A Leisurely Friday and only a tiny bit of cooking

 Today I am feeling like this is a luxurious Friday. I didn't get out of bed until 9:30. I decided to clean my oven. Shabbat starts at 4:22.

I can face Friday as a lady of leisure because nearly all of the food I am serving tonight was made last week.

Lately, my Friday morning workout has been accompanied by watching The Great British Bake-off.  This week's episode was all about making desserts that were dairy-free and gluten-free and vegan. The first challenge of the episode of dairy-free ice cream.

I watched the bakers with great interest. I have been making pretty good dairy-free ice cream for ages. When this was a new adventure for me I used to substitute soy milk or almond milk for the dairy.  I find that I hate the beany undertaste of soy milk and soy-based ice creams. Additionally, my youngest  is both soy and nut allergic. Oatmilk was not then commonly available.

I no longer remember exactly how I stumbled onto the idea of using cooked starch to create a silky mouthfeel in my non-dairy ice cream. I can tell you that it works really well to create something that feels fat and luscious.

Many old-time cookbooks tell you to start ice cream with a cooked custard rather than with just cream and milk and sugar. Anyway, I had assumed that at least one of the contestants on the show would have used my method. This leads me to think, perhaps erroneously that I might have come up with an original cooking idea.

A couple of weeks ago I had made cranberry non-dairy ice cream. I had some left but homemade ice cream doesn't stay stable in the freezer like commercial ice cream. I started with that mixture, added some potato starch---corn starch is nicer but I have potato starch leftover from Passover.

I added the starch to a pot that had the old icecream I also added some more water, pomegranate molasses ( because it is a good dupe for cranberry), maple syrup a teeny bit of salt,

and some olive oil. To answer your next two questions: Yes, that is King Kong inside of my whisk, a gift from one of my sisters. It's about two tablespoons of olive oil.

You keep mixing the whole thing on low heat until it comes to a boil, unless like me you have a brainstorm and decide to grate in a sweet and fragrant little apple into the pan, and then it takes a little bit longer to cook the cold apple. I also whisked up an egg yolk to add into the mixture after the whole thing comes to a boil for additional satiny mouthfeel.

Cooking this sort of a mixture ( a bunch of wet stuff and a bit of dry starch) always has the feel of a fabulous science experiment. You stir up a liquid over heat and then as soon as it comes to a boil the starch molecules change shape and instead of a liquid, you have a gorgeous lush emulsion. This is how one thickens gravy or makes a cheese sauce or a pudding. 

Anyway, that's what I did with my old ice cream, and pomegranate molasses and water and flavors. After it came to a boil I mixed some of the hot liquid into the egg yolk and then added the yoke-ey mixture into the hot mixture and stirred until smooth. That custard then went into my ice cream maker.

I did taste a bit off of the dasher after I packed up the ice cream into my freezer. It tastes like it was made with dairy. This will be a nice way to end our meal.

Autumn means that I MUST eat cranberries and winter squash in many forms. Autumn also means that I must see red and yellow leaves.

The trees along Broadway have done a not-terrible job of fulfilling that need.

A few years ago the subway stop near our house was rebuilt and re-designed. My husband calls the area in front of the station  Spare Change Plaza because of the regulars who sit there.

Spare Change Plaza actually has other pleasures ( aside from the beautiful but terribly slippery in-the- rain pavement) 

The plantings are wonderful.

I get enough of a taste of actual autumn to not feel deprived.

I am also adding these videos because I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I did. I'm sorry, they are in Hebrew. You might be able to get enough out of them even without knowing the language.

This last one is for a Shabbat laugh.