400 FLAVOURS
Just remember as you read this one: we don’t learn from experiments that can’t fail.
Recipe 031: Fennel-Vanilla Ice Cream
The flavour was a suggestion from dear husband Gerald. I’m interested in unusual mix-ins and those candy-coated fennel seeds intrigued me greatly. So, putting them together, will it work?
Fennel-vanilla ice cream:
Ingredients:
A half-batch of the reduced-milk-jenis-thing-we-usually-do
1.25 cups whole milk
1 Tbsp regular fennel seeds
3 Tbsp candy-coated fennel seeds
Instructions:
Toast the tablespoon of regular fennel seeds in butter until it starts to smell nicely aromatic.
Add milk, bring to simmer, and then let it cool to steep the fennel (about 15 minutes).
Strain milk to remove fennel and add milk to the existing base. Stir well to incorporate and chill in fridge for at least 4 hours.
Churn in ice cream machine until at soft-serve consistency. Just before finishing, put in candy-coated fennel sees, then scoop mix into chilled container in freezer to chill overnight.
TASTING NOTES: The flavours work well together! And the candy-coated fennel isn’t too hard. But the look is not great, the colouring of the coating bleeds into the cream too much.
WORTH MAKING: Yes, but put the candy-coated fennel on at the end while serving, not as a mix-in.
Recipe 032: Rhubarb-Custard Ice Cream
Spring farm boxes haves some odd stuff, huh? Later in the year, you get the potatoes and carrots and squash, solid dining vegetables. But early in the year, things are a bit slimmer for pickings. So that’s why we ended up with a bunch of rhubarb.
The recipe for the custard ice cream is a modified version of Melissa Clark’s vanilla ice cream, with the addition of an orange peel steep in the milk, and an extra egg to make it more custard-y.
Rhubarb syrup:
Ingredients:
700 grams chopped rhubarb
700 grams white sugar
Instructions:
Mix the rhubarb and the sugar in a container. Seal and put in fridge overnight.
The next day, drain off the excess watery juice, about a third of a cup in my experience.
In a saucepan, put the rhubarb & sugar and together and heat on medium. Stir as the rhubarb releases more water.
Once water is simmering, turn down heat to low and let simmer for half an hour or so, until the rhubarb bits are mush.
You can mash the berries to help get out the juices, but be careful of drops splattering out and staining things!
Strain out the mash to get a thick syrup.
Re-add the juice to the syrup and mix well.
Rhubarb-custard ice cream:
Ingredients:
Syrup from above (about 2/3 of a cup)
Surface peel from two naval oranges (peel carefully to just get the orange skin, not the white pith inside)
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
2/3 cup white sugar
¼ tsp kosher salt (or 1/8 tsp fine salt)
7 large egg yolks
Instructions:
Put orange peels and milk into a small pot. Bring to boil, then turn off heat and let steep for half an hour to an hour.
Strain to remove peels.
Add milk, cream, sugar and salt to a medium pot, and simmer & stir until sugar is dissolved, about 5 minutes. Turn off heat.
In a separate bowl, whisk the yolks.
Slowly add a third of the heated mix to the yolks, whisking it in.
Heat pot at medium-low and whisk the yolk mixture into the overall mix.
Cook mix until it reaches 170F, checking with the back of a spoon to see if the custard has thickened.
Strain mix to remove any little eggy bits.
Let cool, or put bowl into a large bowl filled with ice water to speed cooling.
Once cool, put into fridge for at least 4 hours.
Once chilled in fridge, churn mix until soft serve thick, about 25 minutes. Put into a chilled container, incorporating rhubarb syrup between scoops.
Freeze overnight.
TASTING NOTES: Puffy and pleasing. I was worried that I hadn’t put in enough of the rhubarb swirl, but it was a good balance between the custard softness and just a bit of the sharp rhubarb.
WORTH MAKING: You know it.
Recipe 033: Cool Ranch Dorito Ice Cream
This one… this one I had been thinking about for a while. The Rice Krispies was a test of the chocolate-coating technology, to keep the chip shards safe and crunchy. The buttermilk was to accentuate the ranch dressing. I thought this could be an incredible thing, I thought it could be a marvel.
What was I thinking?
Doritos cool ranch ice cream w/ buttermilk base:
Ingredients:
2 handfuls of Doritos Cool Ranch chips
About ¼ cup of cool ranch spice mix from The Takeout’s recipe
White chocolate, about 200 grams
2 cups buttermilk
1.25 cups heavy cream
4 tsp corn starch
1.5 oz (3 tbsp) cream cheese, softened
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
2/3 cup white sugar
2 tbsp clear corn syrup
Instructions:
Mix the cornstarch with two tablespoons of the buttermilk in a small bowl, whisking to make a slurry. Set aside.
Whisk cream cheese and salt in a medium bowl until smooth. Set aside.
In a large pot, mix the remaining buttermilk, cream, sugar, and corn syrup over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar and corn syrup. Once the mix gets to a boil, let it boil for four minutes.
Remove pot from heat and whisk in the corn starch slurry.
Return pot to heat, have it reach a boil, and stir until slightly thickened, about 1 minute.
Remove from heat. Carefully pour a bit of mix into the cream cheese bowl, whisking to make sure the cream cheese is melted into the mix, then add the rest of the mix.
Grind one handful of the chips in a spice grinder to as fine a powder as possible, then mix with spice mix.
Add spice & chip mix to the base. Stir to incorporate.
Let cool, or put bowl into a large bowl filled with ice water to speed cooling.
Once cool, put into fridge for at least 4 hours.
Crunch remaining handful of chips to get small pieces suitable for including in the ice cream.
Melt the chocolate, tempering it to get a good shell.
Dip the pieces in the chocolate and spread on a nonstick surface, like a silpat, to harden.
Once chilled in fridge, churn mix until soft serve thick, about 25 minutes.
Scoop into a chilled container, mixing in chocolate-coated chip pieces. Freeze overnight.
TASTING NOTES: Okay. It’s a lot. It’s way cheesier than it was when I tasted the base right after mixing in the spices. Maybe sitting for a bit gave the cheese powder time to bloom in the buttermilk. And speaking of the buttermilk, the sourness is a big problem. Once you get past that though, it fades in a nice way to a mellow spice level. It’s a novelty, but not something where you can eat a bowlful.
WORTH MAKING: Not worth making. But the concept is worth another try…
Thanks for reading, and let me know if you try any of these recipes. Every week I’ll be posting one (or two, or three) more, until we reach….