I was inspired to make a White Lady by two things. In Murder is Easy by Agatha Christie, Bridget recalls a poem by Frances Darwin Cornford called To a Lady Seen From a Train which mentions a white woman. Simultaneously, I found a recipe for a dessert called a White Lady inthe March 2003 edition of Delicious Magazine. This makes this post not only a Dining with The Dame adjacent post but also a Twenty Years Ago Today adjacent post. I do so love it when things come together!
Part of the poem recalled by Bridget runs as follows:
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves, Missing so much and so much? O fat white woman whom nobody loves, Why do you walk through the fields in gloves
Now, as you can tell from the fragment above, this is not a great poem. But something about it roused the ire of other poets of the time. And in what, I imagine to be some sort of precursor to a modern-day rap battle, the poet A.E Housman parodied To A Lady Seen From a Train as follows:
O why do you walk through the fields in boots, Missing so much and so much? O fat white woman whom nobody shoots, Why do you walk through the fields in boots,
And that was not the last word on the subject either. Another poet, G.K Chesterton wrote his own poem called The Fat White Woman Speaks in response to Cornford
Why do you rush through the field in trains, Guessing so much and so much. Why do you flash through the flowery meads, Fat-head poet that nobody reads
Move over Ice Cube, your beef with N.W.A has nothing on Chesterton! Also, this is not about to become a poetry blog, even though I seem to be talking about it a bit recently!
I mean really! Little did that poor woman taking a shortcut through a local field realise that she was going to be weight shamed, accused of being utterly unloveable and have it lamented that she is not the target of a sniper!
In contrast, we are celebrating her with a White Lady or Dame Blanche which is a Belgian ice cream sundae.
White Lady – The Recipe
Now the recipe gives you the option to make your own ice cream. I did not take this option – sometimes you just don’t want to wai a few hours for your White Lady! I don’t love the combination of chocolate and orange so I only used half the amount of Cointreau mentioned iabove.
The White Lady gave me serious McDonalds Hot Fudge Sundae vibes with a little kick of alcohol!
The White Lady was delicious! But also serves as a warning. Ladies, if you are walking through fields, maybe take your gloves off so you don’t incur the wrath of battling poets!
Hello, people of the internet, welcome and hear me out. Because today I am making a bold statement. If you ever have to make the choice of cooking just one recipe from this blog, then, this Millionaire’s Ice Cream is the one! It’s seriously THAT good!!!! And so easy to make as well!
I first tasted Millionaire’s Ice Cream in Cornwall on holiday last year. At the time, I commented on Instagram that I had just eaten the best ice cream I had ever tasted. Of course, the setting helped. It was the gorgeous coastal town of Port Isaac.
If you are a fan of British TV shows about irascible doctors, Port Isaac may look familiar to you. The TV series Doc Martin is filmed here. The town is renamed Port Wenn in the series.
I have circled the Doc’s house in the above photo. And right down the road from the Doc’s house is Mrs Titchell’s pharmacy, which, in real life is the local sweet shop, Harbor Treats. I first tasted the delight that is Millionaire’s Ice Cream At Harbor Treats. Right away, I knew I wanted to make my own version of Millionaire’s ice cream when I got home! And here’s the thing, for something that tastes so luscious and decadent, Millonaire’s Ice Cream is one of the easiest things you can ever make.
That’s Bert Large, one of the locals of Port Wenn. But, back to the ice cream. Sure, you can make it more difficult by making all the components from scratch and I have added in links to each component to allow you to do just that if you so desire. The only thing I made from scratch was the chocolate ganache. And, to my mind, mine was as delicious as the one from Port Isaac.
So let’s get started.
Start with a layer of crumbled shortbread biscuits. Keep these a little bit chunky, you don’t want them to be as fine as if you were making a crumb crust.
Then a layer of salted caramel sauce. I used Bonne Maman but you can find a recipe here. Just splodge it on, it does not have to be perfect.
Then, repeat each of these layers. At any time during this process, if the icecream starts getting too runny, you can pop it into the freezer for about 10 minutes to allow it to firm up.
Finally, a layer of chocolate ganache over the top. This is the ganache recipe I followed. Then back into the freezer to allow everything to set. A little smattering of sea salt flakes over that ganache will not go astray either!
Get ready for YUM!!!!
This ice cream will make you feel like a million dollars!
