Thursday, July 15, 2010 Tomato Basil Ice Cream with Goat Cheese Sprinkles

Dessert it is not.

As good as it is, it is equally odd. The herbal vim of the ice cream shines through, followed by the sweet acid of roasted tomato - WTF? It's strange. It's not bad at all, but it is very different than anything I've ever put in my mouth.

Not a dessert, my husband and I decided. I'm thinking sugar cookies rolled in salt will dress it and kick it up enough to define the dish. It's gotta be an appetizer. An amuse bouche. Ha ha ha, never thought I'd use those words.

Here's the recipe...

Roast two large tomatoes, peel and extract juice by lightly pushing the fruit on a sieve. You're going for the juice, not the pulp. Put the juice in the fridge.

Put two cups half and half on medium heat with basil - I pinched 5 tops of basil from the garden. Slowly bring it to a boil, stir to prevent scorching. Then use a blender to extract the most basil flavor.

Put 4 egg yolks in a bowl along with 1/2 cup white sugar and whisk together with a hand blender until pale yellow and thick.

With a ladle in one hand and the hand blender in the other add the hot creme to the egg mixture slowly in a thin stream. You want to raise the temperature of the eggs slowly so you don't scramble them. Once you have added about half of the creme to the eggs you can mix it all together and put it back on the stove at medium heat again.

Cook it all, stirring constantly, until it reaches 170 degrees and coats the back of a spoon.

Remove from heat, add chilled tomato juice and strain into a bowl. Place plastic wrap directly on the custard to prevent a skin from forming and put in the fridge for at least two hours.

Freeze in ice cream freezer. Let it "ripen" - sit in the freezer for a bit - then grate frozen goat cheese into ice cream and mix in.


I'll let you know how the cookies work out. So if you make this before then don't expect dessert, this is better before the meal.

Bang on, my peeps!

-HH