Something Delicious

The other night I was just NOT able to sleep.  I was in a weird mood where I was contemplating life too much, and I didn’t really like what I saw.  Thankfully, my subconscious took over, and I was suddenly overcome with the incredible need to make something delicious!  I knew exactly what I wanted to make, but I had never made it before.  I did what I always do in situations like this.  I opened a tab on my browser to my favourite search engine, Google.

I needed to know if it was possible to make gelato without the help of an ice cream maker.  The only answer I got was no.  Google did not give me the answer I was looking for, so I did what I always do.  I tried it anyway!  Kidding!  I don’t always try things when people tell me ahead of time that it doesn’t work.  In fact, I do a lot of my learning from other watching other people make mistakes and just avoiding doing what they did.  However, in this case, I had my mind made up.  I didn’t care what Google told me – after all, Google is just a search engine leading me to results of what other people have done or failed to do.  Who’s to say that I can’t be the first person to successfully make gelato without an ice cream maker?  Let it be known, I believe in the power of dreams!

What I needed to know next was what I could use as a thickening agent.  I read that there are two options.  The first is eggs, and the second is gelatin.  Eggs are typically used in ice cream, but I didn’t want to make ice cream.  Ice cream is usually considered to be better or of higher quality if it has a higher fat content.  A dessert with a higher fat content is definitely not what I wanted to make.  I wanted something that would be delicious because of its strong core flavours, not because of its high content of milk fat.  Clearly, my only option was gelatin.  I wracked my brain trying to think if I had any gelatin in my cupboards.  Figuring that I didn’t I was at the point where I would have to postpone my gelato project until the next day when I could get to a store to purchase some gelatin.   This option was quickly dismissed, because I still seriously wanted to make something delicious.

I went to my kitchen and got out a big pot, some frozen strawberries and some frozen raspberries.  I put the berries in the pot and put the pot on the stove over low heat.  While the berries were defrosting, I looked around my kitchen and low and behold, I found some gelatin!  Unfortunately, it was in the form of an old pack of raspberry Jello that was in my cupboard.  This is where I was reminded of an old childhood lesson in improvisation, “Use what you’ve got!” 

I let the berries defrost, then turned up the heat a bit and waited until they had softened up.  At this point, I took a potato masher and squished the berries so that they would expel some of their juices.  I took a handful of green grapes, cut them in half and threw them into the mix, along with two snack cups of cranberry raspberry applesauce, and got to work on sending all of these fruits into one cohesive liquid state.

Once the mix was about 50% mush and 50% liquid, I got out my electric hand mixer.  Correction: I looked for my electric hand mixer.  For some reason, I always store the top piece and the bottom piece in different drawers.  I also always find one half and then forget where the other half is stored.  I know I should just store them together, but in the end, it always seems logical for me to store them in different drawers, so I do… *repeat cycle.*

I must add here, I really don’t like gelato that has seeds in it from the fruit.  That being said, I transferred the mixture into a big bowl, rinsed and dried the pot, and put the mixture back into the pot through a fine metal colander which removed all of the seeds.  I poured half of the mix into the colander at a time, and worked it through the holes with a spatula.  Once I was left with little more than seeds, I rinsed the spatula in the sink, used it to scrape the bottom of the colander, and then rinsed out the colander as well.

I wanted my gelato to have a bit of milk in it, so I decided to warm up some milk to dissolve the gelatin.  Apparently this was a bad move, because once I added the gelatin, the milk curdled almost right away.  

Perhaps it was just too acidic. 

To avoid this happening again, I added the milk (and some sugar) directly to the berry mix in the pot. 

I then boiled some water and whisked in about 1 tsp of the gelatin, 

then added the water mixture to the berry mixture.

All I had to do now was turn up the heat so that enough liquid would evaporate to get the mixture to the right thickness.  This didn’t take too long, which made me happy. 

I found a bowl that I planned to use to hold the mixture when it was 

in the freezer, and transferred the mix into it.

After it had cooled down, I put the bowl of deliciousness 

into the freezer for the night/morning.

When I woke up, I went straight to the freezer and checked on my gelato, hoping that it would indeed be gelato.  It was!  All I did from this point was take a spoon and use it to shave the contents of the bowl into smaller bits and then mould them into an attractive looking mound, and invite my mom over to be my taste tester.

Take that, Google! 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I wasn’t satisfied with just the gelato, so I decided to take ALL day running around getting ingredients. to make another something delicious.  I looked up a few recipes, realized I needed more things, ran around town some more to get those things, then came home, showered, cleaned the house and finally started making some hopefully delicious Indian Cuisine :)

Aside from a little bit too much yeast in the Naan bread (1 Tbsp instead of 1 tsp…oooops!) and a slight headache from the smoke alarm going off when I over-deep-friend the first round of chicken pakoras, I would say it turned out pretty well.  The Matter Paneer was a little bit thick, but tasted great and made for great leftovers, and the Mint Chutney was perfect, except I had no idea what to do with the leftovers. 

I was hoping to make some more rainbow cupcakes before bed (I stay up late because of my night shift schedule) but I was too tired, too full, and I only had 8 cupcake liners left and all the stores were closed.  

Maybe another day.

Thanks for "listening."