Strawberry Ice Cream

For several weeks now, I’ve been obsessing about strawberry ice cream.

I’ve never been one to choose strawberry when perusing the thirty-two-or-however-many flavours. I tend to go for something nutty or chocolaty (or preferably both). Besides that, I’m not even a huge consumer of ice cream. I rarely buy it. It was just one of those unexplained cravings, I suppose.

About a month ago, I was gearing up to run a race I’d been training for and decided it was the optimal time to indulge in something horrifically caloric. So I pleaded my case to my husband, and out we went for huge ice cream cones.

Indeed, I picked strawberry. It was nice, but it didn’t really do it for me. The craving remained unsatisfied. So when I was out at the farmer’s market last Saturday morning and saw the first of the Ontario berries, I hatched a spontaneous plan to make my own. We were headed to friends’ for a barbecue by the pool that night and that was all the excuse I needed.

Not having an ice cream maker was not about to get in my way. I’d just pick one up. So I scoured the net for the perfect recipe (settling on one from a 1983 issue of Gourmet), scared up the rest of my ingredients, and set about making the custard (half-and-half, whipping cream, sugar, and many egg yolks – egad!) and the strawberry puree (those gorgeous homegrown berries and a good scoop of sugar), which then get combined and, eventually, frozen. I saved some chopped berries to add in at the last minute – chunks are essential.

In a mad rush (because I still had to make the salad I originally said I’d bring), I decided we’d simply leave for our friends’ place (in Toronto) a few minutes early and swing by a store up the road to grab an ice cream maker en route. Simple. Perfect.

Until I got to the store (already running an hour late) and they didn’t have one. And then went to another store that had every other small appliance imaginable, but no ice cream maker. And I had seven litres of custard to make strawberry ice cream sitting in a hot car. And we needed to stop for gas yet. And go to the liquor store. And my husband was losing patience, but silently so (which is almost worse).

One last stop at one last store and I had my ice cream maker. I had to buy the floor model and the thing cost me about double what I’d anticipated. But my plan was coming to fruition. Then I leafed through the instructional manual at a stoplight and discovered that the bowl insert in the machine needs to be frozen for six to twenty-two hours before it can be used. Oops.

So my machine remained in the car, and my ice cream mixture went into my girlfriend’s fridge, and then accompanied me home again that night. As I put the machine insert into my freezer, I wondered what the heck I was going to do with seven litres of strawberry ice cream and reminded myself of the dangers of spontaneity.

But, feeling less cranky the next morning, I realized I had the perfect Father’s Day treat to take both my dad and father-in-law. So I flipped on my little dream machine, poured in the creamy, strawberry goodness and went about my business for half an hour.

And when I came back, there it was. My perfect strawberry ice cream. Like silk. All the superlatives apply. Heavenly. Craving fulfilled (and still some left).

My new mission (aside from making margaritas in my new ice cream machine) is to continue to gorge on strawberries. Most of the region’s berry farms open this weekend (see Foodlink.ca for a list of local u-pick farms) and I can’t wait to get out in the field and start picking.

Strawberry Ice Cream

Adapted from Gourmet (May 1983)

1 pound (about 1 1/4 pints) strawberries, hulled and sliced

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1 1/2 cups whipping cream

1 1/2 cups half-and-half

4 large egg yolks

1 teaspoon vanilla, or to taste

In a food processor fitted with the steel blade or in a blender in batches, puree the strawberries and transfer the puree to a bowl. Stir in 1/2 cup of the sugar and the lemon juice and chill the mixture, covered for two hours.

In a heavy saucepan combine the cream, the milk, and the remaining 1 cup sugar and scald the mixture over moderate heat, stirring. In a bowl beat the egg yolks until they are light and thick and pour the milk mixture through a fine sieve in a stream, stirring. Transfer the custard to the pan and cook it over moderately low heat, stirring, until it coats the spoon. Transfer the custard to a metal bowl set in a bowl of cracked ice, stir in the vanilla, and let the custard cool, covered with a buttered round of wax paper. Chill the custard for 2 hours, stir in the strawberry mixture, and freeze according to manufacturer's instructions.

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Sweet Peas

Any day now, the fresh peas will make their debut at the farmer’s markets. Nerd that I am, I’ve been waiting with baited breath. I get more excited for peas than for any other farm-grown produce. They’re so sweet, so tiny and vibrant – and they have me dreaming with possibilities.

Shelling the peas, of course, is part of the experience – taking them out on the porch and toiling away mindlessly. Not everyone finds that part fun, though. One of my best friends, who grew up on a Manitoba farm, once told me she has serious misgivings about sweet peas. Though she’ll admit to their tastiness, she says they conjure up childhood memories of idyllic summer days interrupted by her mom, who would pass her off a bushel from the garden and instruct her to shell enough for dinner for their family of six – plus the farm help.

