Well have I been quite the busy bee. This is the third recipe that I have managed to knock out of The Babbo Cookbook this week. As I said earlier in a previous post, some of these recipes are fairly quick and simple to make. In fact, most people would be surprised to see how quickly a four star meal can come together with the proper tools, equipment, and knowledge.
Completing some of these simpler dishes is all part of my strategy for making this project work smoothly. I figure that as the intricacy of the food increases, I will need to take more time in between recipes to prepare everything. This of course could all backfire on me when I'm knee deep in calf's brains and tripe, wishing for a break with none of the simpler plates left to make. We'll see.
It just so happens that my fiancé picked this next recipe out for me to make. We also had some friends over on the same night that I finished preparing it and we asked, 'hey, wanna be guinea pigs and try something new?'
While they all loved this dessert, and some practically licked their bowls, I, however, did not. Sorry Mario, I'm not saying that I hated it, or that I wouldn't make it again. I just felt that this dish needed something else as I found it a bit one sided and just sweet upon sweet.
I love lemon, really I do. And Mario was right when he described that this dessert packs a powerful punch of lemon. But even with the weather rebounding to make it once again feel more like spring has sprung, I just couldn't get into this dish much. Maybe it'll be your favorite, who knows.
In Italian, semifreddo means half frozen. Texture wise, semifreddo is like a cross between a gelato and sorbet. The pros of making a semifreddo is that it's super easy to assemble, it doesn't require a ice cream churner, and the kids won't have to wait overnight for this frozen treat to be ready on a warm day.
I started by whipping some heavy cream to stiff peaks. Once the peaks form, it can be transferred to a bowl and kept refrigerated until needed later.
While that was working, some sugar and water get put into a pan and brought to a boil. You will want this sugar mixture to reach what is known as the hardball stage. In the wonderful world of sugar cookery, the hardball stage is reached at around 247° to 250°, so you will need a candy thermometer to make sure that you don't over or under cook the mixture. I used to hate when we would do sugar work in culinary school because my sugar mixture seemed to always crystallize. So the sugar and I have a sort of love-hate relationship.
As the sugar mixture is cooking, you should have the mixing bowl freed up to whisk some egg yolks until they become slightly pale and a little thick.
At this point while the mixer is running slowly, you will want to carefully add the sugar mixture to the egg yolks in the mixing bowl. Here I would like to emphasize the term careful, because a splash of wicked hot sugar on any part of your skin is not a fun way to spend your day.
Keep the mixer running and once the bowl has cooled down to the touch, I added some lemon juice, lemon zest, and vanilla.
Once that was incorporated well, I carefully folded the whipped heavy cream into the egg yolk mixture, and it looked a little something like this:
This mixture then goes into a plastic wrap lined loaf pan and then gets placed in the freezer until it firms up.
There are two sauces that accompany this dessert. The first one is the huckleberry sauce and it is super simple. You take some huckleberries, or if you can't find them (and my local stores had none) use wild blueberries, with a little bit of sugar in a small saucepan and heat until the juices are slightly thickened. This can then be transferred to another bowl and put in the refrigerator to chill.
The second sauce that accompanies this desert is a lemon brodo, or broth. See I told you it would be a powerful slap of lemon! For this part, all of the ingredients, (lemon juice, sugar, an egg yolk, heavy cream, and a pinch of salt) get combined in a blender and chilled until ready to plate.
I used a bowl for the final plating. Spoon a little bit of the lemon brodo on the bottom of the bowl, cut a slice of the semifreddo and put it on top of the brodo, then spoon some of the huckleberry sauce right on top.
Visually, it is very simple and the huckleberry sauce does make the semifreddo stand out a little. As I said before though, it's just a little too much of sweet on sweet for me. Maybe I will try it again during the summer when I have a craving for cold lemonade on a hot day. The good news is that so far everyone who has tried it has really liked it. So this will probably be a keeper for a future repeat performance.
I want to take this point to say thank you to all of you who have made a visit to my blog. As it currently stands, I have a little over 100 page views so far. I hope I can keep this momentum going and reach as many people as possible. And of course, feel free to post a comment or send an email about anything on this blog or cooking in general. I would love to hear from you. This is a real labor of love and is something that will challenge me for many months to come, so I welcome all of the support that I can get.
The next few weeks are going to be crazy busy for me so I will probably continue attacking some of the quicker and easier recipes in this book. It's really not a copout, it's just that as of today, I will be getting married in exactly 2 weeks! I am so excited. As you can imagine, these last two weeks are going to be filled with lots of last-minute wedding chores, but I still want to continue with the steady pace of knocking out as many of these recipes as I can.
Until next time...
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