Manchego w/Zinfandel Caramel

Christmas is now in the rear view mirror as is most of 2013, which means New Years eve celebrations are almost upon us.  New Years eve is synonymous with indulgence in good food, and good drinks, and like last year’s White Chocolate Pop Rocks w/ Champagne caramel, we wanted to do something apropos.  Where I come from,  no good party happens without a plate full of good cheese.  Likewise, a plate full of good cheese pairs fantastically with good wine, and that brings us to this week’s flavor, Manchego w/ Zinfandel Caramel.

wine and cheese

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This flavor starts with my one of my favorite Spanish Manchego.  Its a spanish cheese from the La Mancha region, and this particular selection is a raw milk manchego.  Its buttery, with a nice salty bite and a great cheese-y flavor that pairs incredibly well with fruit and a bold red wine.

manchegograted machego

 

 

 

 

 

For the foundation of this flavor, the manchego went into the cream 2 ways- some was finely grated and melted into the base during the cooking process.  More was coarsely grated and tossed in at the end to provide an extra oomph with the occasional bite of cheese.

zinfandel caramel

 

 

 

 

 

The caramel begins as a standard sugar and water recipe, but is finished with a bit of cream to cool it first, and then the zinfandel right at the end to ensure the flavor doesn’t boil off.

manchego w/zinfandel caramel

 

 

The caramel is swirled into the ice cream as its packed into the pint.  It is a wonderfully rich, manchego ice cream decorated with ribbons of zinfandel caramel.

 
Like to try some? You can win one of the only two pints in the world, filled with 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. 2 lucky winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 12/27/13 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally and give us feedback. Pints must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

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Borage Buerre Blanc

Want to learn something new today? Ok. Have you ever heard of Borage? Maybe you have, but I hadn’t, until my friend Christine dropped us a line and asked if we wanted to use it in our ice cream. Borage is a freely seeding annual plant that is said to taste like cucumber. It is considered an herb, but it is usually grown as a flowering plant in vegetable gardens, as it attracts pollinating bees. Now that you learned something new, allow me to show you something else new…us making borage ice cream with white wine. It’s this week’s flavor: Borage Buerre Blanc. Let’s do this!

 

 

BorageBorage LeafBorage Leaf Steep

 

 

 

 

 

This is a picture of the borage plant, similar to the one growing in Christine’s garden. Both the flowers and leaves are edible, but this week, we’re using just the leaves. The borage leaves are meant to be used young, because as they mature, they get a prickly fuzz. This plant was mature, but that’s ok, because we’re steeping the leaves for flavor and straining out after heating. I wanted to try to infuse as much of the borage leaves’ cucumber flavor as possible into our organic cane sugar base.

 

 

Riesling

Buerre Blanc

Buerre Blanc

 

 

 

 

 

 

To pair with the cucumber flavor, I was contemplating acidic flavors , like lemon, lime, vinegar, etc., but in the end decide to pair it with a French sauce called a Buerre Blanc, AKA white butter. A Buerre Blanc can be made with either vinegar or wine, and I opted for the wine approach. I want a light, dry white wine, that would go nicely with a cucumber salad, so I decided to go with this Pacific Rim Dry Reisling. Along with the wine, peppercorns and a bay leaf get reduced down until almost dry in the pan. A small amount of cream is added, and then butter to finish it off. The sauce is strained through fine mesh and ready to use. Buerre Blancs are rich and acidic and generally pair well with a light delicate fish. Today, we’re going to add it into our borage infused ice cream to give it a little tang.

 

 

Borage Buerre Blanc

 

 

 

Borage Buerre Blanc ice cream! It has a subtle earthy cumcumber flavor that is accompanied by a light acidic touch provided by the Buerre Blanc. Something new, but just another day for the FrozBroz.

 

Want to try it? You can win one of the only two pints in the world, filled with 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. 2 lucky winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 9/13/13 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally and give us feedback. Pints must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

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