Having totally missed out on the opportunity in summer, it gradually crept up on me that I really wanted an ice cream machine. I seemed to have been around numerous kitchen shops and kitchen sections of John Lewis and Bentalls and thought 'oh, I'll just have a look at the ice cream machines out of curiosity' and so the thought must have begun to ingrain itself on my subconscious. Probably that and more visits to Soho ice cream mecca, Gelupo. Also, I recently had a birthday. One of those where you fleetingly notice it a month or so in advance, then remember it again the week before when people are asking you what you want for it, and are you doing anything for it, but you don't have a clue. The sort where you end up with money to spend and think 'well, now (mid October) is the time to buy an ice cream machine'. So I did.
The other part of the back story relates to the incredibly important decision of what flavour to make first. I don't think it's quite time yet to tackle the Holy Grail of ice creams, pistachio. But I virtually had my mind made up for me the other weekend when I and Esteemed Blogging Partner Kirsty stumbled into Gelupo after an evening's drinking. Wandering round the deli whilst other people bought ice cream, I started grabbing things - some of their guanciale (the piece I cured wasn't nearly enough), some nduja, as well as some pretty incredible nougat and some honeycomb, you know, the sorts of things you don't really need, but if you buy enough results in spending enough to get free ice cream. Which we were already intending on buying. Anyway, I had almond gelato, which I later realised, wondering what to do with the honeycomb whilst eating slabs of honey almond nougat, was what I should make. One of those Things Falling Into Place things that I which happened more often so I could blog about them.
For my previous ice cream making I took one of the recipes from The French Laundry Cookbook, which as I seem to remember used a HELL of a lot of egg yolks. Regular readers of this blog will be well aware of my torment of wanting to cook things which use lots of egg yolks, leaving lots of whites left. There is actually a recipe in Bocca for some amazing pistachio and hazelnut biscuits which use lots of egg whites, but it matters not as there was only one place I was going to look for a recipe this time, and Kenedy's ice cream recipes don't use any eggs at all.
500ml whole milk, plus a little extra
200g blanched almonds, roasted very dark (not burned)
140ml whipping cream
40g glucose syrup or light runny honey
130g caster sugar
40g skimmed milk powder
3g leaf gelatine (1 large or 2 small leaves), or 4 teaspoons agar-agar
½ teaspoon almond extract
Put the milk and almonds in a pan. Heat to 80°C, just before a simmer, and steep at this temperature for 45 minutes. Strain out the almonds, put the milk in a measuring jug and make it back up to 500ml with a little extra milk (the almonds will have absorbed some moisture as they infused).
Return the milk to the pan, adding the cream and glucose or honey. Heat over a low flame and, when steaming, mix together the sugar and skimmed milk powder and add them in a steady stream. When the liquid approaches a simmer, remove it from the heat and add either the gelatine (already bloomed for a few minutes in cold water, then stirred into the mix) or the agar-agar (sprinkled on the top of the hot mixture and left for 5 minutes, then stirred in) and the almond extract. Leave to cool and freeze in an ice-cream machine.
The machine I bought has a built in freezer, so there is no requirement for freezing bowls or anything beforehand, which I guess saves a fair bit of time. The instruction manual says give it 35-45 minutes for soft ice cream, 45-60 for hard ice cream. I wanted it soft, so I gave it 45 minutes, and drizzled some of the Gelupo honey into it in the last 5 minutes. Firstly, the flavour of it is pretty damn good. When I was adding the almond extract a bit more than the half teaspoon dribbled down the side of the bottle and in, so the flavour is slightly more of that than the infused roasted almonds - there's an almost a marzipan like sweetness to it, although the extra sweetness is partly down to adding the honey. Also, the agar flakes hadn't completely dissolved, and so the consistency isn't as delightfully smooth as I'd have liked, but they're small foibles that can be sorted out come the next batch. All in all, from start to finish the whole thing took about 2 and a half hours, and that's taking into account toasting the almonds, 45 minutes of infusing in milk, mixture cooling, and then 45 minutes of freezing/churning time. And once it's in the machine, it could just be left whilst I sat and watched the football. Apparently if the mixture gets too thick before your set time expires it stops itself, clever machine. It's not exactly quiet, but hardly the Destroyer of Peace and Quiet some of the Amazon reviewers made it out to be.
Having said I missed out on summer ice cream making (not that it should ever be a summer only past-time), I've always felt winter was a good time for making ice cream. I think that may stem from the first time I ever made ice cream at Christmas one year, and so in a way this may well have been the most appropriate time of year for it. Added to which I'm harbouring intentions at the moment to make more salami for Christmas, and there's plenty of old ice cream tubs lying around. Given how long that first lot lasted, I may well find myself making ice cream at every given opportunity.
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