In these parts, for the farm-kids-turned-city-dwellers, like my friend – or for the lazy or otherwise harassed – peas can be had without the work courtesy of the Gingrich family at Winfield Produce near Wallenstein. Alvin and Nancy Gingrich and their children grow 30 to 40 acres of peas, which they sell shelled – thanks not to elbow grease but a pea combine.

“The combine does the shelling in the field, then brings them into the shed for washing, grading and packaging in one pound bags,” Alvin explained to me. “They’re chilled in ice water and then run through a spin drier and packed. They have a short shelf life – only four or five days.”

Which means the peas get to market quickly – and are wonderfully fresh. Gingrich says there is only one other producer he knows of in Ontario that sells fresh shelled peas at market, and that’s in Belleville, so we should consider ourselves lucky.

The Gingrichs don’t sell their peas at farm gate, but rather wholesale to other vendors. You can find them at the St. Jacob’s and Kitchener farmer’s markets, Herrle’s Country Farm Market and a variety of other spots. Look for them to arrive in the next week or two, as Gingrich told me it would be late June this year (due to that cool spring we had) before the peas were in full swing. He’ll be harvesting right through to mid-September, though, so we have all summer to get our fill.

Thank goodness for that. When I think peas, I think pasta – peas in risotto, with pancetta and tortellini, tossed into a carbonara or in orzo salad with mint, lemon and some salty feta. I love them in potato salad, too.

One of my favourite recipes of the last few years is for Sweet Pea Mash. I learned this one from a friend who worked at Toronto’s Dish Cooking Studio, where it originates.

Here’s a quick and dirty version: Blanch three cups of fresh peas in boiling water – just for a minute! – then drain and rinse with cold water. Throw a small shallot and a clove of garlic into your food processor, mince them up finely, then add your peas, half a cup of grated Parmesan, and a whole head of roasted garlic and pulse until smooth. Keep the machine running and drizzle in a quarter-cup of olive oil. Season your mash with salt and pepper to taste and smear it on crostini. I’m all for stirring some chopped, fresh mint into the mix – or sprinkling it on top – just because peas and mint are such a beautiful combo. But it’s lovely as is, too, and makes a great appetizer.

It feels a bit sacrilegious, maybe, to puree those perfectly round little peas into a mush. But if you didn’t shell them yourself, maybe it’s not so terrible? Regardless, all the more reason to start thinking about how to eat them next. I’d start simple – a big steamed bowl tossed with butter, salt and pepper. Summer perfection.
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The Perfect PB&J

The only problem with going away for the weekend is coming home on a Sunday night, only to be thrown back into the work week with no clean clothes, an overgrown lawn and no food in the house. (As a disclaimer, let me add now that as problems go, I’m aware this is not a big one).

My cupboards were particularly desolate a couple of weeks ago after I’d been out of town two weekends in a row and, on the weeknights in between, seemed to be scheduled down to the minute. When I eventually found myself a block of free time to shop, I instead used it to clear my head by sprawling on the couch and watching bad TV.

All of this resulted in a two-week stint of subsisting on what I could unearth from my freezer and pantry. At times, it wasn’t pretty, which my coworkers affirmed when they saw me lunching on microwave popcorn for the second day in a row. But there was a pleasant oasis in the midst of it as I found a loaf of whole wheat rye in my freezer and some peanut butter and jam to accompany it.

As I stood in the kitchen wolfing down my sandwich (which was infinitely satisfying), it occurred to me that I was – just about, anyway – eating a 100 mile PB&J. A pleasing thought when I otherwise wondered whether I might be developing scurvy.

The bread came from Golden Hearth in Kitchener, whom I’ve written about in this space before. The bakery is committed to using local and organic ingredients and bakes with farm eggs and flour milled in Tavistock.

Then there was the peanut butter, which I’d bought at Picard’s Peanuts in St. Jacob’s, where they let you grind your own according to how smooth or chunky you like it. All the peanuts used in the grind-your-own are Valencias grown near La Salette (north of Delhi) and roasted just east of there in Waterford.

Because you open and dump the bag of peanuts (skins and all) into the machine yourself, it’s easy to be confident about what’s in your PB – just the nuts themselves and the peanut oil they’re roasted in. The result is a strong, earthy flavour that’s quite different from the processed stuff most of us are accustomed to. But it’s delicious. And cheap, too – I paid about $4 for my litre of smooth (always a tough decision – chunky’s so good, too) and could’ve saved 50 cents if I’d brought my own container.

