rolled (oops! couldn’t find these, so I used 1 c. wheat flour)
½ cup whole-wheat flour
1cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
1 ½ sticks (¾ cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
¼ cup milk

1. Normally you would use a food processor to grind up the oats, if you had them, until ground but not powdered. Add the flours, sugar, and salt and pulse until combined. Add the butter and pulse until sandy. Add the milk and pulse a few seconds.

2. Scoop the dough out, form into a large ball, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 and up to 3 hours.

3. Unwrap the dough, put it on a floured work surface, cut into 8 equal pieces. Gently shape each into a smooth disk (dough will be sticky), and then slide onto floured parchment paper and refrigerate for ten minutes (I skipped this). Using a floured rolling pin, roll the disks into a 6-inch, ¼-inch thick rounds, and place gently into tartlet pans, pushing gently against the sides and rolling down or trimming any excess.

4. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F, and put the tartlet crust into the freezer for 30 minutes. Place on a baking sheet and bake, rotating halfway through, for about 15 minutes or until the crusts are golden brown. Transfer to a rack, and let cool while you make the pudding. Remove shells from pans once they are cooled.

“Butterscotch” Pudding
6 large egg yolks
¾ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup water
¼ cup heavy cream
½ cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
1/3 cup cornstarch, sifted (tapioca starch would work a-okay too)
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups whole milk
1 vanilla bean
1 Tablespoon unsalted butter
2 Tablespoons whiskey (or you know, more than that)

1. Put egg yolks into heatproof bowl and set aside. In a small saucepan, combine white sugar and water and stir over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved, then increase heat to medium high and cook until mixture turns dark amber. Swirl the pan if necessary to distribute the color evenly, but do not stir. Remove form heat, let stand 1 minute, then stir in the cream. Pour into a small bowl and set aside.

2. In another small saucepan, combine brown sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Stir in milk, and whisk to combine. Split the vanilla bean lengthwise, and scrape out the seeds into the saucepan; toss in the bean husk. Cook over medium-high, whisking occasionally until the mixture comes to a boil. Remove from heat and add the caramel, whisking until combined, then pour one-third of the mixture over the eggs. Keep whisking and add another third, then transfer the egg mixture back to the pan with the milk mixture in the saucepan, and bring to a boil over medium-high. Boil 2 to 3 minutes.

3. Remove from head and add butter and whiskey. Keep whisking for about a minute to cool then let pudding sit for 15 minutes. Remove vanilla beans. Whisk pudding again until smooth, and divide into shells evenly, saving just a couple tablespoons in a separate bowl. Cover the tarts and bowl with plastic wrap, and chill in fridge for 2 hours. Before serving, whisk the pudding in the bowl, and add a dollop to each tart. Top with some chocolate-covered espresso beans, and you’re all set!