Flavors – Page 13

September 8, 2014

Black Pepper Chevre with Beet Syrup

With the Minnesota harvest rolling in we’ve been trying to give our CSI(Community Supported Ice Cream) members a good mix of ice creams that are representative of our locally grown fruits and vegetables. Last month, one of our offerings was a sour cream beet ice cream with chocolate syrup, of which we ended up with an excess of beet juice. Instead of throwing out that juice, we decided to make a new flavor. I decided to use one of my favorite fall salad combinations – beets and goat cheese, which brings us to this week’s flavor – Black Pepper Chevre with Beet Syrup.

I wanted give the ice cream a little extra kick and add another dimension, and instead of steeping a fresh pepper in the ice cream, as we often do, I decided to use freshly ground black pepper. The black pepper is added into our ice cream base along with some chevre from Stickney Hills Goat Farm in Kimball, MN. This particular cheese worked well in the ice cream, as it is fairly pungent for a spreadable goat cheese. I didn’t want the cream to dilute the cheese’s goatiness, if you catch what I’m saying. The black pepper chevre ice cream base is cooked and cooled before it’s ready for the churn. Not before we make our syrup though…

For the beet ice cream that we made for our CSI members, we used fresh beets. Fresh beets have an earthiness about them that trumps any roasted beet, and we wanted all of that. We peeled, pureed and then strained the beets through a fine mesh strainer. After the strain, we have two things left: beet juice and beet pulp. Both were used in the sour cream beet with chocolate syrup, but this week, I’m only using the juice. The juice is reduced down in a sauce pan with sugar until a syrup consistency is achieved. Magic! Not really, but it’s really friggin good guys. This beet syrup is layered into the black pepper chevre ice cream before packaging.

Bang! Black Pepper Chevre with Beet Syrup. More salad flavors made into ice cream…maybe that should be the FrozBroz tagline ;).

You can be one of two lucky winners of this fabulous, scratch made craft ice cream in our weekly pint giveaway. Enter your name in the comments section here, or on our facebook page under the posted contest. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 9/12/14 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

September 4, 2014

Roasted Eggplant w/ Parmesan Shortbread

The end of summer is all about utilizing every last bit we can pull out of the earth. Might be via canning, or pickling, or simply making new dishes and finding new ways to eat things. The eggplant idea hit me literally just from seeing them at the farmers market and I thought, why not? Eggplant offer a subtle sweet flavor that I often use in cooking more as a dimensional/flavor component then as a feature item. That subtle sweetness works wonderfully in ice cream, no matter how strange it might sound. But for fun, let’s add some shortbread. Or maybe shortbread with a good parmesan cheese? Now we’re talking.

Lets start with the eggplant – for the ice cream, the eggplant is sliced, roasted off until nicely browned and blended into a smooth puree that is added to the ice cream base before the cooking process. Roasting helps eliminate the water from the eggplant and rounds out its flavor.

Next, the shortbread. We make a regular shortbread with butter, flour, fresh shredded parmesan and a little bit of sugar. It’s cut into cookies, baked off and then chopped up into small bits to add into the ice cream.

Blammo. It sounds a lot more weird than it really is. The roasted eggplant provides the ice cream with a nice undertone paired with an umami crunch from the parmesan shortbread. A great late summer harvest bite of ice cream.

You can be one of two lucky winners of this fabulous, scratch made craft ice cream in our weekly pint giveaway. Enter your name in the comments section here, or on our facebook page under the posted contest. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 9/5/14 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

August 22, 2014

Sour Cherry and Northern Lights Blue

This week is pretty plain and simple. You see, fresh tart/sour cherries aren’t something you come across very often, so when you do, you make ice cream with them. It crossed my mind to do a plain sour cherry ice cream, but you know? A few week’s back our family was doing some early evening power snacking; the kind where you put every kind of cheese, cracker, condiment, smoked fish, and bread out and go to town. Well, my favorite combo of the evening was a Cherry Black Ale jam from Serious Jam and blue cheese. And this is what brought me to this week’s flavor – Sour Cherry and Northern Lights Blue.

The Seward Coop, our neighborhood haunt, has been carrying a small supply of Barnard Farm tart cherries for a few weeks, and as a said, I couldn’t resist, as they are available once a year if you’re lucky. For the ice cream, we pit the cherries, chop ’em, and make a nice little jam with sugar and a splash of lemon juice. We will layer the jam into the ice cream at the end of the churn.

For the blue cheese portion of the ice cream I choose to use Northern Lights Blue. It’s made in Minnesota by Joe Sherman at Northern Lights Cheese. This blue is of excellent quality and of the Roquefort style of blue. It’s pungent and creamy. I wanted a blue that was full flavored, as the ice cream will tone down its pungentness. The cheese is crumbled and mixed into the ice cream before layering in the jam.

