{"id":152068,"date":"2012-09-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gracious-khorana.45-76-20-142.plesk.page\/toasted-oak-ice-cream-with-smoked-sea-salt-lapsang-souchong-caramel-swirl\/"},"modified":"2023-07-13T12:45:32","modified_gmt":"2023-07-13T12:45:32","slug":"toasted-oak-ice-cream-with-smoked-sea-salt-lapsang-souchong-caramel-swirl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/localmilkblog.com\/2012\/09\/toasted-oak-ice-cream-with-smoked-sea-salt-lapsang-souchong-caramel-swirl.html","title":{"rendered":"Toasted Oak Ice Cream with Smoked Sea Salt & Lapsang Souchong Caramel Swirl"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Last autumn seemed the most vibrant & animate one I\u2019d ever seen, maybe the only one I\u2019d ever really seen<\/i> since I was a child. It was my first sober autumn in my adult life and so terribly, wonderfully orange, blue, and Rachmaninoff. It used to be a melancholy time for me, a comfortable, familiar melancholy in which a refrain from Vashti Bunyan forever repeated itself in my head. Fires are now burning and life has no reason. <\/i>Winter loomed.<\/div>\n
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But last autumn was the first in a very different life. He and I were falling with the leaves only harder. Shadows were violet and light was gold. I could see, speak, form memories. He built me fires, brewed mat\u00e9, and gifted me awfully romantic things like plastic skeletons and ring pops. I roasted pumpkin seeds in myriad flavors, and we dressed up as Marlon Brando & Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris<\/i> for Halloween, he in an overcoat & me in fur, flowers pinned to my hat. Our synapses were swimming in oxytocin, and his hand on my knee was electric. We spent the last of the warm afternoons on a blanket in the park, setting out to read our respective books but making out like teenagers instead to both the disgust and fascination of passing tweens. We watched all of Peter Greenaway\u2019s films in bed, ate popcorn and peanut M&M\u2019s. And that\u2019s the story of how I decided not to move to New Orleans last December as I had planned. I stayed in Tennessee, and we made a home.<\/div>\n
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This ice cream is my homage to mild, smoky Indian Summer days, a time of year as ephemeral and lovely as spring, a time where fall & summer produce cross paths on their ways in and out of the market. I\u2019m used to love that blazes, fades to embers, and then turns cold. Ash. Like so many autumn pyres. But this time it\u2019s been different. We celebrate our one year anniversary on All Saints day, about a month from now. No, a year is not a long time in the grand scheme, but to feel as happy, happier even, as I did a year ago, that\u2026that is something. Something violently golden, an endless swoon of leaves.<\/div>\n

Even more now than in the throes of that exploratory infatuation, as kaleidoscopic as it was, I\u2019m so deeply satisfied I can hardly form the words to express my gratitude. We have put down roots right into each other\u2019s ventricles. I\u2019m a touch of the crazy and no easy creature to navigate. To find someone capable of traversing the lay of my land\u2026well, that\u2019s a rare, intrepid man. One I had almost come to believe didn\u2019t exist. He\u2019s a regular unicorn. This is a spectral time of year, romantic and eerie and crisp. I love it. It\u2019s ours. This ice cream tastes like it.<\/p>\n

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The smoky confection was inspired by a dessert course at The Catbird Seat in Nashville, TN. Our meal there was one of those where each course is a revelation, an education. Truth be told I have little interest in eating out unless the meal will tell me something I don\u2019t already know. As such, I\u2019d rather save for months and spend it all on an experience such as The Catbird Seat rather than frittering it on underwhelming meals. Give me street food, soul food, or one of the best restaurants in the country. Otherwise, I\u2019ll cook for myself, thank you. I\u2019m not much for the food that falls in between. They\u2019re deserving of their reputation, and if you find yourself with the opportunity to eat there, do. It didn\u2019t hurt to know that a personal hero, Grant Achatz, had eaten a seat over from me not but a few nights prior. I like to think his aura was still reverberating around, getting genius ectoplasm on my foie.<\/p>\n

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