March West Coast and April East Coast/Memphis travel schedule, Chicago duo updates, reflections on resisting the culinary algorithm, and finally an eggless recipe for seduction

MARCH WEST COAST TRAVELS

I will be returning to the West Coast to conduct my own rites of spring!

San Francisco Mar 4-6

San Jose Mar 10-11

Phx Mar 17-18

I am excited to swim in the bay, flirt with my favorite Bay Area flowers, Adriana Rose, Rose Gibson ,and Flora Sparks, and fall in love with lovers new and old!

APRIL TRAVELS

🎸Memphis April 1-2

📚Boston Apr 23-24

🚕New York Apr 28-29

🥊Philly April 30-May 1

CHICAGO

I am now offering duos with my fellow Asian sister and stallion*, Tomie Tang! Save a horse, get pegged by your local cowgirls.

Whenever we hang out, we always loose track of time because we’re brainstorming all manners of cooking and cocktail mischief. If you’re looking to woo us thoroughly on our first date together, I would highly recommend a butchery class at the Chicago Meat Collective, a cheese or wine tasting class at A Beautiful Rind, or a fermentation class with the illustrious Vargo Brother Ferments, or sampling rare Korean spirits at Proxi.

*I’m more of a pony, but who cares lol

Would you like an egg during this trying time?

As the world burns, I cannot offer you an egg as Frank Reynolds would to remedy your existential dread. However, I have a counter offer: a top tier eggless recipe for seduction, and expanded forms of connection beyond the algorithm with your favorite hot girl.

I have a love/hate relationship with the algorithm and social media because of the demands of producing constant content and access, as well as the pervasive discrimination against those in the adult industry. As an antidote, I am embracing slow simmering romances, long reads, and even longer nights.

I invite you to connect through the twin pleasures of pen and flesh.

Are you ready?

As a self appointed hot girl food writer, today’s recipe is an inadvertent homage to joys of wandering around the library.

I first discovered David Lebovitz and his food blog when I was beginning my culinary journey as a college student.

As a homesick Californian, I was overjoyed to learn he was a former pastry chef at Chez Panisse, a Bay Area institution (with perhaps an undeserved reputation, but that’s another discussion for another day lol).

Nostalgic for the days of checking out Chez Panisse’s “Fruit” cookbook from the local library, and making decadent persimmon bread from neighborhood trees heavy with fruit, I latched onto Lebovitz’s food writing.

Thanks to David Lebovitz’s blog, I have traversed many culinary roads including ice cream making for the past 6 years! My friends still yearn and plead about the reappearance of my coffee ice cream with homemade cajeta swirl and chocolate chunks. However, I have been gifted the culinary Razzie award for the pugnaciously pungent roquefort honey ice cream.

In a very touching full circle moment, a Chicago sweetheart gifted me David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop” on our first date in fall 2024!

Earlier this February, I was dreaming of the perfect ice cream recipe for a lover in time of the avian flu, and wanted to skim my own library for inspiration. Channeling my best impersonation of Disney’s Belle, I began sensually stroking my book shelves while projecting my attachment issues upon my inanimate household objects.

Lo and behold, my much annoyed teapot dragged me to the recipe for fleur du lait, a French eggless ice cream. While I cannot endorse you channeling your inner Belle in public, I do sincerely encourage you to wander around your public libraries.

I cannot credit my local libraries enough for fostering my current culinary curiosity from a young age. I grew up without cable so I learned so much about other cuisines from cookbooks.

While some trending recipes are quite amazing (I am on IG after all), the trends do hide what’s less marketable. Be the main character in the bookstacks, be overwhelmed and awed by the amount of food writing in the world, be stressed at the thought of the difficult task of cooking for an orgy on a budget, let your curiosity guide you! Who knows what you may learn with your library card!

If you’re still here patiently while I culinarily edge you, bless you! I have for you a precious gem beyond compare from my test kitchen. The 24 carat pothole of Chicago’s wintery season as one may say .

I am delighted to present an incredibly rich and decadent recipe from “The Perfect Scoop” for an egg free rocky road ice cream.

