Pastry chef tracker

Pastry chef Danielle Keene has left BLT Steak, Laurent Tourondel's Sunset Boulevard steakhouse, for the joint kitchens of the Little Door and Little Next Door, on Beverly.  Keene, who changed toques a month ago, was previously at Wilshire, in Santa Monica, where she started Ice Cream Shoppe Night.  The Culver City-born, Sherman Oaks-bred chef says she wanted more menu flexibility — but that what she really wants is, unsurprisingly, an ice cream shop of her own. All in good time.  Meanwhile, Keene, whose resume includes Water Grill, Campanile, AOC and Blair's, is busy making exquisite macarons (yesterday's included blueberry, raspberry, lavender and coconut-caramel), fig and hazelnut poundcake, strawberry-hazelnut Linzer cookies — and pistachio-lemon semifreddo, since the restaurant doesn't have an ice cream machine.  Yet.  When Nicolas Peter, chef at both the Little Door and Little Next Door, got back in town after a week on the East Coast, Keene said she greeted him warmly: "How was your vacation?  When are we getting the ice cream maker?" 

The Little Door, 8164 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles.  (323) 951-1210; Little Next Door, 8142 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles.  (323) 951-1010.

— Amy Scattergood

Photo by Amy Scattergood

Cool new ice cream

It sounds too good to be true -- a "fusion of Italian gelato, fresh frozen custard & hand-cranked home made ice cream," made fresh hourly. So what are they really serving at Silky Smooth, the new ice cream place in the Beverly Center?

Well, it's low in fat (10%), so it tastes more like ice milk than Ben & Jerry's or Häagen-Dazs. You can look on this as a positive (cleaner flavor) or a negative (not as rich).

Unlike the usual low-fat ice cream, though, it has a wonderful texture. One reason is that it's served at 18 degrees, much closer to the luscious melting point than to the rock-hard temperature of most ice cream. It's more like soft-serve, that is, except that soft-serve always has a fairly coarse texture, and Silky Smooth really is silky smooth. They say the secret is a special ice cream maker that produces ultra-small ice crystals, combined with the fact that the ice cream is made that day, so it never gets exposed to the cycle of thawing and refreezing that coarsens supermarket ice cream.

Another difference from most of today's ice cream places is that Silky Smooth stocks a limited range of flavors -- just vanilla, chocolate, coffee and strawberry when I was there this morning. In the '30s and '40s, soda fountains usually worked with no more than three or four ice cream flavors, which they varied by making sundaes, splits and shakes. Silky Smooth continues that tradition, except that it can also blend ice cream flavors if you want.

The best part, for some people, will be that all the soft drinks are old-school, made with cane sugar rather than the now universal high-fructose corn syrup. So they're all imported. Silky Smooth may be the only place in town that boasts of serving Coca-Cola bottled in Belgium.

-- Charles Perry

Fro-yo at home

All the current hype about fro-yo wars ignores, perhaps, those waged at home. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood to stand in line at my neighborhood frozen yogurt (or ice cream) store, with or without sugar-crazed children.  And then there's the issue of all that sugar and fat, things which we get quite enough of already. 

So this Christmas, when I got an ice cream maker (thank you, Jenny!), I thought I'd try making something my daughters would like -- and that I could live with too.  Although I love homemade ice cream, I didn't really want them eating the 12 egg yolks and Armagnac that are in my favorite recipe; and the recipes for frozen yogurt that came with the machine called for things like canned fruit, whole milk and lots of added sugar. So we made up our own.

Here's our version of strawberry fro-yo. (I explained to Sophie that strawberries aren't in season, but she was adamant.)  First we macerated 2 cups of sliced strawberries and 1 tablespoon sugar for half an hour (to bring out the juices and flavor a little; with ripe summer berries I won't need this step -- or the extra sugar), then pureed them in a blender with 2 cups Greek-style plain yogurt and 1/4 cup wildflower honey. That, in turn, went into the ice cream machine; about half an hour later, we were done. 

The kids couldn't believe how easy it was.  Nor could they believe that I let them have seconds.  And thirds.  No more begging them to eat a "healthy" snack of plain yogurt, sliced fresh fruit, a drizzle of honey ... 

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Amy Scattergood

Gelato birthday bash

If you're in the Valley on Monday -- or even if you're not -- you might consider swinging by Gail Silverton's Gelato Bar, which will be celebrating its first anniversary. In the morning, you'll get a free cup of coffee, and from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m you'll be treated to a free bambino-sized cup of gelato. Or fork over a little cash and get some Intelligentsia espresso and a double scoop of fig-mascarpone or cinnamon-basil gelato. But the real reason to put on a party hat is the drawing they'll be having -- no purchase necessary to enter -- to win a one-week stay in a furnished two-bedroom apartment in Umbria. Yes, it's Silverton's very own pad, in the hilltop village of Panicale. If you're really lucky, maybe you can coordinate your schedule with the rest of the Silverton clan; Gail's sister Nancy has a house in the village too. Who needs Travelzoo?

