On Sunday, I made Chocolate-Galangal Vegan Frozen Dessert. And it’s terrific.
I like to say it “Chocolate Galangal!,” with lots of excitement on the Galangal, because of something my Dad said years ago. I had made pasta with a homemade sauce that included summer squash for my friends who lived in my building in Brooklyn and a friend who was visiting from New Hope, Pennsylvania. I talked to my Dad, who has never been the biggest fan of most vegetables, on the phone about this meal, and he said “Squash!” As if squash in a pasta sauce was sooo out there.1
Anyway, let me get back to my Vegan Frozen Dessert. I haven't posted on here about a VFD for more than a year. That one was also a flavored-chocolate dealie: Chocolate-Mint. For Huge Hound, one of my most successful VFDs was Chocolate-Ginger, which I made with fresh ginger from a farm just down the road from our house: Sandbrook Meadow Farm.3
My husband, Tony, loves purchasing and experimenting with different dried herbs and spices from Atlantic Spice Company and Penzeys Spices, which seems like it ought to have an apostrophe. We use dried galangal fairly regularly when we cook. To me, the dried stuff, from Penzeys, smells peppery and earthy, with a slight mustardy quality.
Our local Lucky's Market had some fresh galangal on Sunday. I bought a piece of it, on the left below, and a piece of fresh ginger:
Our big reference book on herbs and spices includes galangal under the Citrus Spices category. The author, Jill Norman, lists two types, greater (Alpinia galanga) and lesser (A. officinarum), and notes the lesser variety is "pale red inside" and "seldom seen in the U.S." So I know the fresh rhizome I bought was greater galangal, and I suspect our dried galangal is as well.
"The aroma of greater galangal is mildly gingery and camphorous; the taste has a lemony sourness with a flavor resembling ginger and cardamom mixed," Norman writes. "Lesser galangal is more pungent, with a hint of eucalypt; its taste is piquant, suggesting a mix of pepper and ginger."
The fresh stuff smelled a little like mustard when I cut into it, and I was afraid the combination of chocolate and galangal would be a bust. I considered using some of the fresh ginger alongside the galangal to hedge my bets, but I stuck with my original plan, and I'm glad I did: chocolate and galangal are lovely together. The combo was somewhat reminiscent of the chocolate-ginger one but prettier and less bold.
Here's a photo of the churned product in my ice cream maker:
And here's my recipe:
Chocolate-Galangal Vegan Frozen Dessert
2 cups unsweetened flax milk
A 1-ounce piece of fresh galangal, peeled and coursely chopped
2/3 cup melted refined coconut oil
1/2 cup agave
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon arrowroot
1 1/2 teaspoons xanthan gum
3/4 teaspoon sunflower lecithin powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 1/2 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips (I used semisweet)
1) Place the flax milk and galangal in a saucepan and bring just to a boil. Remove from heat, add the coconut oil, stir to combine, and let steep, covered, for a half hour.
2) Pour mixture through a strainer to remove the galangal pieces. Return it to the pan and add the agave, vanilla extract, and dry ingredients.
3) Whisk thoroughly. Heat the mixture at medium-low temperature and continue whisking until it thickens, about 5 minutes.
4) Remove from heat, add the chocolate chips, and stir to combine.
5) Strain the custard into a clean pan or bowl, stirring as you go with a spoon or whisk to push the thickened mixture through the mesh.
6) Let cool in an ice bath and/or the refrigerator until it's thoroughly chilled and then process in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.
7) Transfer to a container and store in the freezer until it's completely solidified or enjoy right away for a soft serve–type texture.
Makes about 1 quart.
I made a double batch, so that's 2 teaspoons of arrowroot, 1 tablespoon of xanthan gum, etc., in the photo of dry ingredients above, and this is 7 ounces of Guittard semisweet chocolate chips in the photo below:
Here's Tony completing the straining process for me after I'd poured the custard into the sieve:
He added ice cubes around the pan to cool the custard quickly, so I could process it while he made dinner.
I actually made a very successful VFD at the end of July, but I didn't write about it here because I failed to keep track of the amounts of ingredients I used and so couldn't reproduce the recipe. It was Blueberry–Key Lime VFD, using Florida-grown key limes:
It had a very good balance of flavors, with the lime coming through nicely but not running roughshod over the berries.
1My Dad's grandfather on his mother's side was also a picky eater, so genetics may play a role in his fussiness. I like to poke fun at my Dad for his food issues, but I want to make it clear I'm laughing with him and not at him. And I give him credit for trying the most offbeat and only veggie-centric (and, not terribly surprisingly, weakest-selling) ice cream I made for my frozen dessert business: Beet-Nutmeg. You can read about it here2 and here, in posts from my Huge Hound Frozen Desserts blog.
2I wrote about Dad's eating habits in that post, too. Poor Dad.
3Tony and I joined SMF's CSA, and it was an incredibly positive experience. The farm, farmer Alex and his crew of workers, and their amazing produce and flowers are among the top things I miss most about living in Hunterdon County, New Jersey.