his post has nothing to do with writing.  In fact, the end of the book is being written from one punctuated equilibrium to another; to get from one point to the next, I have to do a huge amount of thinking, and unfortunately, most of my thinking time has been reserved for other things and other people.  And, of course, even when I do have time to think for myself, my mind wanders off elsewhere.
Tonight, I thought about olive oil gelato.You’ve probably been socialized to believe that ice cream must be sweet.  It’s not true; ice cream is at its best when it’s savory.  In part, that’s because it’s unexpected and new, and yet both the texture and the flavors will be familiar.  It’s the best of the cooking world:  you can give someone something they’ve never eaten, and yet it won’t be so odd that they’ll reject it out of hand.

Savory ice creams and sorbets remain some of my favorite foods.  I’ve had an incredible tomato sorbet (basically crushed tomatoes, with a squeeze of lime and a dash of tobasco, run through an ice cream machine), a phenomenal english pea ice cream (peas, cooked, and then pureed into milk with a hint of salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar).  I’ve made a roasted onion ice cream (which was wonderful until I added raw onion juice, which was unbelievably strong, even in small quantities–oops!  Live and learn.).

So, the olive oil gelato.  Start with an egg yolk.  Add a little sugar.  Then drizzle in an equal volume of olive oil, stirring all the way.  Add milk, slowly, and then drop it in the ice cream maker.  The good thing about having an ice cream maker is that you can make half a cup of ice cream, just enough to split among two people and barely clear the palate at the end of a meal.  This is good if you’re like me and you live alone most of the time.  Or if you’re like me and have poor impulse control when you have a pint of ice cream in the freezer.  Or if you’re like me and you think that most commercial ice creams are too darned sweet.  If you want to do it right, sprinkle the olive oil gelato with a bit of sea salt.

This works best with a strongly-flavored olive oil–if you can get an unfiltered extra virgin olive oil, so much the better.

Once you start thinking this way, you’ll realize that there are a number of foods that we are socialized to believe are not-desserts.  Don’t believe me?  Start with red beans.  Or black beans.  If you’re from most parts of the world, black beans and rice is a yummy staple.  But have you ever gone to dim sum and had those sesame balls filled with black bean paste?  Definitely a dessert.  Or take beets.  You might think beets belong only in salad.  But roast them, grate them, and you can use them like carrots in a cake.  Or you could juice them, carbonate them, and make beet ice cream floats with a good chevre ice cream.  (You might not think you like beets.  Maybe you don’t like beets.  Maybe you have only had beets from a can; canned beets are, of course, the tool of the devil.)  Or think of corn.  It’s not called corn syrup for nothing–corn is sweet, and it’s a great dessert.  And that’s not mentioning the damage you can do with herb ice creams (basil, cilantro, rosemary, sage) or vinegar ice creams (balsamic, sherry, champagne–just imagine agrodolce).
You can go the other way, too, and mix desserts with main courses–harsh, dark chocolate, grated with pepper and salt, can be used as a dry rub for a steak.  Or make a savory vanilla ice cream (only use a pinch of sugar, salt the mixture, and scrape out a real vanilla bean, and maybe add a bit of bourbon) to be served along side pork loin.
This, of course, is what my mind comes up with today when it should be thinking of this darned book.  Curse you, Dog Biscuit Gods!  Curse you!