Gelato Bar, 4342 1/2 Tujunga Blvd., Studio City; (818) 487-1717.

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Christina House

Gelato and a movie

   Driving up the San Gabriel foothills into Altadena for a fix of Bulgarini Gelato has been well worth the trek since the outpost opened in April.  And now you can pull up a folding chair and stay awhile: Owners Leo Bulgarini and his wife, Elizabeth, recently instituted movie nights.  Every other Friday night, after the sun (and the lines snaking out the door) goes down, at about 9:30, you can watch an Italian movie free of charge in the open courtyard outside their shop.  Eat a bowl of pistachio gelato or spoon up an affogato (a scoop of gelato topped by a shot of espresso) while you wait for the same stars watched by the nearby Mt. Wilson Observatory to come out.  Last Friday, the third movie night so far this summer, it was a showing of "Mediterraneo," the Italian flick that won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1992.  Come early, save a seat and get dinner too: for $9 you can get a huge plate of homemade lasagne or ravioli and a salad at the table they set up outside. Or get back in line for a second bowl of plum sorbetto or chocolate-orange gelato while you brush up on your Italian.  Not that it's required; the films are subtitled, even if the occasional shouts from the back of the house aren't.

Bulgarini Gelato, 749 E. Altadena Drive, Altadena; (626) 441-2319.

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Stefano Paltera for The Times

Summer cabin apricot ice cream

"Who forgot to bring the ice cream maker?"

Blood-curdling words to start a vacation. Don't be the one everybody blames for not being able to make fresh fruit ice cream. Just remember this recipe.

The luscious, melting texture of ice cream is due to the fact that it has a lot of air whipped into it. An ice cream maker accomplishes this during the freezing process. This clever recipe inserts the air first -- it makes a custard sauce and whips it as it cools, then it folds in whipped cream. At that point all you have to do is stick it into a refrigerator freezer compartment and leave it. Any sort of mold will work -- a bowl, even a bunch of ice cube trays.

It comes out like regular ice cream but with a faint crunchiness, like Italian spumoni. (In fact, it is spumoni.) Stone fruits and berries work best as flavors.

If you can get your hands on some chocolate ice cream, you can even turn not having an ice cream maker into an advantage. Let the chocolate ice cream soften a little so you can line a large mixing bowl with it. Fill the cavity with the apricot spumoni mixture, freeze the whole thing, and you'll have an impressive classic French dessert: bombe africaine. (Use another flavor and you'll have invented your own bombe.)

To make Summer Cabin Ice Cream, start with one cup of fresh fruit purée. (If you're using apricots, peel and pit four of them and then pureé them in whatever equipment you have -- a food processor is best, of course.) For a frozen dessert, fruit flavors might need a little perking up, so beat in 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and 1 tablespoon of sugar.

Then make a syrup by boiling half a cup of water with one cup of sugar until it's clear. Take it off the heat and let it cool. Stir in the purée along with eight lightly beaten egg yolks, put it back on the heat and cook, stirring, until it thickens. A good sign it's ready is that when you stir around the bowl with a spoon and then remove it, the mixture doesn't keep moving but comes to a stop. Remove from the heat and beat it until it's cool.

Meanwhile, whip a cup and a third of whipping cream until it forms stiff peaks. Dump it onto the cooled apricot stuff and fold it into the mixture by repeatedly scooping with a big spoon from the bottom of the bowl up through the whipped cream until the texture is uniform. Cover with plastic wrap and freeze for two or three hours.

You didn't need an ice cream maker. In fact, you planned this all along. That's your story, and you're sticking with it.

-- Charles Perry

Photo by Charles Perry

More plums: Santa Rosa plum granita

There are few things better than Santa Rosa plums, especially now when the fruit is ripe and shot through with sugars.  So I ran over to the Santa Monica farmers market yesterday, just long enough to get some -- and catch a fleeting glimpse of new Bastide chefs Walter and Marge Manske shopping at the Windrose Farms stall as I hurried out.  But speed has its price -- as does carrying a stack of books everywhere you go -- and to my enormous dismay I found when I arrived at the Times Test Kitchen that my glorious plums were bruised and battered.  So I did what any self-respecting and slightly accident-prone cook would do --  I improvised.  I mashed my plums even further and made a pretty awesome granita. 

Here's the recipe: Put three-quarters of a cup of water, half a cup of sugar, the juice of half a lemon, two tablespoons white verjus (you can substitute white wine if you don't have this) and half a vanilla bean (split and scraped) into a small heavy saucepan.  Bring to a simmer and reduce, about three minutes, until you have about half a cup of syrup.  Skin and remove the pits from about five Santa Rosa plums and break up the fruit with a fork; you'll need about one cup of mashed fruit.  Cool the syrup slightly, then add the plum mixture.  Stir and strain through a fine-mesh sieve, pressing the solids through with a spoon.  Put the mixture into a glass dish and freeze overnight.  Stir a few times to break apart the ice crystals as the granita is freezing and then again right before you're ready to serve it.

I'll never cry over battered fruit again.

-- Amy Scattergood

Photo by Leslie Brenner