State of the world = Blah

[lexicat]

I don't know what's up today. I don't feel like getting out of bed, though I probably will in the next 10 minutes or so. I've been laying around for 2 hours. Part of this is I couldn't get to sleep until 5AM. I've been having more extreme than usual insomnia this week... Tuesday night I didn't sleep at all. I went to the gym at 6:30 AM and

Comments

[tylik]

I went searching a few years back, when I was interested in the taste and textural differences between ultra pasteurized and just plain old pasteurized cream.

Hmm... A lot of the fat soluable volatiles are best extracted with at least some heat, but I'm not sure how well the distinctive chocolate mint flavor would survive repeated cooking. I know alcohol makes a nifty liaison, which might work better than butter in this case. Do you care about filtering out the solids?

If you don't, I'd puree the mint, and then stir it into the cream (you could mix them directly, but you'd be want to be sure the cream didn't whip). And I'd use a fair bit, as chocolate mint isn't that strong.

If you are wanting a purer product, I'd probably pestle the holy heck out of the mint with a little cream, and then add more cream and let it sit over night. Then strain it. (This will leave the mint in bigger pieces, and make it easier to filter, while still exposing much of the oils.) Or, again, use a fairly neutral alcohol as a liaison.

You might also consider incorporating uncooked mint in some way, perhaps as a garnish. For instance, you could whip a quantity of melted dark chocolate with cream cheese (marscapone works well for the purpose -- the tartness of the cheese makes this much more intense than a chocolate mousse of the general sort) and then at the last add some quantity of fresh mint puree.

[lexicat]

As you say, the mint isn't too strong, and I want a mint cheesecake, not a grass cheesecake.

Perhaps if I puree the mint with vodka and then strain through cheesecloth? What I really need is a bead beater for proper cell lysis. Or a sonicator! Ideally I'd lyse the cell wall, but not the inner membranes, and take just the cytoplasm. I imagine the green-taste of plants is in the chloroplasts or the cell wall, but that's has less foundation the more I think about it. But the mint and chocolate flavors are probably in the cytoplasm anyway.

[tylik]

I think the vodka / mint would be a good bet (lots of mint to a smallish amount of alcohol) though I'd strain it through something finer than cheesecloth. Do you have a coffee filter handy?

Careful there -- this sounds like the path K and my cooking experiments were taking. Fun, but tended to disturb his housemates. ("What's the centrifuge doing on the kitchen!")

Though why the culinary equivalent of self stirring flasks are not generally available, I will never know...

[lexicat]

I went searching a few years back, when I was interested in the taste and textural differences between ultra pasteurized and just plain old pasteurized cream.

Yeah, and what is the difference?

[tylik]

I didn't notice much difference when it came to sauces, where the cream is being heated anyway (but I don't make a lot of cream sauces, and after it's been added to sauteed shallots deglazed with a little cream sherry, how ever are you going to tell anyway?)

But it's pretty striking when the cream is being whipped. The ultra-pasteurized cream is duller flavored, without the really nice fresh edge. Not always a big deal, but if you're doing something like strawberry shortcake that's all about the fresh strawberries, fresh cream, and shortcake hot out of the oven, it shows up a lot. It also isn't quite as stable when it's whipped, and the texture isn't as smooth.

But it will last forever, just about. It's kind of scary that way.