Forever Summer (30 page)

EGG-CUSTARD ICE CREAM

This is vanilla ice cream, but I just wanted to remind you that all it is is frozen custard, paired at its best with a bowl of warm, oven-poached rhubarb (following the rhubarb bit of the
fool
recipe).

500ml full-fat milk

1 vanilla pod

6 egg yolks

125g caster sugar

150ml double cream

Pour the milk into a saucepan. Cut the vanilla pod all down its length and, using the tip of the knife, scrape out the seeds into the milk in the pan. Now add the rest of the pod and bring almost to the boil. Turn off the heat, cover the pan and leave to steep for 20 minutes.

Whisk the yolks and sugar together, remove the pod from the milk and pour the milk into the eggy mixture, whisking as you go. Wash out the milk pan and pour the custard mixture back into the cleaned pan and heat, stirring, for 10 minutes or so until the mixture’s thickened, following all the usual
strictures
. Let cool, stirring every now and again, then chill in the fridge. Just before freezing, whip the cream until thick, but not stiff, and fold it into the custard.
Freeze
as usual.

Serves 6–8.

APPLE ICE CREAM

The inspiration for this comes from Bella Radford, a contestant on
Masterchef
some years back now. It isn’t her recipe, though on my request she did send it to me (which I characteristically and promptly lost) but
hommage
to it. I’d made a rhubarb ice cream for
How to Eat
, and just substituted the one fruit for the other. And in turn, if you want to try any other fruit ices, you can just use this as a blueprint. Eat as it purely, perfectly is, or turn it into an unfamiliarly elegant ice-cream sundae by piling it into a glass and topping with butterscotch sauce, which you make by melting 3 tablespoons of light muscovado sugar, 2 of caster sugar, 50g unsalted butter and 150g golden syrup in a pan over medium heat. When smooth, turn up the heat and let bubble away for 3–5 minutes. Then, off the heat, stir in 125ml single (or double) cream. Add some toasted flaked almonds on top for utter perfection.

1kg cooking apples

100g caster sugar

300ml single cream

3 egg yolks

juice of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon Calvados (optional)

150ml double cream

Peel, core and cut up the apples and put them in a pan with 50g of the sugar and cook till soft. Let cool and purée in a blender or processor then push through a sieve.

Make the
ice cream
as usual by heating the single cream, beating the remaining sugar with the yolks, whisking in the warm cream till a custard is formed, then adding the flavourings (lemon juice and Calvados, if using). Let cool.

Fold in the cold apple purée, whisk the double cream till thick but still soft and fold that in, too, and
freeze
as described.

STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM

There is just something about home-made strawberry ice cream: it’s the taste of blue skies, of sun on your shoulders; an idealised memory of summer in perfect culinary form. If you’re up to it, and I don’t mean by that anything much, as it’s really pretty simple, make some
vanilla shortbread
to go with, but whatever, just make this: even using long-haul imported strawberries in bleakest February, it is sunshine-giving, life-transforming, sensational. (But first, do read the section on general
ice cream
tips.)

500g strawberries

175g caster sugar, plus 2 tablespoons

500ml full-fat milk

500ml double cream

1 vanilla pod

10 egg yolks

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Hull and roughly chop the strawberries, put them into a bowl and sprinkle over the 2 tablespoons of caster sugar and leave them to steep and infuse with flavour.

Pour the milk and cream into a heavy-based saucepan, and add the vanilla pod, split down the middle lengthways. Bring the pan nearly to the boil and then take it off the heat and leave to infuse for 20 minutes.

In a large bowl whisk the egg yolks and the 175g sugar until thick and pale yellow. Take the vanilla pod out of the milk and cream and pour, whisking the while, the warm liquid over the yolks. Put the cleaned-out pan back on the heat with the cream, milk, egg and sugar mixture and stir the custard until it thickens, then take it off the heat and pour it into a bowl to cool.

Purée the strawberries in a processor, and when the custard is cool fold in the lemon juice and strawberry purée.

At this point you can either freeze the ice cream in an ice-cream maker, or in a plastic tub in the freezer. If you do the latter you should remove it from the freezer after an hour and process it again, then put it back into the container for another hour before repeating the
process
, as usual.

Serves 10–12.

REDCURRANT SLUSH SORBET

Just as with ice cream, the glorious thing about home-made sorbet is that you can make flavours you could never buy in a shop. And the texture is so much better, too: smoother, richer, without all that icy brittleness. This sorbet is intentionally slushier still: a sluicing with Cointreau adds an orangey depth and keeps it all from freezing solid.

If you’re not using an ice-cream maker, then just pour the sugary fruit purée into a plastic container and whip it out of the freezer and mush it up in a processor a couple of times while it freezes, following the instructions for machineless
ice-cream making
.

750g redcurrants

500g caster sugar

zest and juice of 1 orange

75ml Cointreau

Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4. Put the redcurrants, stalks and all, into an ovenproof dish and add the sugar and zest and juice of the orange. Cover with foil and put in the oven for about 45 minutes, by which time the fruit will have become soft and pulpy.

