We have a
lot of basil in our garden, somehow this year I've managed to grow more of it
than I normally use (there seems to be forever a jar of pesto in the fridge!),
which just means that I've become a bit more creative in how I use it, or (most
of the time) just throw it into dishes more often. It added an extra dimension
to a stir fry of thinly sliced kangaroo (marinated briefly in soy, sambal oelek
and garlic), mushrooms, a red pepper from the garden and jasmine rice - its
stronger aniseed notes went really well with the asian flavours in the wok. It
was such a simple delicious dinner, I'm no longer bound by Italian cooking when
thinking of how to use my basil! I have purple basil as well, but tend to use
the green basil more often purely because I have more of it, it's thrived where
the purple basil has been much more subdued (though its a very pretty addition
to any garden!).
The
creation of a new ice cream flavour follows a pattern in my house. I have full
cream milk and cream in my fridge for some reason (which I dont normally have -
usually hilo and NO cream!), and there will be some pantry items or fruit which
need using. This time I had a lemon, and this worked nicely with the theme for
this months Sweet Adventures Blog Hop being lemons! I assumed there would be
many lemony cakes, curds and tarts so I didn't want to go down that road. Ice
cream it would be! I then had a thought of including basil in with the lemon -
I must have seen it somewhere before and subconsciously remembered it, but I
thought that would be something a little different!
What I
ended up with was a really interesting flavoured ice cream, totally delicious!
You get hints of lemon and basil, but together they almost taste a bit like
spearmint! It was not a sweet ice cream but really refreshing, definitely for
use as a palate cleanser, or a light after dinner treat. I think this would be
fabulous as a sorbet, you could get alot more sharpness of lemon into the mix
then (I was too worried about the mixture curdling - I wasn't keen on making
cheese!).
Heres how I
did it... note that normally I would use more cream, but I ended up having
equal quantities of both. For a creamier ice cream use more, or all cream.
Ingredients
350ml cream
350ml full
fat milk
1/4 cup
sugar
1 egg (or 2
really small ones)
zest of 1
lemon
Tops of 3
or 4 basil bunches
Method
1) Put the
cream, milk, basil and lemon rind into a saucepan to warm up - don't bring to
the boil.
2) Beat the
sugar and egg together until pale and ribbony.
3) Pour a
spoonful of the warm milk/cream mixture into the eggs and incorporate well,
then start pouring the rest in, beating the whole time (you don't want the eggs
to scramble!).
4) With a
slotted spoon, discard the basil and lemon zest, and pour into your ice cream
machine and churn until its thickened. If you want soft serve style ice cream
then serve this now! I found that the mixture was slightly grainy/icy and would
have benefited from being whipped in the mixer, however it was about 11:30pm
and I wasn't feeling like it!
5) Pour into
covered containers and freeze until you're ready to use them!
Its worth noting that, upon speaking to others who make ice cream, it is harder when you get it from the freezer than store bought stuff. You just have to take it out of the freezer 10 minutes before you want to eat it, and not forget about it!