In fact, it is so good it will have you reacting like this

(With the success of this ice cream, I finally understand how God must have felt when he created nectarines and Meghan thee Stallion)

Some Brief Thoughts on Ice Cream Thickeners

It does not surprise me that cornstarch is the star thickener in question for this recipe! Cornstarch is the oldest and most versatile friend in my kitchen pantry. I thought she was just a childhood friend at first, as she was the foundation in delicately savory sauces coating vibrant Chinese stir fries, but she’s so multi dimensional. As time passes, I’ve found cornstarch to be the backbone to vegan coconut masala chocolate puddings, hot and sour soup, and now ice cream. Cornstarch never ceases to amaze me.

The Levant region (Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Turkey) also have a rich history of thickening their ice creams with sahleb, ground orchid root. Such ice creams in this region are called booza and supposedly have a stretchy, dense, and creamy texture.

I was generously sahleb from a friend who recently returned from her ancestral home in Lebanon, and I can’t wait to try out some booza recipes showcasing the gems of summer’s bounty.

Josie’s Rocky Road Ice Cream adapted from David Lebovitz’s “Perfect Scoop”

Ingredients

• 2 cups of Milk

• 1 cup of Cream

• 5 tbsp of Cocoa Powder

• 140 grams of Semisweet chocolate chips

• 3 tbsp of Cornstarch

For the toppings (Add more if you like more “rockiness” in your ice cream)

• 1/2 cup or so toasted almonds

• 1/2 cup or so of chocolate chips

• 1/2 cup or so marshmallows (homemade is not necessary, but a fun task if you love hanging out in the kitchen)

  • If you do end up using the linked recipe, I generously sprinkled flakey sea salt to balance out the treacly sweetness of the marshmallows.

Equipment

• Heavy bottomed sauce pan

• Medium mixing bowl

• Spatula

• Whisk

• Large mesh sieve

• Ice cream maker

  • The ice cream maker canister NEEDS to be chilled in the freezer over night. Do not skip this step or all your effort will be for naught. I have had the 1.5 quart Hamilton Beach ice cream maker for the past 6 years, and while she’s not aesthetically pleasing, she does the job.

Instructions

1. Combine 2 cups of milk, 5 tbsp of cocoa powder, 140 g of semi sweet chocolate, and 3/4 cup of sugar in a heavy bottomed sauce pan over low heat. Stir constantly until the chocolate is melted and the cocoa powder and sugar are incorporated into the milk.

2. Slowly drizzle one cup of cream into 3 tbsp of cornstarch and whisk until the mixture forms a thin and uniform slurry.

3. Slowly pour cornstarch slurry into the heated milk mixture and stir. Bring it to a boil and simmer for 2 minutes.

4. Once it has finished simmering, cool the mixture and refrigerate overnight. DO NOT SKIP CHILLING YOUR ICE CREAM BASE. I have tried chilling my base for 2 hours, and it simply does not thicken when poured into the ice cream maker. If you’re in a time crunch, you can chill for four hours.

5. Pour your mixture into a sieve to catch cornstarch lumps. Use a spatula to push the mixture through the sieve. You may be tempted to skip this part before you add it to the ice cream maker BUT DO NOT!!!!

   Cornstarch will lump despite your best efforts whisking it seductively. Nothing is more heartbreaking than presenting your sweetheart a beautiful bowl of homemade ice cream in this egg crisis, and see their face fall quicker than the twin towers as they bite into a lump of cornstarch.

6. Pour your now smooth ice cream base into the ice cream maker. My ice cream maker generally takes 20 minutes to finish churning, You’ll know when the ice cream is ready to be removed for the last stage of chilling when the mixture is visibly thickened and the churning motion starts slowing down.

7. As you pour your finished chocolate ice cream into your container, take some pauses to sprinkle in your toppings. I was too lazy to swirl them in, so I just layered my ice cream with toppings throughout the container.

8. Serve after chilling in the fridge for 4 hours. Seduce your sweetheart, lord over your enemies, crow over your success, you deserve it all baby.

P.S. And if you want to send your chef a virtual kiss of appreciation, I do love being recognized for my writerly efforts with gifts from my wishlist.