Very Easy Vanilla Ice Cream

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

Vanilla ice cream (crop)

Here in Adelaide we sweltered through much of summer. As much as many of us might have complained about the above 40°C days, people were similarly disappointed that we didn’t crack our all time record temperature. I was pretty grateful that that was a record we missed – 46°C is plenty hot enough, thank you very much.

And while temperatures have dropped, and we’re enjoying some almost wintery days, we still have some moderately warm weather ahead of us – and, of course, our friends in the northern hemisphere are all looking forward to summer proper.

So all of that is justification for just now posting a super simple vanilla ice cream recipe. I first made this back in February to take along to a 4 year old’s birthday party. Funnily enough – there weren’t a great many photo opportunities at that event and, despite making a second batch, I’ve done a really rubbish job of attempting to photograph it. However, I’m willing to bet that pretty much everyone and anyone reading this page knows what vanilla ice cream looks like and doesn’t need eighteen perfectly shot images to remind them!

The great thing about this ice cream is that it is egg free which means that it’s custard free. This means that it is zero hassle to make and anyone who avoids eggs can eat it.

The original recipe comes from the Cuisinart manual that came with my mum’s ice cream maker. This recipe suggests that you will need to whisk the milk and sugar for just a couple of minutes. This is complete nonsense. You really need to whisk the milk and sugar until the sugar has completely dissolved (otherwise you’ll have gritty ice cream – yuck!) and in my experience that probably takes a good 10-15 minutes.

As always with ice cream, making it on a stinking hot day is never a good idea – especially if your ice cream maker relies on a frozen insert.

This is one of the easiest ice cream recipes I’ve come across and, being vanilla, is an absolute crowd pleaser.

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Very Easy Vanilla Ice Cream

Ingredients

  • 1 cup (250mL) full cream milk, cold
  • ¾ caster sugar
  • 2 cups (500mL) cream (pure cream is best but thickened cream will do), cold
  • 1-2 tsp vanilla paste to taste

Instructions

  1. Beat the milk and sugar until the sugar is dissolved.
  2. Thoroughly mix through the cream and vanilla paste. If you choose to use a stand mixer, keep the speed on low so that you don't heat the mixture.
  3. Churn in your ice cream maker according to instructions then place in container in freezer for at least a couple of hours.
  4. Makes about a litre.
https://eatingadelaide.com/easy-vanilla-ice-cream/

Beef and Stout Pie

- Alex Prichard 1 Comment

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Friday was Pi Day. The humour in this is limited – if you write dates in the American format it was 3/14, and pi (the mathematical constant) approximates to 3.14 (if you’re dealing with 2 decimal places). The connection between all of this and pies is tenuous at best.

But we’ve also had a burst of relatively cool weather in Adelaide so for starters I’m more than happy to consider switching on things that generate substantial heat. And I’m also happy to consider eating pie. A hot, home made pie for dinner is definitely cold weather food.

I found this pie recipe on the MiNDFOOD website and tweaked it a little, not least of all because pies have pastry on both the bottom and the top!

Green peppercorns are a great ingredient to cook with: they add bursts of pepperiness along with a hint of sharpness. Just make sure you rinse them first (they will come in brine). You do need to factor in plenty of time for both cooking and cooling the pie filling. You can’t rush the beef being tender and, especially if you are doing a pie properly, you need the filling to be cool because if you hit the pastry with hot pie filling you’ll end up with the dreaded soggy bottom!

We used our piemaker for this and bought pastry (both shortcrust and puff – yes, sometimes dinner just has to happen!) so once the pie filling was complete the actual pie could be be assembled and on the table in about half an hour (20 minutes of that was cooking time). If I were serving this to others, I would bother to at least make my own shortcrust, use individual pie dishes and cook them in the oven. At least … that’s what I tell myself!