An unopened jar of Glen Farms strawberry rhubarb jam on my counter was the final ingredient for my sandwich, and it proved the perfect partner for my PB.

Having grown up eating only my mom’s homemade jam, I’ve always been a bit of a jam snob, but I’m happy to say that Glen Farms’ tastes just as good as what you’d make yourself.

David and Judie Glen, who operate Glen Farms in Listowel, make seven jams and five marmalades, much of it from fruit they grow themselves (not oranges, obviously, but strawberries, raspberries and red and black currants, for starters). They use old-school recipes that were devised before commercial pectin was on the scene, and, as such, simply cook it longer to thicken it. All their products are preservative-free and have low sugar content. I bought my Glen Farms jam at Golden Hearth, but it’s also available at The Farm Pantry in St. Jacob’s and can be ordered directly from the Glens by phone.

I realize that sugar doesn’t fit the 100 mile bill, and that the squeeze of lemon also added to the jam is not local, either. And I’m not saying there wasn’t anything in my bread that might have come from beyond a 160 kilometre radius.

But there was a high degree of ingredient traceability to my peanut butter and jam sammy that beat anything mass-produced. And in the midst of a decidedly unsavoury week of eating, it tasted like heaven.
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Well Fed Food

There is a great moment in an episode of The Simpsons where Lisa decides to go vegetarian. Sitting at the dining room table, she begins to agonize over the lives lost for the sake of her dinner.

She imagines the chops falling out of a bleating, fuzzy lamb, the rump roast falling off a big-eyed cow’s back end and the breasts flopping out of a chicken. Then she visualizes a rat’s tail, a raccoon’s feet, a pigeon’s head and the tongue of a boot coming together to make a hot dog.

Unlike Lisa, I couldn’t go the vegetarian route. But, when it comes to hot dogs, I share her paranoia. Yummy as they are, I, too, fear raccoon bits. Growing up, my dad used to joke that hot dogs were made of… well, I better not tell you.

Thankfully, though, there are good people making unscary – and delicious – hot dogs right here in our region. A person needs to be able to enjoy a grilled dog in the summer, after all. Fear should not be an obstacle.

Last weekend I stopped in at Well Fed Food, a one-stop shop for locally-raised meat near Ayr, to stock up on some summer barby essentials. I came away with chicken breasts, wings, steaks, additive-free burgers, nitrate-free all-beef hot dogs, and some spicy pepperettes – and had to restrain myself from going nuts.

Well Fed Food is owned and operated by Mark and Cindy Gerber, who run it out of their home. They also run a farm, called Oakridge Acres, which raises about 100 head of Angus cattle (who go on, of course, to become those lovely burgers and steaks).

The Gerbers both used to work in the retail business, but left to take over Cindy’s parents’ farm in 1996. There were no animals on the farm at the time, just cash crops, but Mark and Cindy started with two cows in 2000 and slowly added more.

All the cows are registered purebred, which means their ancestry is tracked and the Anguses are always bred with Anguses. That results in well-marbled, short grained, tender meat that is naturally more flavourful. There are no drugs or growth hormones used and the cattle have plenty of access to pasture. They’re 80 per cent grass fed (never corn), with a little home-grown oats and barley added for fat. “If I don’t grow it, I don’t feed it to them,” Mark says.

When the BSE crisis hit in 2003, “a bull that would fetch $2000 to $4000 dropped to $300,” Mark tells me. The Gerbers didn’t want to sell their cattle at those prices, so they opted to sell the meat from their home instead.

They started with a freezer in their garage and sold quarters and sides of beef until one day, a customer came in wondering if he could just buy a couple of steaks. “We looked at each other and said, ‘Why not?’ ” says Mark.

From there, the Gerbers started talking to other farmers with similar ethical philosophies that were looking to sell their meat directly to customers, but didn’t necessarily want to do so at their own farms.

Now the Gerbers’ store is filled with chest freezers bearing various cuts of chicken, pork,
lamb, wild boar, elk, fish and more, all grown and produced locally. Frozen meat, they feel, is the freshest. Mark says it’s sitting out only two to three hours at most before it’s frozen, as opposed to grocery store meat that sits out for longer periods of time.

The Gerbers also sell honey, maple syrup, organic milk and other interesting bits and pieces at the shop. In August, they’ll open a stand-alone store on their farm – “So we can have our house back,” says Cindy – and plan to expand to organic and locally grown produce and other items.

“People are becoming more and more educated about the food they eat,” says Cindy. “It seems to appeal to people more now to know the farmer that produces the food. We’re impressed with how many people are researching and looking for alternatives.”

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