... lettuce?

[rushthatspeaks]

I arrived in Boston yesterday evening (YAY I HAVE A WIFE YAY) to discover that my housemates have gotten an ice cream maker from weirdquark's parents.

Clearly we had to make ice cream posthaste, because I have only been waiting forever to make various flavors of ice cream I've been hearing about, like pink peppercorn ice cream and sweet basil ice cream and plum and so on.

We could not find pink peppercorns at the nearby store, so we settled on Earl Grey-flavored. The custard is still chilling now and seems awesome.

Then we had six leftover egg whites and also a lemon from which we had cut only one strip of peel.

Now, I don't know whether other people also have the cooking-related syndrome I have. I think of it as the Throw Together syndrome, and the thought process behind it is 'and then while that is cooking I can just throw together [insert recipe involving something else I am using/fiddly detail for recipe I am already making/completely different recipe that has a matching cooking time]'. And the Throw Together syndrome? Iterates. This is the thought process that leads one inexorably from 'I will make a cake' to the moment when one finds oneself putting together a scale model of the Eiffel Tower made of shortcrust and agonizing over the number of candied cherries necessary to accurately replicate the blinking lights. In addition to the cake. Which somehow began to involve ganache and fondant and every pan in the house*.

At four in the morning when the entire process is over, it's a masterpiece, but you're too tired to do anything other than blink at it and pass out. And then the next day there are Dishes.

My housemates are as far as I can tell not afflicted by this syndrome to the same degree that I am, but they aid and abet.

Six egg whites? Make infinite quantities of meringue. And we threw in the juice of the lemon, because we could, and we couldn't find any resources that advised against it.

The texture came out very nicely, lovely light crisp slightly sticky meringue.

But I am here to tell you that if you throw the juice of one lemon into your meringue before baking, the finished product will have an aftertaste that I can only describe as almost precisely that of iceberg lettuce. It's quite strong, and not exactly unpleasant, but the entire experience changes from that of dessert to that of salad. If you really, really concentrate you can tell that it is lemon, but you have to be thinking about it.

Seriously. Lettuce.

They are totally edible, though. And the ice cream will I think be very good.

Readercon this evening! Yay!

* I have never literally had the thing with the Eiffel Tower happen, but I really think the cake I made for last Twelfth Night was a morally equivalent experience.

Comments

[marith.livejournal.com]

The ice cream sounds delicious.

And I remember you having a really excellent "sweet you rock" icon, which is suddenly the perfect thing to use for complimenting a friend on her new story. Was that you? Do you still have it? Would you be willing to let me use it? *looks hopeful*

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I do have it, but it's on a computer that I don't have with me as I'm not in my usual city at the moment. I can send it to you Monday, if that works. (Glad you like it, it's one of the two or three I have I made myself.)

[marith.livejournal.com]

That would be lovely, no rush at all!

[nightengalesknd.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

I've heard of adding lemon juice to whipped egg whites for a royal icing sort of deal (specicfically Julia Child dips fresh strawberries into such a concoction) but never for a merangue that is to be cooked. I guess there's a reason for that. . .

[signy1.livejournal.com]

Heh. I don't really have the Throw Together syndrome as you describe it-- no Eiffel Towers for me-- but I do seem to have a related condition. I call it As Long As Dot Dot Dot.

As in, 'As long as I'm making turkey, I might as well make gravy to keep it moist. And as long as I'm making the gravy, I might as well bake some biscuits to soak up the gravy. And as long as I'm making the biscuits, I might as well whip up some honey butter to put on them. Dot dot dot.' I'm completely capable of turning a 'use up the leftovers already' meal into a six course exercise in unabashed hedonism. This, despite the fact that I cheerfully scrub my own pots, is almost never appreciated by anyone at all.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

Wild! ...and if you want, I can send you some pink peppercorns. They grow all over the damn place in San Diego!

Also, if you want, I have Nigella's recipe for Margarita Ice Cream (more of a frozen custard, really-- doesn't even require an ice-cream maker-- but very yummy).

And I may just have to try that, with with meringue and lemons...

[foleyartist1.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that I don't know if your gmail address is the correct one or not. FYI, I sent you an email there. If that's the right address, no worries! (I don't care about a reply, just want to make sure I'm not 3 email addresses behind or something.) If it's the wrong address, let us make other arrangements. :)

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

My gmail is my LJ username, no breaks/spaces/underscores/caps, at gmail. If that's the one you used, we're good, though it has not shown up (sometimes I get a lag). If not, well, that's it. :)