Cooking with Kimberly

What should I name my Food Network show when I'm the next Food Network star?

Tonight I made the final round, two rounds actually, of chocolate wedding cake. I'm also still working on cleaning out the fridge and freezer. Tonight I tossed some unused raspberry frosting that somehow got relegated to the back corner of the fridge. It was originally pink but was now white and brown and fuzzy. Also found a lime that rolled to the back of the fridge. It had turned brownish yellow and concave.

A great recipe to make when you need to clear out your fridge and freezer is homemade ice cream. I made two batches Sunday. First, I made a batch of vanilla ice cream, recipe courtesy Auntie, then another of raspberry. That used up some dairy, plus cleared the freezer of two Cuisinart ice cream freezer bowls. And if you have frozen fruit on hand as I did, you can mix it in to the ice cream, or boil it down and make a sauce.



Raspberry Ice Cream
Makes 1 quart

ingredients

1 1/2 cups milk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
5 ounces evaporated milk
2/3 cup sugar, plus 1-3 additional tablespoons
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 1/2 tablespoons Chambord, separated
fresh or frozen raspberries, optional

preparation

Stir together milk, cream, evaporated milk, 2/3 cup sugar, vanilla, and 2 1/2 tablespoons of Chambord with whisk until sugar dissolves. Pour into ice cream maker to freeze. While machine is running, combine fresh or frozen raspberries with remaining tablespoon Chambord and 1-3 tablespoons of sugar to taste. At the end of machine cycle, add raspberries and any accumulated juice to ice cream mixture while machine is still running. Mix for an additional 1-2 minutes, or until fruit is incorporated throughout. Transfer ice cream to plastic container and freeze until firm.

**For vanilla ice cream: use only 2/3 cup sugar total, increase the vanilla extract to 2 teaspoons, and eliminate the Chambord and raspberries.

Other late great adventures in cooking with Kimberly:

For Father's Day dinner, we had Grilled Tequila-Lime Chicken Breast, for which I used a Lawry's marinade of the same name. I don't grill outdoors. My Le Creuset Square Grill Pan substitutes perfectly. Also had Mashed Potatoes and Fire-Roasted Corn Salsa. For dessert: Key Lime Pie served with Whipped Cream flavored with Coconut Rum.



A rather weak addition to the many pies collection: Banana-Caramel Coconut Cream Pie. I had a homemade pie crust that wasn't doing nothing, so I filled it with a bunch of stuff that was easy to throw together. I filled the bottom of the pie shell with caramel, then layered sliced bananas, vanilla pudding, and whipped cream flavored with dark rum on top of that. I sprinkled the top with toasted pecans and coconut.

We had Gul and Matt over for dinner. We had Caesar Salad and Chicken Marsala, and I thought Tiramisù would be great on the menu. Tiramisù is Italian for "pick me up," and it's one of my absolute favorite desserts. It's comprised of Savoiardi lady fingers soaked in espresso and rum, layered with a mixture of mascarpone cheese, egg yolks, sugar, and rum, cocoa powder sprinkled on top, garnished with dark chocolate shavings.

Arrosto di Maiale Al Latte (Milk-Braised Pork): This one is probably worth a post by itself. The photo you see is from Adam Roberts of Amateur Gourmet. Get thee over to his blog immediately. I saw this recipe on his blog last September and have wanted to try it since then. I ended up doing a mashup of Adam's recipe and this one from Kevin Weeks. The recipe uses butter, flour, olive oil, a huge pork loin, whole milk, garlic, sage, and lemon. As Adam said, "How could that taste bad?" You need to know that I chopped 20 cloves of garlic for this recipe. My house smelled like garlic for a week and the neighbors filed complaints. It was delicious.