After the Chicago White Sox lost season, it came to this

Happy Tuesday, White Sox fans.

To be honest, my heart wasn’t interested in reading, watching, or constantly letting the White Sox organization down. Chris Getz’s promotion to general manager was the cherry on the sundae, and since then, the face of Baseball Earth has been lost.

I even got ready to write a column on Tuesday morning last week, took out my notes, and gave myself five hours to write something. Nothing came.

Creativity forced out of desperation never works well, and if it does, it’s often about soulless subject matter, or directed from the mind of an indifferent author. I refuse to fake it, to you or to anyone. I’ve been through enough already this season.

I used to watch every White Sox game, but I haven’t watched even a minute since the management change. I stayed away from White Sox social media, and didn’t have the heart to read any of the wonderful (and disgusting) columns from my South Side Sox teammates. I don’t care any Baseball now, which is very unusual. (Side note: Dad, I’m mad at you because you told me the Cubs have a wild-card spot right now. I’d rather stay ignorant.)

There was nothing satisfying to fill the baseball void, aside from the normal daily testing, writing, video game breaks, and cooking (that’s the norm from October to March during the offseason). I lost my passion for baseball, and it hurts.

Fortunately, I’m grateful to be able to wake up every day in a neighborhood I adore, in an apartment in the sky among neighbors of many White Sox fans, overlooking a city that often brings me joy. So, in the spirit of all things Chicago, and to bring you original content from the heart, I’m sharing my tribute to the city — in ice cream form.

Lately I’ve been making a lot of original ice cream, which I’ve called “Di Scream.” I enjoy incorporating the crème anglaise base into various baked goods I’ve made from scratch: cinnamon rolls with pieces of the inside of the roll and a cream cheese swirl, Margarita Cheesecake, Pepper (vanilla base filled with black peppercorns, drained, and mixed with soaked strawberry coulis).

Cooking is a great hobby of mine, and many of my recipes are original. However, Di Scream is trademarked, but not for sale. I make it for friends, because the brands you are proud of are precious things, and that in itself is part of my brand.

So here’s the Chicago Mix D Scream. It’s a lightly sweetened crème anglaise filled with caramelized Garrett corn, then strained, churned, and rolled with the Garrett corn. Is this strange? maybe. Is it delicious? Damn yes it is.

Chicago Mix D Scream: 19/10, highly recommended

De Bellic

ingredients
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
4 egg yolks
¼ cup sugar
A pinch of sea salt
1 teaspoon good vanilla extract
75% off a small can of Garrett Caramel Corn
75% off a small can of Garrett Cheese Corn

tools
Ice cream machine
Instant-read food thermometer
Colander
Saucepan
Whisk
A bowl of ice and salt and a gallon freezer bag, if you want to speed up the cooling process

directione
Start by separating the eggs and setting the yolks aside in a medium sized bowl.

Separate your eggs.

Combine heavy cream, milk, sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan. Over low heat, stir occasionally until the sugar dissolves, but do not let it boil.

Turn off the heat.

Beat the egg yolk. Mix the eggs by taking 1/2 cup of the hot milk mixture at a time, then slowly stream it into the yolks while whisking. You do this slowly so you don’t end up eating scrambled eggs, which can be bad, so be patient with this. Do this gradually until it flows and whisk about 2 1/2 cups of the hot milk mixture into the yolks.

Now slowly fold the beaten egg yolks into the pot, whisking while incorporating in the same way you just did.

Now that it’s all in one place – the pot – I turn the heat down again. You’ll be stirring a lot, because you need to heat everything evenly. You’re trying to thicken this to the perfect ice cream consistency, which is when it covers the back of a spoon, or 170 degrees Fahrenheit. Make sure to stir or whisk it where you are measuring the temperature so you can be accurate.

Once the mixture reaches 170°F, remove the pot from the heat and add a teaspoon of vanilla.

Place the strainer over a large bowl and pour the crème anglaise through it, so you can catch any bits of bad scrambled eggs that may have formed. There will be a few small pieces, most likely.

Now that you have that hot liquid, it’s time to eat the nuts. Pour the Garrett caramel into the crème anglaise, stirring to mix everything. It will make a popcorn sound when you pop it with butter at the movies. Holy shit, it smells amazing. This is how it will taste.

please trust me.

By the way, the reason there is so little sugar in the crème anglaise base is because of the sugar content in the caramel corn. If you are using this rule for other things, you may want to increase the sugar to 1/2 cup.

Once it’s nice and stirred, we’ll leave it in this crème anglaise like a tea bag, slowly adding its flavor, until it cools. If you want to speed up the cooling process, you can fill a very large bowl with ice and salt, and set it aside. Then pour the caramel anglaise into a gallon-sized sealable freezer bag and seal tightly. Put that shit on ice, where it’ll cool down faster, and then put that big boy in the freezer.

Patience method.

Once it’s cooled, but not before (because stirring while still hot will cause more ice crystals to form, and no one wants that), it’s time to drain it.

Pour the cold mixture through a strainer. The caramel corn corpses now look sad and scared, and that’s good. That means we’ve soaked up all that delicious caramel, and added popcorn-flavored crème anglaise.

Dead caramel corn carcasses

I press the berries with a spoon so I don’t waste any of the precious ice cream mixture, but you don’t have to. Discard solids.

Pour the mixture into your ice cream maker. Mine took about 30 minutes to deliver a hard soft serve. Once I finished making my popcorn, I mixed the popcorn with the cheese slowly at first, but once I got a taste of it with the ice cream, I took a little bit of the popcorn and put almost the entire packet in there. It’s very salty and cheesy, and the ice cream tastes just like caramel corn, but better because it’s ice cream infused. I put it above the emotional pain, and it was nice.

It’s the best ice cream I’ve ever tasted.

So this is where we come to. Ice cream recipes. I don’t have the heart to say, “Go White Sox,” at the end of this, because I just want them gone. I want Reinsdorf to walk on that sidewalk near the kindergarten that is always flooded with dangerous waves. I want Chris Getz to not know his microphone is on during a press conference and accidentally admit to the nation that he’s a massive piece of shit. I want to watch baseball again with my friends. I want to believe in my favorite team again and not just watch football instead of baseball.

I want the nightmare to end.

But until then, ice cream.

Fuck the Cubs.

Chicago Mix D Scream

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