Cactus Sorbet

Prickly pear fruit is amazingly magenta.

 

The entire plant is edible, actually. Well, not the prickly parts, but the paddles are; they're called nopales. Those are more of a dinner thing though, and this is dessert.

(and yes, I know this post is a little late, but my lab report was not)

Prickly Pear and Coconut Sorbet

• 4 prickly pear fruits (aka tunas)
• 1 tin coconut milk or cream
• juice of 1/2 lime
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 c sugar

 

Yup, that's it. I know, I know ths sugar is missing. Five ingredients and I still couldn't get them all in the shot.

First thing you have to do is wash the tunas. Wear gloves. Seriously.

The spines have been removed, but there are tiny, hair-like fibres on them still, and those things are practically invisible and are an annoying pain in the thumb if you get one stuck in you.

Keep the gloves on as you cut away the skin.

You're left with red, juicy, flesh that tastes mildly berry-like. Sweeter though. There's none of the berry tartness to these.

Chop them and toss them in the food processor to mash them.

Next we have to get rid of all the seeds. I suppose you could cut the fruit and pick them out one by one, but they're small, round, slippery, and throughout the entire fruit.

Better to sieve them out.

A coarse sieve will work okay. A finer sieve will work better, but takes longer. If you've got the patience (I had all day, but ran out of patience) go for it.

Combine the berry mash in a pot with the vanilla, lime juice, and sugar.

Bring it to a boil then turn the heat down to medium and let it go until you get this sort of pink foam on top:

Combine the sweetened, reduced berry mash into a bowl with the coconut milk.

Now is when you should use the ice cream maker, if you have one. If you don't, and I don't, you can still do this, you'll just need to pay attention to it for a few minutes at a time for the next little while.

Pour it into a pan and put it in the freezer. After about 45 minutes, take it out and give it a stir, then put it back in the freezer.

After about 40 minutes, do it again. Then 35... then 30...

What you're doing in the stir part is breaking up the ice crystals that are forming. That's what the paddles in ice cream makers do. At first, it takes a while to get the water in the sorbet to freeze (hence 45 mins) but once the crystals are there, they propagate quite nicely (hence the reduction in freezer duration each time).

So, yes, it will take a bit of time, but if you've got a Sunday afternoon for puttering about the house, it's an easy thing to add to the putter.

And you get a beautiful coco-berry sorbet out of the deal.

And you can tell the kids they're eating tuna ice cream!

Even better with chocolate sprinkles.

What's your favourite pink food?

Chicken Salad - Round 2

I love things that are rolled up or stuffed. Or both!

I'd been planning on making a chicken salad (cold dinner, too hot to cook) with Asian flavours all week... and then I started getting cravings for Sriracha. (which I, and others apparently, like to call "cock sauce" thanks to the lovely rooster on the bottle)

I knew what I had to do.

I know most people unfailingly put mayo in chicken salad no matter what other flavours are going in, but not me. And not just because my mayo had been in the fridge so long it had expired.

I've been making various versions of a peanut butter and sesame based salad dressing for a while now, and that's how this salad stays together. It's basically a vinaigrette, but with peanut butter as an emulsifier. Watch, you'll see.

Chicken Salad Rolls

The Dressing:

• 1/4 c peanut butter
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp lime or lemon juice
• 2 tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 tsp fish sauce
• 1 tsp ginger
• 1 clove garlic
• sriracha to taste
• peanut oil

The "vinegar" part of this dressing can be replaced partially or entirely by citrus juice. My ideal is a combination of lime and vinegar, but all I had when I made the salad was lemon, so that's what I used.

In a bowl, combine the peanut butter, juice and / or vinegar, fish sauce, ginger, and garlic.

A microplane grater (or citrus zester) is the ideal thing for ginger.

