Sweetbreads, Duck Breasts, Ice Cream Cake and More!
For David’s birthday we decided, rather than going out for a meal (sorry Laredo but your options for fine dining are limited at best), that we would cook a 5 course meal. We started with Chilled Cucumber Cream Soup with Smoked Salmon Ribbons, followed by Cured Chorizo and Parsley on Toasted Bread, followed by Sauteed Sweetbreads with Caramelized Onions, then Rosemary Duck Breast with Rustic Potato Gnocchi (the rustic part meaning that it looks a bit ugly but tastes good), and a radish and sprout salad. As per his request, David’s birthday cake selection was an ice cream cake. I didn’t have a recipe for an ice cream cake so I kinda winged it and I have to say that, even if its only in this one instance, I am a culinary genius. It worked out beautifully and to be honest was quite easy — the only catch is that you need an ice cream machine.
Bittersweet Chocolate Ice Cream Cake
- 2 cups oreo cookie crumbs
- 3 tbsp butter, melted
- heavy cream
- 1/2 cup milk
- 2 cups light cream
- egg yolks
- sugar
- 4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, crushed
- 4 oz. chocolate toffee bar, crushed
- Line a springform pan with wax paper on the inside and aluminum foil on the outside.
- Combine the oreo crumbs with the butter and mix until the texture of wet sand.
- Press firmly into the bottom of the springform pan. Chill.
- In a saucepan, combine 1 1/2 cups heavy cream with 1/2 cup milk and bring to a simmer.
- Meanwhile whisk together 4 egg yolks and 1/4 cup sugar.
- Slowly pour in the yolk mixture, while stirring. Reduce heat to medium low and stir constantly for 10 minutes.
- Add the crushed bittersweet chocolate, stirring to melt completely. Transfer the pot to an ice bath. Chill mixture completely in fridge.
- Transfer to an ice cream machine and process. Spread mixture over the chilled oreo crust. Cover and transfer to freezer. Freeze overnight.
- In a saucepan, combine 1 1/2 cups light cream with 1/2 cup heavy cream and bring to a simmer. Meanwhile, beat 5 egg yolks with 1/2 cup sugar.
- Slowly whisk in the yolk mixture, then reduce the heat to medium low and cook 10 minutes, stirring constantly.
- Transfer to an ice bath and then chill completely in fridge.
- Pour into an ice cream machine and process. While mixing in machine, add the crumbled chocolate toffee bar.
- Spread mixture over top the frozen chocolate layer. Cover and freeze overnight.
- Eliot Lipp - "The Outside"
- Bibio - "Maroon Lagoon"
Hi Nicole. Happy Birthday, David. Hope that meal is as good as it looks. Have a good one buddy. And try not to party to hard, you gotta make more videos. LOL
Looks excellent. You may repeat this one for me sometime. Anytime, actually.
My favourite thing about cooking is getting to eat so I would be very happy to pass up the cooking part so that you could feed me! Cook me some fish!!!
I really love your blog and eagerly (greedily?) await each entry. You never fail to surprise me with your interesting choices of ingredients. And, as a fellow Canadian it’s cool to see you thriving in Texas…Happy birthday to you David, can’t wait to see what you make for Nicole’s big day!
Ok, now I have 2 questions:
1. What brought you guys to Laredo?
2. What in the HELL is that horrible spiky gray and pink meat thing in your twitpic?
We moved to Laredo for job reasons and the romantic idea of the Southwest:) As for the Spiky looking thing, it is the feature of our next video!
that looks so freaking good
David, Nicole…I LOVE the design of your site! Did you know it was featured on webdesign.org’s site showcase? Y’all are also very adventurous culinaires
Following you on Twiiter.
I wouldn’t be able to help myself eating the sweet bread if they were served in front of me.. Look so tasty!
Hello from London!
I love reading this website, you guys have great taste!
One question, who’s the musician playing in the background of this video?
Hey, sorry for the late reply. The first song is “The Outside” by Eliot Lipp and the second track is “Maroon Lagoon” by Bibio.
I think this is probably the second time I’ve seen you mention sweetbreads. Try them grilled as well, usually with a lemon/rosemary baste or something similar.
Cheers.
Oh, and I should note quickly that eating too many can give you gout. This happened to my Dad, quite painful and the pill they give you to relieve the problem does very unpleasant things.
I hadn’t heard about a connection between sweetbreadsand gout…although it doesn’t surprise me since all truly delicious things are terrible for us! Your grilled suggestion sounds delicious–I wonder if its necessary to stick with the soaking and the blanching steps in that situation?
I really want to try out the ice cream cake, but I’m not sure what the difference is between light and heavy cream? I’m from the Netherlands, maybe that explains it, haha.
Could you e-mail me or something with some info? Then I could try it next weekend.
Thanks for checking out our website! I get confused with all the creams out there too. In general, light cream has between 18 to 30% fat. If you can’t find it, an easy substitute would be half and half which has around 10 or 12% fat and would be even a little healthier. As for heavy cream, if you don’t spot it in the grocery store, you could definitely use whipping cream instead. I hope it works out for you!
Thanks for your help! I’ll try it soon.
My mom loved the site too, haha
This is my result: http://twitpic.com/d9lmn
I didn’t have the toffee/chocolate, so I added some vanilla extract to the top layer and during the ice machine process, I added chunks of chocolate (which was left over from the bottom layer) and some banana. It tastes delicious! Thanks for the recipe.
That’s so cool that you tried it! Hurray! I’m glad it worked out! Haha now I want to try it with banana–good idea!
I am totally going to try to cook the pie guys! I will let you know how it turns out
(pray for me)
Have you guys tried making roasted marrow bone? Also there is a soup called Sopa de Medula, it is made with the marrow from the spine not from the bones. It is really good too, I think you guys will like it.
We haven’t got around to cooking them ourselves yet, but we’ve had marrow bones in restaurants several times and they’re one of our favourites!