Ice Cream Ireland

 Brian, over at Chocolate Gourmand recently published a recipe and how-to for pirouettes. These cookies, perhaps named for the circular dressage move, are light, tubular cookies formed by rolling them around a wooden spoon.

What interests me about them especially is that they use egg whites and so are a great way to use the whole egg when making ice cream (where you usually just use the yolks). 

They go really well with ice cream, and are similar to the wafers we use for sundaes. I’m not going to post a recipe as Brian has done so here (complete with helpful how-to photos).

I didn’t have any trouble making them, and they are great fun to do. Perhaps when I make them again I’ll try dipping one half of them in chocolate!

Technorati tags: pirouette, cookie, recipe, baking 

 I’ve just received 3kg of Xocoline, Valrhona’s new sugar-free chocolate. We’ve been struggling to find a way to make sugar-free ice cream that is natural and meets our standards in terms of taste and consistency. Hopefully this will be a big step forward, and I’ll start playing immediately with it.

As far as sugar-free chocolates go - it is by far the best I have ever tasted. It’s fruity and sharp (65% cocoa content), and is very much a Valrhona product in terms of quality. I think there will be many interested chefs and many happy people who are on sugar-restricted diets!

Xocoline is available in Ireland through Odaios Food (trade only). Valrhona is planning to sell these as bars as well for retail customers, but as far as I know they are not available yet…

Technorati tags: chocolate, Valrhona, sugar free, Xocoline

 I know it’s a long way off, but the official dates have been set for the second annual Dingle Food and Wine Festival. It will take place the first weekend of October (3-5th) 2008. So if you like to plan ahead, mark your calender!

Speaking of festivals, I know I mentioned it in a recent post, but I’ll say it again - if you like Dingle and the arts, Feile na Bealtaine is one of the best times to come to this part of the world. From film to drama to music to fine art - it’s a packed week and my favourite time in Dingle, since the town is still quiet enough to enjoy it! I’ll post a schedule when the full list of events has been published…

Technorati tags: Dingle, food, festival, wine, 2008, gourmet

 With Spring almost over, we’re still freezing here in Ireland. Who knows how long it will continue, and one does worry whether summer has been cancelled as well. Still, as you can see from the photo above, the lambs are out and frolicking about, and seeing them always fills me with joy. A warm day or two can’t be that far off…On a different note - for anyone interested, there’s an article in PC Live magazine about Irish bloggers who have managed bookdeals. Among those covered are Twenty, Fiona, Grandad, (and me!).

Technorati tags: PC Live, magazine, spring, cold

  We’re getting close to publication now, and we’ve set the following launch dates for our up-coming cookbook:

• Dingle: 1 May 2008, 8:00pm, at Murphys Ice Cream, Strand Street
• Killarney: 30 April 2008, 7:30pm, at Murphys Ice Cream, Main Street *

We’ll try to make it a special event, and I promise there will be ice cream involved!

I think we’ll do both evenings as benefits for a good cause - we’re thinking Chernobyl Children’s Project.

I’m delighted that our Dingle launch will be part of the Feile na Bealtaine festivities, and anyone thinking of coming to Dingle would do well to arrive for that festival. Feile na Bealtaine is quite local in feel, international in aspiration, always interesting, and quite often inspiring.

In any case, we’d delighted if you could join us in either place!

    * To be confirmed…

Technorati tags: cookbook, Book of Sweet Things, launch, Feile, Bealtaine

 This is one of the best flavours I think we have ever made. We’ve tried chocolate truffle ice creams before, but the question has always been what is the best base to support them? A vanilla base can be a bit bland, and a chocolate base can over-power.

This base, designed by JP and Christophe in our production, has just a whisper of chocolate - so light and delicate that it has amazed the customers in our shops over the last month or so. It complements the dark chocolate truffles perfectly.

We used vanilla ganache truffles from the Skelligs Chocolate Company, which is based right here in Kerry. We found that using mixed-flavour truffles can confuse the palate, so we ordered 7 kilos of the one kind of truffle and started chopping. They thought we were nuts, but last week Sean received a phone call of thanks from the perplexed chocolatiers. Apparently quite a few people who tasted this ice cream in our Dingle or Killarney shops, jumped in their cars and drove out to Ballinskelligs to visit the factory shop (which is now also home to Cocoa Bean) for even more indulgence!

Murphys Chocolate Truffle Ice Cream

• • 125g sugar
• • 5 egg yolks
• • 1/4 vanilla bean, split lengthwise or 1/4 teaspoon natural vanilla essence  
• • 230 ml cream
• • 200 ml milk
• • 20 g bittersweet (70% chocolate)
• • 100 g chopped chocolate truffles

Yield: 6 Servings 

What to do: 

1. Melt the 70% chocolate in a double boiler over simmering water or a microwave. Take care – chocolate burns easily!
2. Beat sugar and egg yolks together until pale yellow.
3. Add the vanilla bean to the milk and bring to a simmer.
4. Turn off the heat and remove the vanilla bean.
5. Add the milk to the melted chocolate in small parts, mixing thoroughly until fully combined. 
6. Immediately beat the milk/chocolate into the egg and sugar mixture in a slow stream. Pour the mixture back into pan and place over low heat.  Stir until the custard thickens (around 60C). 
7. Allow the chocolate custard to cool.
8. Whip the cream and fold into the mix.
9. Chop the chocolate truffles into small pieces, making sure you handle them as little as possible (to avoid them melting).
10. Freeze the ice cream using a domestic ice cream machine, adding the chopped truffles once the ice cream has become semi-solid.
11. Otherwise, cover and place in the freezer, stirring every few hours to break up the ice crystals. Again, add the chocolate truffles once it’s semi-solid (or they will sink to the bottom).

