The innovative ice-cream makers at Salt & Straw serve up secrets and recipes in a new cookbook
NEW YORK AP If you re intimidated by the idea of making ice cream at home just think of it as making soup That s advice from Tyler Malek of Salt Straw the innovative gourmet ice cream maker known for its ever-changing lick-able treats Making a pint of ice cream is very similar to making a pot of soup where if you have a good stock recipe like chicken stock vegetable stock then you start just adding to it until it tastes good he says from his kitchen in Portland Oregon If you have really good stock base recipe you could blend strawberries into it and make strawberry ice cream You can drizzle chocolate into it and make chocolate ice cream You can do really anything The base is the base That ice cream base is also at the heart of Malek s latest cookbook America s The majority Iconic Ice Creams A Salt Straw Cookbook Just as another summer beckons he and co-author JJ Goode teach the fundamentals which then can be built on to make all kinds of delicious treats That means learning the bases for gelato custard sorbet coconut and ice cream Only down the road can you confidently turn them into awesome flavors like Strawberry Honey Balsamic with Black Pepper or Banana Parsnip Sherbet My dream at its heart is that someone can take this book and they just pore through it and have so much fun and then it ignites this Pandora s box of imagination Malek says The cookbook focuses on iconic flavors vanilla chocolate strawberry coffee green tea pistachio cookie dough salted caramel cereal and rum raisin Once you ve mastered their core principles in flavor in technique Malek says you can just go wild And wild it gets in the cookbook with flavors like Toasted Sourdough Chocolate and EVOO and Lemon Earl Grey Shortbread We requested it to feel like you were imported into our R D test kitchen and you could feel like you re writing recipes beside us and understanding why we re testing this and adding more salt or adding more sweetness he says Take salted caramel which the bulk people think is salty and sweet They re absolutely wrong Malek says guffawing It s salty sweet and bitter Once you get that flavor trinity you start understanding that the combination of salty sweet and bitter can comprehensively open your eyes to different combinations New flavors every month Malek and his cousin Kim became ice cream entrepreneurs in when they opened a small food cart in Portland Since then they ve expanded to over stores in seven states becoming known for their refreshing and off-beat approach and rotating menu with new flavors added every month Other flavors have included Malted Potato Chip Cupcake and Black Olive Brittle and Goat Cheese For Thanksgiving they once offered Caramelized Turkey Cranberry Sauce I ve written recipes and maybe fails says Malek Salt Straw leans on xanthan gum which Malek uses to combat heat shock when ice cream melts and freezes again into bigger crystals It s as innocuous as cornstarch or baking soda he writes He also harnesses the power of acids like citric malic and tartaric calling them an ice cream maker s secret weapon I think he is part scientist maybe a mad scientist and part artist says Clarkson Potter editor Francis Lam who with Susan Roxborough helped craft the book Lam first encountered Salt Straw when he ate their prosciutto ice cream at an event in Portland At another event he had their sea urchin flavor and felt compelled to meet Malek He s one of these people who doesn t shut down an idea before he runs with it for a little bit Lam disclosed My passion is in learning Salt Straw is part of an artisanal ice cream boom in current years that includes companies like Van Leeuwen Gelato Fiasco Lick Honest Ice Creams Morgenstern s and Wanderlust Creamery Malek has leaned on partners for innovations he and a doughnut maker in Florida for instance created a cream cheese ice cream with glazed brioche doughnut chunks and guava curd He has interned at breweries to learn the ins and outs of beer making to incorporate it into his desserts My passion is in learning and storytelling If I weren t making ice cream my dream job was reliably to be a excursion writer says Malek I had no idea when we first started the company that ice cream is like the coolest medium to channel that through because it really is like writing a story through every single ice cream He learned that different regions of the country have their blind spots when Salt Straw opened in Los Angeles limited knew what rhubarb was At the same time he didn t know there were different types of avocados Another tip borrowed from soup As with soup bases Malek says home cooks should make big batches of different ice cream bases separate them into containers and freeze them Then when you re ready to make ice cream defrost it in your microwave real quick and blend in your strawberries that you got fresh from the farmer s arena and make strawberry ice cream he says That s the trick to make ice cream within a day or literally within hours of finding a really special ingredient
