"ICE" news and stories

Years ago I worked a bar that only had an ice machine that made soft, mushy pellet ice that was great for sodas, sweet teas and my mint juleps. However, this ice made slushy, watery drinks when shaken, especially with all the excess water that resulted from the pellets sitting in a steel ice bin. I would bring my own bag of cubed ice from the corner gas station to work every day. I never imagined years later, ice would become so controversial.

Now, you can stir your drink with an ice spoon, or pour your highball concoction over prepackaged ice cubes made from purified, distilled water that's supposed to make a clearer ice cube than your tap water in the old fashioned ice tray. Big, clear ice cubes do look good in a glass. You can spend hours at home with distilled water, boiled twice, agitated while freezing to release air trapped inside to make your own clear cubes, but I've not found this very exciting.

Nowadays your top bars may boast about their expensive ice machines such as Kold-Draft or Hoshizaki brands. These machines make square ice cubes measuring more than an inch around that have been touted to make your drink better. Some bars even take these cubes from the ice machine and put them in a deep freezer for "double frozen" ice.

B52 on ice. Photo: quinn.anya, Flickr

• Ice isn't solely a drink chiller. It's also a fine art for bartenders concerned with chilling rather than diluting.
• Farm vacations hit stateside. Would you pay hundreds for the chance to work on one?
  
• Frank Bruni's final column notes his (often underrated) favorites around New York City.
  
• After nearly half a century, Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" has finally topped the best-seller list.
• The Minimalist dips into peanut butter.
• Hot baths and other treatments to keep your berries from growing mold too quickly.
  

Instead of grabbing that blue-gelled cold pack for your little cooler, make some all-natural ice packs.

With a little forethought, ice cubes can be more than just rapidly melting beasts that dilute your drinks.

On a recent trip to Singapore I fell hopelessly in love with the unholy, neon-colored love child of a Sno-Cone and a Jell-O salad, also known as the ais kacang.

The ais kacang is wildly popular in Singapore and Malaysia (where it's sometimes called an "ABC"), served in outdoor food centers and in mall food courts countrywide. In its most basic iteration, it consists of a scoop of roughly shaved ice drizzled with varicolored sugar syrups and evaporated or condensed milk sitting on a nest of corn kernels, red beans and cubes of herb jelly or gluey sago pearls.

It's the hyperstimulating carnival of desserts, with every texture -- Crunchy! Chewy! Icy! Glutinous! Creamy! -- and dozens of flavors exploding in your mouth all at once. Some versions even include a scoop of ice cream or a pile of fresh mango or (eeek!) durian. More is more, right?

Never mind that it's still 45 degrees and raining here; I've been craving ais kacang as if it's midsummer in Southeast Asia. So I decided to make my own. I simply ground up ice in my food processor and doused it with Torani raspberry syrup (the kind you use to make Italian soda) and a milk syrup I'd made by cooking evaporated milk with brown sugar. I omitted the corn and beans, but next time I'll try adding some sago pearls or chopped fresh berries.