on where to shove great british tradition...*

i'm gonna lay something on the table here, okay? tennis sucks you guys. it actually just sucks. it is the most repetitive sport in the universe, and surely must have been designed for people with the attention spans of goldfish. i would actually rather watch a game of golf in its entirety, which is mostly just dudes walking up hills in stupid clothes, than watch five minutes of tennis. because it sucks. the only way tennis sucks any more than usual is when it is wimbledon season. suddenly loads of people who don't usually give two craps about tennis are talking about seeds and andy murray, and shitting themselves that it might rain, even though wimbledon courts have lids now, so it wouldn't even matter if it did. granted, working in pubs i am exposed to more of this chatter than most, which may be the cause of my excessive aggravation over it, but seriously, wimbledon sucks.

i know what you're thinking, where's my national pride, and sense of tradition and heritage? whatever. i'm half foreign (that half in question being from the commonwealth and thus having a bit of harboured resentment about colonial rule, perhaps), so that's my get out of jail free card when i'm pointing out how boring our traditions of rich people politely clapping over a ball bouncing back and forth like trained monkeys actually are. what about lemon barley water? a clever advertising tie-in. what about strawberries and cream? oh please. fruit and cream is not something to get all misty eyed about to strains of god save the queen, it's a faux-nostalgic take on british seasonal produce, that the supermarkets exploit year after year to sell their imported fruit at insane prices. unless you grow, or pick your own strawberries, or buy them from a farmer's market, your fruit probably isn't even good enough for jam.

so what am i going to do if a punnet of strawberries and a pot of cream suddenly land in my lap gratis (which they did, this week)? you bet your ass i'm not gonna sit down and eat them as they are in front of wimbledon. i'm gonna flick through my copy of nigel slater's tender vol. II and look for something to do with them that appeals to however i'm feeling kitchenwise at the time (which i did). i've been toying with the idea of ice cream for quite a while now. not least because it is my Favourite Thing Ever In The World. so i found a recipe which the right honourable mr. slater reckons is probably the only ice cream worth making even if you don't have an ice cream maker, and upon seeing how laughably easy it looked, a way to play with free ingredients and learn something rather than caving to Great British Tradition was born:

a strawberry ice for a hot summer's day

strawberries - 450g
caster sugar - 100g
double cream - 300ml

rinse the berries quickly under cold running water and remove their leaves. cut each berry ino three or four slices, then put them in a bowl, sprinkle with the sugar, and set aside for an hour.

lightly whip the cream. you want it to be thick enough to lie in folds rather than stiff enough to stand in peaks. put the strawberries, sugar, and any juice from the bottom of the bowl into a food processor and whiz til smooth, then stir gently into the cream. how thoroughly you blend the two is up to you.

here's mine before it went in the freezer (note, any lumps you may see are pieces of strawberry, i got lazy with the stick blender):

transfer to a freezer box, level the top, cover with a lid or a piece of clingfilm or greasproof and freeze for three or four hours. it is worth checking and occasionally stirring the ice as it freezes, bringing the outside edges into the middle.

remove from the freezer about fifteen to twenty minutes before serving to bring it up to temperature.

and here is what mine looked like (no, i don't own an ice cream scoop, and yes, matching sprinkles were necessary):


so, there we have my first foray into frozen stuff. granted, not as technically advanced as ed's ice cream, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out which pot tosser is the most slapdash where technique comes in, does it? it was good, actually, i was surprised at the texture being so smooth given it was literally just fruit and cream, but honestly i can't imagine a custard base working with strawberries, they're kind of a wimpy flavour at the best of times as far as fruit goes, so the less they have to stand up to, the better. i had stuff to get on with in the kitchen that afternoon so i literally took it out and hand whisked it every 30-45 minutes or so, which might have helped. it was enjoyed while reading my current literature crush, one fyodor dostoevsky, and ignoring my mother talking about wimbledon, which has been a tradition at casa mitchell since i've been old enough to know how to ignore efficiently.

anyway, i'm pretty glad i chose a minimum effort recipe first time round, as it's a pretty good way of bypassing what otherwise may be a massive new-technique avoidance that i'm pretty good at cultivating. now that i know i can avoid come dine with me style rock-solid disasters, i might actually give more complex frozen stuff a go.

*...in the freezer, obviously. minds out of the gutter please guys.