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Beef and Stout Pie

Beef and Stout Pie

Ingredients

  • ~ 800 g diced blade steak (or any other cut of beef which works for long slow cooks)
  • 2 onions, very roughly chopped
  • 2 cloves of garlic, finely minced
  • 2 tbsp plain flour
  • 250 mL stout
  • 375 mL beef stock
  • a few sprigs of fresh thyme
  • 125 mL cream
  • 1 (generous) tbsp green peppercorns, drained and rinsed
  • pastry (for a piemaker)
  • 1 sheet of shortcrust pastry, defrosted
  • 1 sheet of puff pastry, defrosted

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 140°C (fan, or 160°C conv).
  2. Heat some olive oil in an ovenproof casserole dish and brown the beef in batches.
  3. Set the beef aside and turn down the heat. Add the onion and garlic and soften. Stir often.
  4. Return the beef to the pan and sprinkle over the flour, mixing well. Allow this to cook for a minute or two, before adding the stout, stock and thyme.
  5. Bring to the boil and then take off the heat and put, covered, in the preheated oven. Cook for about an hour and a half until the beef is meltingly tender.
  6. If the gravy is still a little thin, return to the stove and remove the lid - but keep a close eye on it and don't over thicken. It should be no more than the consistency of a thin cream.
  7. Allow to cool a little before adding the cream and pepper corns and set aside to cool fully. The cooling and the addition of the cream will thicken the gravy further.
  8. If using a pie maker, preheat and cut the base (shortcrust) pastry. Line the pie maker, fill (take care not to over fill!) and top with the puff pastry. Cook for the recommended time (in our case 20 minutes) and serve immediately.
https://eatingadelaide.com/beef-stout-pie/

The Snake Charmer, Unley

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

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date of visit: Sunday 22 February 2014

Part of our grand plan when we headed to the Unley Ignite craft beer afternoon was to head out for an early dinner.

We are still at the point in the toddler’s life where an ‘early dinner’ means we sit down at 5:30pm (bed time is 7pm – he gets a bit of leeway if we go out!) and this generally limits our choice of venues. Many pubs don’t start serving dinner until 6pm which is just a bit late (especially if there’s a bit of travel involved) and generally I am thrown into some state of indecision – poring over the Entertainment Book, UrbanSpoon and blog reviews of restaurants. It’s ridiculous.

Fortunately, with Ignite being held on Unley Road there were plenty of options and we decided to wing it. One great thing about dining out at 5:30pm is that you do not need to worry about reservations!

As the natural accompaniment to beer is curry, we found ourselves headed to The Snake Charmer on Unley Road. It opens at 5:30pm and we were, literally, the first people through the door.

The interior decoration is quite dark and striking: bare brick walls and gold and black upholstery and certainly a lot smarter than I was expecting. We were greeted warmly, seated and we were so early we were given the Early Bird menu. If you arrive at opening and you can vacate your table by 7:15 pm then a cut down version of the menu sees entrées costing just $5.90 and main courses $9.90.

I duly asked the toddler what he wanted to eat to which he announced “BEEF!”. The beef options on the take away menu all fall into the ‘really spicy’ category (even I’m not stupid enough to feed vindaloo to a three year old!) so I chose the beef madras, Andy the rogan josh and our friend, Simon, the lamb saag. We also ordered entrées: onion bhaji for Andy, pakoras for me and samosas for the third party. To go with our main courses we ordered naan bread and rice. And, to start, we ‘shared’ pappadums (where ‘shared’ means that the toddler took possession of most of them).

Our entrées arrived quickly (no doubt helped by the encouragement from the toddler …. “where’s my fooooood?”). Andy’s onion bhaji arrived as individual onion rings (rather than clumped together patties) and they were very much enjoyed by his side of the table. My pakoras were excellent and the samosas seemed to go down well too. The entrées all scored big ticks and were very prettily presented.

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It is, of course, very hard to make a curry look pretty … Our main courses arrived, the toddler took one look at what was on the table and announced that the rogan josh was his (a relief for me with my beef curry!). Poor Andy would have enjoyed his curry had he been allowed to eat more of it! Fortunately, Simon also shared some lamb saag with both Andy and a starving small child. My beef madras was suitably spicy. I think my one criticism would be that each curry was bulked out by at least one piece of potato.

Fortunately for us, the toddler refuses to eat bread, so we all got to try some naan and Simon, being a very hungry sort, was able to finish off any left over gravy.

Of course, on an early bird menu, the dinner was super cheap (even with beers it came to under $30 a head) so it definitely represented sensational value. On top of this the food was good and the service was friendly and efficient.

A definite thumbs up!

The Snake Charmer
60 Unley Road
Unley SA 5061
phone: 08 8272 2624

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