Sunday Night Dinner... On a Monday

sauteed tilapia with warm tomato and basil relish
roasted asparagus with shaved parmesan
rosemary potato bread, oven-toasted with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, rubbed with cut garlic

anise ice cream with dark chocolate stracciatella*

* Recipe from the David Lebovitz book The Perfect Scoop.

This is my first experience with anise ice cream and oh my gosh, I absolutely love it! It's delicious! There is another version of this ice cream in the book called "Biscotti Ice Cream", which is anise with marsala-soaked raisins and toasted almonds stirred in at the end. That combination of flavors is Bruce's very favorite biscotti flavor, so I think we'll definitely have to make that one in the near future.

I was initially going to make vanilla bean ice cream with stracciatella. You might be asking, "what's stracciatella?" It's actually something I'm sure most of you have had before. It's chocolate chip, except the chocolate isn't really 'chips' as much as it is thin little bits of chocolate. It's made by drizzling melted chocolate into the frozen ice cream while it churns, thus freezing the chocolate in streaky sheets that get broken into tiny pieces by the dasher.

I thought I melted the ice cream when I drizzled in the warm chocolate. It probably wouldn't have hurt to let the chocolate cool just a bit before I added it. Regardless, I did not wreck it, and it's totally YUMMY.

So back to the vanilla. Do you people have any idea how much vanilla beans cost these days?? I figured I'd buy some beans at the market and holy smokes! There was one in a jar and the jar was $9.99!! I mean homemade ice cream is better than store-bought for sure, but is it worth $15 a quart?? No I do not think so!

Someone told me about Penzey's Spices a long time ago (hi, Lenore!). Curious, I checked their website. As it turns out, vanilla at Penzey's is a much better deal! 15 Madagascar Vanilla beans for less than $30. I'll be placing an order soon. Those supermarket spice jar companies can be a serious rip-off.

Happy Labor Day, everyone!