The Cow’s Nest Cookbook: (1) Super Simple Walnut Ice Cream
A couple of weeks ago I found myself contributing to a Twitter discussion in which Dan Barber described his rapturous first encounter with raw milk. “Non homog nicer than homog which is nicer than UHT,” I tweeted.
And then I thought. “What in the world am I doing? I value all these industrial milks. They have all contributed much to the human condition.”
Now I know that condensed milk is not held in high regard in the United States and Great Britain. I have to search around on the very bottom shelf under chocolate chips and other baking supplies to find even a few cans in my supermarket. And when some years ago I presented on condensed milk at the 1999 Oxford Symposium for Food and Cookery, the initial audience reaction was something between disdain and sniggers.
Go to the tropical world, though, and you will find that condensed milk is honored and that the grocery shelves are bountifully stocked with cans. It was twenty-five years in Hawaii and Mexico that turned me into a condensed milk fan.
Even the initially skeptical Oxford audience quickly came around. Hands shot up in the question period, as participants told their stories of condensed milk. And following the meeting letters with more stories and recipes poured in.
Perhaps part of the reason was that for that Oxford meeting I had prepared a pamphlet, The Cow’s Nest Cookbook: Condensed Milk for Culinary Moderns, with forty condensed milk recipes from highly regarded cookbook authors. Copies flew off the table.
Prepared for the Oxford Symposium in 1999
I took the title from a joke that circulates among anthropologist. A little boy looks at a pile of empty condensed milk cans. “Look,” he says to his mother, “there’s a cow’s nest.” (With a little imagination you can see the pile of cans under the tree on the cover of my pamphlet).
Ever since that Oxford meeting, I’ve been meaning to write a more formal book (and no, I have no tie to any condensed milk company). Something tells me that I’m not going to. But the Twitter exchange has prompted me to begin blogging recipes for and stories about condensed milk (and by extension, evaporated milk, dried milk, malted milk, pasteurized milk, homogenized milk, and UHT milk).
So welcome, then, to a series of recipes—ice creams, mousses and creams, custards, pies, cookies and cakes, confections and candies, sweet yogurts, fruit desserts, drinks, even savory dishes–fresh from the cow’s nest.
Super Simple Walnut Ice Cream
One member of the Oxford audience took no persuading of the delights of condensed milk: Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra who had enjoyed it growing up in Guyana. She sent me this recipe, which I quote in full.
This is a no-nonsense, rich, satisfying ice cream that needs no accompaniment. It has a “bought” texture, which is in general hard to achieve without an ice-cream maker, and is made in a matter of minutes.
When I made it I was quite pleased with the results. The final proof came when my nine-year old daughter, who fancies herself as something of a gourmet, remarked that she didn’t know the local supermarket carried walnut ice cream!
Sorry, no substitute for condensed milk! Just make sure that the tin is at the bottom of the bin before the guests arrive.
And just to make you feel better about using that ingredient that only ex-colonials and those who don’t know any better use, I’ll tell you why it makes such fantastic ice cream. It has the right proportion of fat and sugar to inhibit the forming of large ice crystals so detrimental to the texture of ice cream.
Ingredients
1 400 gm tin sweetened condensed milk
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
½ liter whipping cream
100 grams walnuts, chopped medium fine
Place the condensed milk and vanilla scrapings in a large bowl and set aside.
Whip the cream until soft peaks form. Add to the condensed milk. Mix well to incorporate. Stir in the walnuts. Transfer to a 2 liter freezer container and freeze until almost set. Break up the crystals with a fork and freeze until set.
Serving is easier if you put it in the fridge about 15 minutes before serving.
And up soon, five more recipes for condensed milk ice cream from great authors, all in condensed form.
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But for now, and while I’m at it, I’d like to introduce you to Gaitri’s work if you don’t already know it.
Shortly after Oxford, a yellow spiral-bound second draft of Windmills in My Oven: The Baking Traditions of Holland dropped through my letterbox. (Amazing how fast the Internet has taken over from mail). Now published by the wonderful Prospect Books, it’s an eye-opening look at Dutch baking traditions.
Gaitri went on to produce the award-winning Warm Bread and Honey Cake and Sugar and Spice.
And just this week, Wrapped: Crepes, Wraps, and Rolls from the Around the World turned up in my mailbox.
Gaitri brings to all these books good-natured kitchen intelligence and an open-eyed curiosity about the culture of baking, perhaps not so surprising in someone who describes herself as “convent attending Guyanese Hindu of Indian ancestry who was educated in North America and Europe and subsequently married into a European Jewish family.”
So now I’m off to try Guyanese butter flap with jerk chicken and Jamaican beef patties (first cousin to the Cornish pasties that I obsess about).
Ah the joys of condensed milk! My mother used to do a traditional Irish recipe for fudge with condensed milk – I think the recipe came from a standard cooking book for “domestic science” courses back in the day – and when Baileys Irish Cream was invented I was somehow reminded of that condensed milk again.
Have also come across several TV documentaries about India (such as the BBC one with Michael Palin) in which a tea brew called masala chai is served on trains with condensed milk.
There is a small cottage industry out there, Mel, making ersatz Bailey’s with condensed milk. And yes, condensed milk is huge in India. Fits into traditional ways of dealing with milk.
Yes, condensed milk is big in India – and was endorsed (sort of) by Gandhi! Here’s a piece I did ages back on that and also on how it first came to be manufactured in India:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/features/liveitup/the-taste-that-made-mahatma-lower-swadeshi-guard/articleshow/2493976.cms
Vikram, I might have known that you would have written on condensed milk. The Gandhi story was quite new to me. And I recently wrote the tres leches article for the Oxford Companion to Sweets!
I always enjoy your posts and perspective — but I would never, ever drink raw milk.
Thanks Donna. With a hundred cows in milk at any one time, the only milk I had growing up was raw (though we didn’t drink it). But then we knew how the cows were cleaned, we knew they were TB and Brucellosis free. I wouldn’t drink raw milk now.
There used to be a wonderful recipe for condensed milk ice cream which began with boiling the unopened can for several hours. Unfortunately I have lost the recipe, but it also included egg yolks and double cream. I made coffee ice cream with it once, using Nescafe, and it was so rich that I could only eat a teaspoonful at a time!
Yes, boiling the can of milk is very much standard practice in many parts of the world. The result is similar to the traditional Latin American sweet, dulce de leche or cajeta.
Some years ago Leo, a long-time friend of mine, set about to teach my oldest grandson (Logan, then about 13) to make her grandmother’s lemon meringue pie. After watching/listening I commented that it was the same pie that my mother (and I) made from the recipe form the Bordon’s can. My friend was incensed! “OH! NO!!! this is different! It is my GRANDMOTHER’S! pie!” I backed off and read my book. When the pie came out of the oven the meringue was very pale though it AND the filling were set. Practical son-in-law, Frank, said, “Just a minute!” and ran out to his garage. He came back with a blow torch and protective eye-gear and finished the peaks off to a nice golden color. My grandson loved Leo and EVERYBODY loved the pie (not for the first time) and ever after that when Logan made the pie, as soon as he put it in the oven, he ran up to the garage and got the torch and eye-wear to finish the pie when it came out of the oven.
Lovely story, Kay. And I think a lot of those fabled grandmother’s recipes started life on the back of a can!
Many grandmothers were literate, and they have been in some cases for several centuries
1 Is this such a surprise? Big companies have been selling their products with recipes on trade cards, in booklets and on boxes them since the later 19th century.
Hi Barbara, Yes indeed they have. Something that Michael Pollan failed to recognize when he formulated his famous “Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t eat.” What we need is a good dose of your bracing historical sense.