Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures and Cherry Frozen Custard

Any book that gives you an excuse to make frozen custard, must be good, right?  Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures is mostly set in glamorous (and not so glamorous) Hollywood, but at its heart and start it is a story about a girl from Door County, Wisconsin - where frozen custard is a summertime staple.  The novel tells the story of the improbable rise to stardom of Elsa Emerson, a young girl from Wisconsin.  Elsa has the theater in her blood - her parents run a summer theater in rural Wisconsin.  But it is a family tragedy that propels her determination to escape Wisconsin and make it in Hollywood - her drive to succeed is not just for herself, but for her family.  Elsa spends her first years in Hollywood as a young wife and mother, never really making it in the Hollywood studio system.  She finally makes it when she meets a man who convinces her to shed "Elsa" and transform into Laura, the glamorous Hollywood starlet.  The book spans 40+ years of Elsa/Laura's life and career, and the ups and down that come with it.

Emma Straub's Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures is an ambitious and impressive first novel.  Elsa Emerson is the youngest of three girls in Door County Wisconsin.  Her childhood is both idyllic and quirky, her normal country life disrupted every summer when a bunch actors, directors and theater people descended on her family's farmhouse summer theater.  Elsa and her two sisters are very different - Josephine is sturdy and unfussy, resembling the girl's mother and Hildie is a glamorous handful - always seeking the limelight and fragile emotionally.  Elsa's mom is tough - running the house and theater without taking much time to show love to her kids.  Elsa's father is warm and loving, the center and heart of the family.  As a young girl Elsa makes her stage debut and is as smitten with acting as the audience is smitten with her.  When tragedy strikes the Emerson family Elsa is traumatized and from this moment on starts to step away from her family and move towards her destiny - Hollywood.  Elsa's ticket out of Wisconsin is a young actor Gordon Pitts from Florida who stars in one of her father's productions when Elsa is 17 or 18.  Elsa and Gordon decide to run to Hollywood together.  Elsa leaves home with her little suitcase and big dreams of success, but when she gets to Hollywood she is still Elsa.  She finds her pregnant almost immediately and must stay home in a small house while Gordon becomes a bit player in the Gardner Brothers studio system.  It is at a Gardner brothers party that Elsa's Hollywood journey real begins, when she is singled out by Irving Green, the quiet, older Gardner Brothers studio head.  Irving is different than Elsa - she is midwestern, hearty, healthy, pretty while he is a small, slightly sickly, east coast Jew.  He meets her and can tell there is something special about her - he convinces her to dye her blond hair dark and change her name to Laura Lamont.  Presto!  She becomes an mysterious, alluring leading lady.  Irving gives Laura her first big part, and she too becomes part of the Gardner Brothers system, but in a much better place than her husband Gordon.  Soon Gordon's drinking (and drugging) become a problem and Laura finds herself falling in love with Irving.  At first I doubted that her feelings were real - she was with Irving because he could advance her career - but Straub created a real love story between Irving and Laura.  They both truly love each other, he is a wonderful father to her two girls and they have a happy life.  Of course this is Hollywood, so happiness cannot last forever - Laura becomes dependent on pills, her career stagnates, the studio fires Irving and his health declines.  But the drama here is never too lurid or too dark, and that is perhaps a weakness in the book   - it all feels a bit surface.  By the end of the book I missed the slightly spunky child Elsa, Laura, while interesting, is bland and a bit passive - there was the sense that this big life just happened to her - when of course there was a fiery drive in herself that made it happen.   The book also touches on Elsa's transformation to Laura and her decision to leave her family behind - I would have liked more of her grappling with this and with her family.  That said, this was a fun read, perfect for the coming summer months.

Cherry Frozen Custard, adapted from the Examiner.com
(printable recipe)
Being a New Englander, I am not familiar with frozen custard.  Midwesterners seem to love it, and it was mentioned early in the Laura Lamont book.  Also mentioned was Door County cherries, so combining frozen custard and the cherries seemed like a good bet.  What appears to make frozen custard different than ice cream is a lot of egg yolks and less churning.  For my at home version I still churned like regular ice cream, but the result was still a very rich, dense treat.  The original recipe had a ration of 3:1 cream to milk, I decided to make it 1:1 to lighten in up a bit.  No worries, this is still ain't health food.  The base is a great french vanilla that can adapt to any additional flavoring.

Ingredients (makes about 1 1/2 quarts)
2 cups milk
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup plus 1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 egg yolks
1 tbs vanilla
3 cups frozen cherries (fresh if it is the season, but frozen works great)

Directions:

1.  To make the cherries, combine the cherries and 1/4 cup of sugar in a small sauce pan with a dash of water.  Heat over low heat until the sugar dissolves and the cherries break down a bit.  Mash the cherry mixture with a masher.  Set aside to cool.
2. To make the custard base, whisk the milk, cream, half a cup of the sugar and salt in a medium sauce pan over medium heat until it just simmers. 
3. In a medium bowl whisk together the remaining sugar and egg yolks vigorously until pale and  thick.
4. Whisk 1 cup of the hot cream mixture into the eggs slowly until incorporate. Whisk in 1 more cup.
5. Pour the egg and cream mixture back into the saucepan and cook over medium low heat whisking constantly until thickened so that it coats the back of a spoon.  
6. Whisk in the vanilla.
7. Strain the mixture through a sieve into a bowl.
8. Chill, covered, at least two hours.
9. When you are ready to churn, stir in the cherries mixture.
10. Follow the instructions of your ice cream maker, mix for about 20 minutes.
11. Enjoy!
12. This should be eaten in 1-3 days.