Que Nappe!

I live in a beautiful place with a yard.  There are many herbs all over.  I have peppermint, spearmint, sage, chives, oregano, basil, thyme, parsley, and cilantro.  I also have a lot of garlic.  Sadly, the drought in Rochester has not been kind to my lettuce.  Danny (my foodie friend) also grows his food.  He's more experienced than I am though.  He has a lot of vegetables and some fruits.  A lot more herbs.  He introduced me to chocolate mint which is much stronger in flavor than peppermint and spearmint.  He gave me a bunch.  I steep some leaves for my daily morning drink of hot chocolate mint tea.  Yum.

I noticed that the owner of my place left behind an Ice Cream/ Frozen Yogurt Maker in the basement. I told Danny I wanted to try making dark chocolate-chocolate mint ice cream.  He was game!

We attempted this experiment two weeks ago.  I found this recipe online:  http://www.thelittleepicurean.com/2014/07/dark-chocolate-mint-ice-cream.html.  We were looking at this recipe and we were wondering about this word: nappe used in a phrase "nappe consistency".  We looked each other realizing we didn't know what it meant.  It was fun learning a new culinary term.  Nappe is a French word tied to the consistency of the sauce.  Ideally it should not be too thick, thin, nor lumpy.  A whisk is used to help bring a mixture to nappe consistency.  Most recipes would say whip until all the lumps are gone and the sauce is thickened, not too thick.  Nappe is one lovely word that sums it all up.

Once the mixture hit 180 degrees, he kept on stirring until it was 'nappe'.  Then we poured it into a container to be refrigerated overnight to "mature".  I loved how the recipe used the word 'mature'.  Essentially, it really means that the mixture needs to be thickened even more to be mousse-like consistency.

The next evening, we met again to put the mixture into the machine.  We watched it churn into soft-serve ice cream.  Then it was off to the freezer for half an hour before it could be devoured.  Yum. Freezing it overnight made it 'mature' into hard ice cream.

Not bad for first-timers who didn't know what the heck nappe meant.