Let the fruit cool before pushing the mixture through a mouli, or purée it in a blender or processor. The advantage of a food mill, though, is that it purées and sieves at the same time. A blended or blitzed mixture will have to be pushed through a sieve to remove all the pippy bits. Either way, make sure you use all the syrupy juice the redcurrants have made as well, and then stir in the Cointreau.

Put the sorbet mixture into an ice-cream maker to freeze and then decant this vivid puce slush into an airtight container and keep in the freezer until the actual point of serving.

Serves 6.

PEACH ICE CREAM

This, again, is essence of summer, but you do need to use ripe, luscious, fleshy and sunny-scented fruit. Even so, I find that you get the best, most intense, flavour, from roasting the peaches first. If you’re bowled over by the sheer, unimprovable peachiness of the fruit to hand you can ignore this step, but frankly, although it adds to the length of the whole procedure, sticking the fruit into the oven isn’t exactly a difficult task, so I wouldn’t make an issue out of it.

I am madly in love with crème de pêche (which is so much more peachy than, say, crème de cassis is redcurranty), and keep a bottle to hand to add to this ice cream, or to a glass of prosecco when the mood arises, but it’s not an essential component.

10 ripe yellow-fleshed peaches

6 tablespoons vanilla sugar or ordinary caster

juice of 1 lime

3 tablespoons crème de pêche (optional)

1 x 284ml tub single cream

4 egg yolks

1 x 284ml tub double cream

Preheat the oven to 210°C/gas mark 7.

Halve the peaches, remove the stones, and sit them in a roasting tray, cut side up. Sprinkle half the sugar into the cavities, and then squeeze over the lime and roast for 20–30 minutes until softened and intensified in the heat.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool slightly before slipping the peaches out of their skins and into a food processor (a bit of skin left behind doesn’t matter, however), making sure you catch every last bit of juice which you pour into the bowl of the processor, too, before blitzing to a purée. Transfer to a bowl, adding the crème de peche if you’re using it, and leave to cool entirely while you get on with the custard.

So: in the
usual way
, heat the single cream in a pan, beat the yolks and remaining sugar in a bowl and, while whisking, pour over the warmed cream. Make the
custard
in the normal way, and when it’s completely cold, stir in the peach purée and then whip the double cream until thick and fold this in, too.

Freeze following all the
usual instructions
.

RASPBERRY RIPPLE ICE CREAM

Do not think of this in the same breath as the factory-made, whale-blubbered and artificially flavoured stuff. It’s not even related. In fact, of all home-made ice creams, this is probably the most amazing: for the truth is, you cannot help but call to mind the vile (for most of us) original; this knocks you off your feet. It’s like ice cream is meant to be, but so rarely is. It’s what you want your childhood to have tasted of.

I should admit that the first time I made it, I got the ripple bit wrong (I tried to swirl it in for a minute in the machine rather than stippling by hand so all went pale pink and the definition was lost) but it still tasted like a reward for being placed on this earth.

If you don’t want to fiddle about with the rippling, double the ingredients for the raspberry element, chill it in the fridge rather than freezing it and serve it dribbled over scoops of ice cream in bowls rather than veined through it. And trust me with the balsamic vinegar: it may not be traditional, but it really works.

600ml single cream

6 egg yolks

200g caster sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

125g raspberries

1 and a half teaspoons best-quality, syrupy balsamic vinegar

Fill the sink half full with cold water in the normal, or that’s to say, advised,
way
.

Heat the cream till nearly boiling. Whisk the yolks and 150g of the sugar, and pour, still whisking, the warmed cream over. Transfer to a saucepan and cook till a velvety custard. When it has thickened, take it off the heat, add the vanilla, then cool before chilling and freezing in the ice-cream machine (or see
manual tips
).

While the ice cream’s freezing, put the raspberries, remaining sugar and the balsamic vinegar in the processor and purée, then push through a nylon sieve to remove the pips (or just purée and depip at the same time by using a food mill). Then pour into a small, airtight container and stick it into the freezer to thicken but not to set hard.

When the ice cream’s frozen, but not solid, put a third of it into a container and then dribble over a third of the semi-frozen, raspberry syrup, and repeat with another two layers of each. Take a wooden skewer and squiggle through so that the syrup ripples through the ice cream. Cover and put in the deep freeze till set.

Serves 6–8.

GOOSEBERRY AND ELDERFLOWER ICE CREAM

This is June in idealised gastro-form. Don’t make me go on: words just cloud the issue. But know only that one mouthful of this, with its combination of tart fruit, floral syrup and egg-rich cream, makes you feel as you’ve been transported to a purer, better age. Eat and weep.

500g gooseberries

125ml elderflower cordial

2 tablespoons water

300ml single cream

100g caster sugar

3 egg yolks

300ml double cream, whipped

Put the gooseberries, elderflower cordial and water into a pan and cook, stirring every now and again, till the fruit has burst into mushiness. Take off the heat and when it’s cooled down a little, purée either in a processor or blender, or just with a fork. Whatever: you don’t want a super-smooth mixture here; a bit of texture is a good thing.