Plain and simple – Sour Cherry and Northern Lights Blue. An ice cream gem that you’ll only find here at FrozBroz!

You can be one of two lucky winners of this fabulous, scratch made craft ice cream in our weekly pint giveaway. Enter your name in the comments section here, or on our facebook page under the posted contest. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 8/29/14 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

August 21, 2014

Sour Cream and Chive

I’ve been having a hard time containing my excitement for this week’s flavor for so many reasons.

We’ve talked for years about doing fully savory, non-sweet ice cream flavors but had never quite figured out exactly how to present them. I made the decision earlier this summer that we couldn’t wait anymore. It was time to take a turn down this country road and see what we would find.

The world opened up when we came to the conclusion that this “obviously-not-a dessert” flavored dessert was exactly that. Not a dessert. Still following me? Ice cream as a condiment: this was where we found our traction. This week’s flavor (and I’m sure there will be many like this to come) is meant to be served with or as an accent to something else – a snack, salad or main dish. I was instantly inspired by one of my favorite childhood (and adulthood) snacks – chips and dip. And, I’m in love with fresh summer chives. The thought of dipping a potato chip into a scoop of cold, fresh sour cream and chive ice cream on a hot summer day was one I immediately wanted to capture. Shall we??

IT all starts with fresh summer chives picked straight from my backyard. Since we aren’t making a sweet dessert ice cream, the big difference is in the amount (or lack thereof) of sugar. We still use the same cream and eggs approach, but the sugar is reduced by about 97%. It still serves a purpose, but only to round out the flavor. The idea was to make a very clean tasting cream base so the chives and acidity of the sour cream could star.

We follow the same process as we do for all of our other flavors at this point – the chives are minced and steeped in the cream base during the cooking process. The steep brings out the fresh chive flavor without cooking it too much.

Let me tell you – the end result is magical. It really is. The ice cream is very clean, not sweet at all – a hint of salt with a nice sour cream foundation and bright, fresh chive flavor. The real excitement came when I was able to serve it up to friends and witness their reactions. I scooped a couple of large scoops into a bowl and set it out with good quality potato chips for friends to dip in the super cold ice cream, just as I had imagined it. It was a hit, and one that I expect will have us venturing back into this territory soon – perhaps even offering some pints for sale at the shop in the near future. Ice Cream as a condiment – it’s happening!

You can be one of two lucky winners of this fabulous, scratch made craft ice cream in our weekly pint giveaway. Enter your name in the comments section here, or on our facebook page under the posted contest. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 8/15/14 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

August 11, 2014

Sweet Corn with Jalapeno Honey

Onward to another variation of one of the season’s greatest offerings – sweet corn! This week we got a little help from our friends Rich and Angela, who a few weeks back, made my new favorite sweet corn combination, jalapeno honey butter. After tasting it and watching them make it, I knew we had work this combo into one of this season’s sweet corn flavors. So here it is, this week’s flavor – Sweet Corn with Jalapeno Honey

As we did last week, we picked up our corn at the Midtown Farmers Market from Peter’s Pumpkins. The ultra-sweet bi-colored variety. Whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it right. I can eat this corn raw right off the cob. It’s that good! Oh, and I did. For the ice cream, the corn is pureed with a little cream, steeped in the ice cream base, and strained after the cooking process. It’s now ready to churn, but not before we make that jalapeno honey…

These are organic jalapenos from the Wisconsin Growers Cooperative near Durand, WI. They’re perfect. We first roast them on charcoal grill with a little wood added for that subtly smoky wood fired flavor. The peppers are peeled, seeded and deveined before they’re pureed in a food processor with wildflower honey from Garden Farme in Ramsey, MN. Initially I wasn’t going to put any butter in this jalapeno honey because I thought it would probably get lost with all of the other flavors here, but in the end, I may have added a touch of brown butter to this jalapeno honey puree. Shhhhhhhh, don’t speak. We layer the jalapeno honey into the ice cream at the end of the churn.

Sweet corn ice cream of any variety is luxurious on a number of levels, and this my friends, is no different. In fact, it’s beyond luxurious. The sweet corn ice cream with the jalapeno honey provides an explosion of flavor and a true party in your mouth. And for those supportive CSI full share members, this flavor will be part of your August share.

On the bright side, if you’re not a Full Share member, you can be one of two lucky winners of this fabulous, scratch made craft ice cream in our weekly pint giveaway. Enter your name in the comments section here, or on our facebook page under the posted contest. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 8/15/14 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!