What's Cooking (Take Four)

[Jenise]

That sounds lovely, Mike...Pumpkin seed oil is not one I have tried. I have many oils...will look into that one..

It's a finishing oil, not for cooking. I'm a huge fan. So much flavor and no ingredients, just pumpkin seed oil! It's a traditional Austrian product. I always bring some back from Germany because I don't see it very often in the US, but I'm sure CA has something, perhaps even their own.

Also called Styrian, I think. I owned some in the long ago past. My favorite treatment was over grilled baby eggplants that were whole/sliced/but still-connected at the stem end.

I received my Pumpkin Seed Oil from La Tourangelle yesterday. It says product of Austria, and has only one ingredient. Smells nice, will try it today .

My wife and I were recently in Sicily and we were both taken by the granita there. It's very smooth and creamy, and we found the pistachio and almond versions particularly delicious. We wanted to try making it at home, but most recipes here call for making the base, putting it in the freezer, and then breaking it up as it freezes over the course of several hours. We've both tried making it that way and the result is nothing like the Sicilian version, with much coarser ice crystal and without the creamy texture. So yesterday, I tried using the ice cream maker to make almond granita. The recipe came from a dessert cookbook called Sicily, My Sweet adn apparently is more appropriately termed a "cremolata" than a granita, but it certainly looked like what we wanted. We took fresh almonds, blanched and peeled them, and then blitzed them in the blender with some water and strained to make almond milk. Half of that was combined with sugar, boiled for five minutes, and then the rest of the almond milk was added back in. (I couldn't resist the temptation to add a pinch of cinnamon here, which was a little bit of a mistake). The sugar-almond milk mix was chilled and then frozen in the ice cream maker. The result was exactly what we were looking for, with extremely fine ice crystals and a luscious creamy texture. Unfortunately, the pinch of cinnamon somewhat dominated the delicate almond flavor, so although it was delicious, I won't do that again. We're really happy to have figured this out and will be making the pistachio version next.