6 Servings.

Notes:

1. This ice cream will only be as good as the chocolate you use. Find the best you can! 
2. The boiler or container in which you melt the chocolate must be completely dry or the chocolate can clump.
3. To pasteurise the eggs, heat the custard to 73C and keep at that temperature for three minutes. Use a cooking thermometer, though! If the custard goes any higher than 76C, the eggs will scramble. Immediately cover and place in the freezer until cool.

Technorati tags: chocolate, Skelligs, truffle, ice cream, recipe

I had my first opportunities to play with my new toy - the Nikon D300, which arrived promptly from Conn’s Cameras in Dublin. I took the photo above for Food and Wine, who will have us as part of their “Hot 100″ in next month’s issue, without hardly tinkering with the settings. Not bad for a camera straight out of the box!

The thing I noticed first off is its ability to render colour accurately and dramatically. The reviews I had read pointed to this, and it really does seem to be excellent.

There’s much more punch to the colours than I had with the D80, and it also seems to reproduce subtle variations and shades with much greater accuracy.

Of course, one of the first items on my agenda was running over to visit my little niece, Una, who (along with her brother Conor) has to put up with an uncle who keeps pointing a camera at her.

I think the photo on the right is a good example of what I was talking about above - there is good colour detail on her quite pale face, with lots of pinks and whites, while at the same time her dark blue of her eyes look as they do in real life - not under-exposed.

Chances are with my previous cameras, the face would have been over-exposed or the eyes too dark.

I should point out, as well, that all of these photos had only very minimal adjustments in Photoshop. I hope do be spending a lot less time tinkering on that particular program!

The final test was to see how it handles very low light. I had heard that the D300 is much better in low-light situations (although naturally not as good as the D3, which is meant to be astonishing).

Low light is a big issue here in Ireland, since so many of the days are positively murky, and I love using natural light if at all possible.

I took this photo of Gatsby, the ice cream cat, at twilight using 1000 iso, and the shot is perfectly usable. There is some noise, but not nearly as much as I would have expected.

 All in all, I’m very impressed with the camera, and I can’t wait to play some more. I don’t think I’ll have any excuses at all if my photos don’t improve!

Technorati tags: Nikon, camera, D300, photography, review

 This has been a hard week, and it’s only Wednesday. First a freezer failed, and we lost a lot of ice cream, and then we had news that Fresh Supermarkets in Dublin are thinking about dropping us. If you buy your Murphys Ice Cream at Fresh, please make your displeasure known to the manager!

However, there is something that cheers me up each spring, and that is when I hear from Colm, the farmer who supplies us with Kerry Cow milk, telling me that the first of his Kerry cows has given birth. It means that we’ll soon again have a regular supply of rare and delicious milk for the summer season.

I always drive over to meet the first one, and it always leaves me delighted. For me, it puts everything else in perspective…

Technorati tags: breed, ice cream, farm, cow, Kerry, Dingle

  I try to keep politics off this blog, but this story deserves attention:

The Green Party announced today that they are considering bringing a motion to the Dail that would ban freezers in Ireland. The ban is set to reduce carbon emissions, but Irish industry is less than impressed, stressing the likelihood of job losses. According to Green Party spokeswoman Deirdre De Gruen, however, the ban on freezers that could come into effect as early as January 2010 would play a major part in reducing Irish carbon levels to new stringent EU targets.

“We were elected to address climate change and get on with the business of government,” she said. “This bill will have a major impact on the environmental health of Ireland.”

According to activists, eating fresh foods instead of frozen foods would save up to 30 million tons of carbon through savings in electricity and diesel on freezer vans. A total ban on freezers would also result in a significant reduction of waste, as freezers cannot be recycled. In addition, it would have positive health implications, pushing consumers toward fresh produce. Even noted organics champion Prince Charles has weighed in on the issue.

“Food should come fresh from a farmers market or an organic farm,” he told a British broadsheet recently, “not from a little tin or pot. I would love to see Buckingham Palace freezer-free and Camilla agrees.”

So are refrigerators next, and could we survive without our frozen peas and ice cream? According to Government sources there are no moves yet to put a freeze on fridges, and surviving without a freezer might be easier than you think. Almost half of people surveyed by this paper couldn’t identify the contents of their freezers and 32.5% stated their freezers only contained left-overs that would never be consumed.

Not everyone is convinced, however, especially the fishing and ice cream industries. Small business consultant and representative David Montague claims such a bill would jeopardise as many as 1,000 Irish jobs and could have serious consequences for the economy.

“We will be mounting a campaign to stop this mis-guided motion before it ever reaches the floor of Government buildings,” he said.

So will business win out or will frozen fish, peas and ice cream simply melt away? According to the Green Party, there could be special exemptions for food producers and outlets. Chippers might be allowed frozen fish that comes from EU-designated disadvantaged areas, for example, and ice cream makers could still operate if they use alternative power sources.

“Change is not always comfortable, but it is time to do the right thing,” Ms. De Gruen said.

From the Muster Daily Express.

Note: Now that April Fools is past I will add that this was only meant for the day and there is no truth in this whatsoever (as far as I know!)

Technorati tags: freezer ban, Green Party, ice cream