Making a mess

Once again I find myself with a fridge full of stuff, which I'm blaming on Caris and also Saturday night's San Sebastian party. Not that I'm complaining; it has only inspired me to make all sorts of food I've never made before this week, at one stage I seemed to have used every pan in the kitchen.

It all started with the slightly crazy idea of making two different ice creams in one go, neither of which I have tried before. I had 6 egg yolks leftover from making the pavlova, and I'm still wondering whether it is false economy to go out and spend another ton of money on more ingredients in order to use them up. I was going to stick to what I know, ice creams which were essentially egg custard with yummy stuff stirred into it, but I had a special request for something chocolatey, so made my first ever chocolate ice cream. This Nigella recipe is another one of those where you consume a day's worth of calories in one porton.

Baci Ice Cream (makes about 1 litre)

4 egg yolks
100g caster sugar
500ml double cream
100g 70%+ cocoa dark chocolate
25g good quality cocoa powder
1 x 200g pot Nutella
2 teaspoons hazelnut syrup (begged from coffee shop next to tube station)

1. Make an egg custard by whisking the egg yolks with the sugar until pale, thick and creamy; bring the cream to the boil, and add slowly to the egg yolks and sugar, whisking all the time.
2. Melt the chocolate, and whisk this also into the custard. Pour everything into a pan, and cook slowly, stirring constantly, until the custard is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Leave to cool, stirring occasionally to prevent a skin from forming.

3. When the mixture is cool, whisk in the Nutella and the hazelnut syrup. Freeze in ice cream maker or use the churn by hand method.

This was more like making a cold ganache than an ice cream, the mixture gets so thick it's almost impossible to churn by hand. But the end result is very very rich and very very good. There is plenty in my freeze for those who want to try! More mess was made as I also made apple ice cream, very simiar to the rhubarb ice cream recipe I make often, but this time with apple puree.

The other big mess I've made this week goes back to my food nemesis. I consider myself an ok cook, I can generally make a good attempt at most recipes, but one thing that has always alluded me is the humble poached egg. I've cried many a time over these horrid things, I have no idea how people manage to get the whites to cling so perfectly without cheating with cling film or moulds. (It did please me greatly to see eggs being poached in cling film at Rousillon on Masterchef recently though, ha!).

I tried again, mainly because I was cooking for myself, with no one around to stress me out. Maybe it's like that philosophical question of whether the tree makes a sound when it falls if no one is there to hear it; if no one is there to see me cry over the sodding eggs, maybe they will work! I used pretty fresh eggs from Waitrose, a little vinegar in the water and the 'whirlpool' method. It was still a mess, egg white all over the place, but at least the yolk was still nice and runny. I also used another trick I learnt off Masterchef by putting some tomatoes on the vine with everything to distract from the ugliness:

In slightly less messy situations this week, I also wanted to record some other new things I tried. Abel & Cole bought me another unwelcomed cucumber in my veg box this week, so I pickled it to serve with some chargrilled mackerel:

I also made a ridiculously luxurious salad with figs, mozzarella from that amazing stall in Borough Market, and parma ham:

This was meant to be a detox week, obviously it has not gone well.