Mr. Rilch and I are having company for dinner tonight: Friend who lives next door, plus Co-Workers (male and female). Mr. Rilch is making the pasta, bread and salad; I am making pistachio gelato and walnut-raisin cookies.
I made the cookie dough and put it in the fridge to chill for an hour. The gelato was trickier; I’d forgotten about the necessity of shelling the pistachios! Also, I discovered that when one puts pistachios, or any similarly hard little nuggets, into a food processor, they skitter on top of the wheel and try to jump out. So I had to press the scoop down on them, feeling a bit like one of the guards in the Inferno, heedless of my victims’ cries for mercy. Still, they’re in a better place now; they are also in the fridge, chilling. And now I am chilling, until Mr. Rilch gets back.
There’s an outside chance that the gelato won’t turn out. The recipe forbid letting the custard boil, so I had to take it off the stove before the prescribed eight minutes were up. The pistachio shreds take up so much room, I can’t tell if the milk/egg mixture really thickened as it should have. Still, it’s known that this is my first attempt, and there will still be the cookies if the gelato is DOA.
