Kitchen Toro: WHICH WAS 1ST? ICE CREAM OR SCRAMBLED EGGS?

So I promise, one of my next posts will be about my new job but I'm beat which is the subject of this post: sometimes when you're tired you should just leave well enough alone. The internet hasn't been working for me all afternoon so really, I shouldn't even be writing this!

Observe the disaster above, at right. What do you see? That's right, failure! When you see the recipes and the pictures of the plates you see the end results, the successes. You don't see me sometimes struggle to follow a recipe after I've written it out in shorthand, you don't see the ingredients get multiplied (245G X3 is what, quickly!), the sugar burnt, the fish broken in the pan while being flipped, the pan itself slipping out of hand or in today's case, the eggs in your ice cream getting scrambled.

Now, I'm not asking anyone to cry for me but I've got one day off a week, Sunday and usually all I want to do is sleep and I think sometimes maybe that's all I should do. Today I've tried to make a second savory ice cream for my planned appetizer, a Frozen Caprese-- it's a basil ice cream and it is meant to compliment a mozzarella ice cream (you read correctly) and a tomato ice cream. The mozzarella ice cream is done. It's a subtle flavor without much sugar and only a touch of salt. I'm pleased with the cheese ice cream though it has hardened up a bit too much in the freezer since I made it Friday (all recipes for this appetizer will be collected into one post coming soon) so it will have to be nuked for service otherwise it won't be as creamy as I've envisioned.

I was smart enough in my tired state to know that the tomato ice cream was too ambitious an endeavor for the likes of me today so I did a rough chop of the basil, cut the sugar of the recipe I was working from because I was afraid of the ice cream being too sweet and let it steep as the recipe dictated.

The recipe says:

Bring milk, basil, 1/4 cup sugar, and a pinch of salt to a boil in a 2-quart heavy saucepan, stirring, then remove from heat and let steep 30 minutes. Transfer to a blender (reserve saucepan) and blend until basil is finely ground, about 1 minute.

I obliged, but I don't have a blender so I used my food processor and I don't know whether there wasn't enough basil or what the problem was but the basil wouldn't chop up fine, I nearly dropped two pans on the floor and then, yup, I got lazy and sat down on the couch in front of a Yankee game with the Yanks up 9-1 "just for a minute" during the crucial time period of returning the mixture, with eggs to the stove.

I know better, which is what I meant when I said sometimes it's better to leave well enough alone--cooking needn't be done every day maybe, especially when you drank 2 shots of espresso at 9 p.m. the night before to deal with 206 covers at a restaurant and then couldn't fall asleep until 5 a.m. (who said working in the food industry is healthy?).

The result, left: scrambled eggs with basil instead of ice cream. I probably should have called it a day but this is Kitchen Toro afterall and like a bull, I'm stubborn. For the second attempt there are a few "I'm not's."

First, here's the rest of the recipe:

Beat together yolks and remaining 1/4 cup sugar in a medium bowl with an electric mixer until thick and pale, about 1 minute. Add milk mixture in a stream, beating until combined well. Pour mixture into reserved saucepan and cook over moderate heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until mixture coats back of spoon and registers 175°F on thermometer (do not let boil). Immediately remove from heat and pour through a fine-mesh sieve into a metal bowl. Set bowl in a larger bowl of ice water and stir until cold, 10 to 15 minutes.

I'm not cutting the sugar this time because I'm not in an experimental mood and it may be that the sweet basil ice cream will be a better contrast to the subtle mozzarella ice cream. I'm not putting the milk, sugar and basil, in a mixer, that's just silliness-- you'll have to clean an appliance. I'm using a whisk...it takes a few seconds to use and clean. Instead of relying on the food processor or a blender which I don't have, I chopped the basil up finely by hand with my trusty knife-- it won't be a basil ice cream with sand-sized basil particles but it's chopped pretty small.