And don’t worry, in case you get too excited by the ice cream, the good Doc is on hand to keep things in check
Just so we’re clear? Free on E is not my memoir of rave and single life in the ’90’s but a new thing I thought would be fun – I could cast my eye over some of the cookbooks available for free as ebooks and…you know…do what I do. Read. Cook. Mock. Eat.
And occasionally give a little “Eek” of delight when I find a hidden gem.
And because they’re readily available and free you can read, cook, mock and “Eek” right along with me!
Ice Cream Muffins
Anyone actually wanting my memoir of rave life in the ’90’s? Sorry, that’s a completely different e-book that will be available for purchase in the not too distant. Just kidding. Unless anyone would actually pay money for it. In which case….hit the contact me button immediately. I’ll start writing….
Anyway, my first venture into “free on e” was “Rapid Recipes for Writers And Other Busy People” By Marsha Ward.
Oh boy.
Marsha, Marsha, Marsha….
To put it nicely, the 31 recipes in here are mostly pretty ordinary. I was seriously struggling to find one that I wanted to cook. There’s a lot of ground beef, a lot of canned soup and frozen vegetables. This is a typical example:
Boss Beef Dish
Make patties of:
2 lbs ground beef
4-5 grated potatoes
1 grated onion
1 tbsp garlic salt
2 eggs.
Brown both sides of patties in skillet.
Add mixture of:
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 1/2 cans water
1 lb frozen peas.
Simmer until warmed through.
Blecchhhh….
Then there’s
Garlic Baked Potatoes:
Cut a small triangle out of each potato; add 1/2 tsp garlic powder and replace triangle. Put a pat of butter on or margarine on potato, wrap in foil then bake in over or on coals in barbecue or campfire. Salt and pepper maybe added to margarine for extra flavour.
Hmmm…Enjoy that mouthful of burnt garlic powder. Why not just add the garlic powder to the margarine? Whilst we’re on the subject of garlic powder? It’s the devil’s work. Second only to margarine. Don’t even get me started on that particular rant…
I was just about to agree with the reviewer who said this book wasn’t worth free when I came across the recipe for:
Ice Cream Muffins
1 ½ cup self-raising flour
2 cups soft vanilla ice cream
Mix until dry particles are moist. Grease muffin tins; bake 20-25 minutes at 450 degrees F.
“No way” I thought. “There’s no way that’s going to work. That’s about the dumbest thing I ever heard”.
So, I made them.
Yeah, I don’t get how my mind works either.
And…believe it or not, they worked!
Ice Cream Muffins
Don’t get me wrong, these weren’t the best muffins I’ve ever eaten but they were recognizably muffins and they were made out of ice cream and flour! That’s kind of awesome. And the possibilities are only as limited as the flavours of ice cream available to you. I didn’t have vanilla and I wasn’t about to buy some for a recipe that I was sure wasn’t going to work so mine were actually rum and raisin muffins.
Ice Cream Muffins
This exercise also reminded me that if you ever need a dose of kooky in your life, spend an hour or so reading Amazon reviews. They’re hilarious!!! This gem was in the review section for Rapid Recipes for Writers.
Let’s break this baby down shall we?
I’m not a good judge here. Didn’t stop you from writing a review though, did it!
This is an actual cookbook! Yeah. Uh huh. What did you think it was? A rubber chicken?
AND a lot of the recipes had MEAT. Maybe they don’t tell you in NaNoWriMo circles that it’s bad form to start a sentence with “and”*? Or that it’s kind of annoying when you capitalise RANDOM words.
I’m a vegetarian who doesn’t cook. So why buy a cookbook then? Oh, that’s right. You didn’t realise it was a cookbook (sigh…facepalm).
When you’re reviewing a book, it might also be useful to tell people more about the book than yourself**. I believe all we learned about “Rapid Recipes for Writers ” was that it was an actual cookbook! That contained MEAT.
What do I know though? Five out of seven people found that review helpful. Which only serves to confirm my belief that five out of seven people are idiots. Which I guess dear, smart, funny, cute, discerning reader leaves you and me!
We’ll head back to Vietnam next week….
Bye for now.
*For the pedants, I’m perfectly aware I started at least 3 sentences with “and” in this post. Please refer to sentence 3 in **below.
** For the most part people reading Amazon reviews are not remotely interested in what you eat or anything else about you. If you are that self-obsessed, maybe you should try blogging. The added benefit of which is, that when it’s your blog, you can start sentences with whatever the hell you want.
*For the pedants, I’m perfectly aware I started at least 3 sentences with “and” in this post. Please refer to sentence 3 in **below.