If you can't find fish sauce, or if you're kinda scared of it (lots of people are, it's okay to admit it, and admitting your fear is the first step to overcoming it) you are free to leave it out, but it really is what's missing in all the home made Asian food that never quite tastes the way it does in the restaurant...

Whisk together the stuff in the bowl, and keep whisking as you drizzle in the peanut oil.

Drizzle until you have a slightly thicker than usual salad dressing.

Use a bit of carrot or rice wrapper to taste it. Mine needed a bit more sour, so I squeezed in another tbsp or so of lemon juice.

If you want to put this onto a green salad, I'd suggest doubling the oil and vinegar amounts. What you have here should be pretty thick.

The Salad:

• 2 c cooked chicken
• 2 carrots
• a few radishes (daikon, if you can find it)
• 1/2 c cashews
• 1/2 c cilantro
• 1/2 c basil
• 2 green onions

Yes, there is a pretty high veggie and herb content in this salad. Damn tasty, and makes for a full meal. I couldn't find decent bean sprouts, but some of those would be nice in this if you have them.

Start with the nuts.

Toast the cashews in a dry pan over medium heat. Shake them around in the pan until parts of them start to turn golden. You should also be able to smell them.

Next, the sesame seeds... yes, I know they're listed in the next batch of ingredients, but they're in the pic in this section so toast them now while you have an already hot pan.

Dice all your veggies to about the same size, chop the chicken, and chiffonade your basil.

Thow it all into a bowl, mix it, pour the dressing over top, and mix again. Or just mix once. Up to you.

Now, at this point, you have a perfectly viable chicken salad. You could eat it as is for lunch or dinner. You could serve it with some fried rice (I haven't made fried rice yet, have I? I need to do that soon) or some noodles. You could roll it up in lettuce like I did with the last chicken salad.

Or you could roll it up in rice wrappers.

Have I mentioned that I love food that is rolled up and stuffed?

The Rolls:

• rice wrappers
• sesame seeds
• sriracha

Now, you've already toasted your sesame seeds, so we've got that covered.

Next is the rice wrappers. If you've ever had Vientamese "salad rolls" you know what I'm talking about. Rice wrappers are these lovely stretchy things that you can wrap around all kinds of fresh food to make a hand held salad.

They're a really fun ingredient to play with, and though they look delicate, they are fairly resilient and can stretch quite a bit.

The set up: you need rice wrappers, a dish of water (pie plate works), a plate to work on, and a plate for your finished product. Hmm... I didn't seem to take a pic of the set up, but this is almost everything...

What you see on the plate there is a dry rice wrapper. They start out crispy, but with a little moisture will soften quite nicely.

Dip the wrapper into the water in the pie plate. All you need to do is get it wet, but you need to get all of it wet.

Lay the moistened wrapper on the working plate, and wait about 15 seconds. It will suddenly be flexible and extremely pliable.

Put a small-ish amount of chicken salad in the middle of the wrapper. Too little and you won't get a nice proportional roll, too much and, though it will roll up, the filling will fall out when you try to eat it.

You're going to roll this up just like you would a burrito. Start by folding the edge closest to you over the filling.

Then, fold each of the sides in.

Then, lift the filling and roll it away from you until you have a perfectly stuffed, beautifully rolled, chicken salad.

Sprinkle the rolls with the toasted sesame seeds. If you don't want to dip your rolls directly into hot chili sauce (Taneasha now understands why she keeps seeing me chop jalapenos with bare hands; relatively high tolerance for capsaicin), you can make another batch of salad dressing, or a bit of hoisin instead.

One thing to note about rice wrappers: they will dry out in the fridge if you have leftovers. They won't revert back to their original dry state or anything, but they will lose their stretch and pliability, and are much more likely to fall apart. 

To prevent them from drying out too much, roll each roll in a dampened paper towel before you put it in a container. Even if they do start to lose their structural integrity, you can just tear the wrapper into pieces, dump it all into a bowl and eat it with a fork.

What kind of rolled up or stuffed food do you like?