I made the ice cream with my now-favorite custard base of eight egg yolks; five cups of dairy (equal portions of heavy cream and half-and-half); one cup of sugar; and a pinch of salt. Before assembling the custard, I heated the cream in a saucepan with twenty-five green cardamom pods (cardamom is a member of the ginger family, don't you know), which I'd smushed to smithereens with my big knife.
I allowed the mixture to steep and aromaticize while I went and had a good gossip at the hairdressers', as one is wont to do.
When I returned home, freshly-coiffed and up-to-date on the latest news, I heated the dairy to near-boiling; whipped the egg yolks with the sugar; dribbled the cream through a strainer onto them; and reheated (stirring constantly!) the custard to 170 deg F. I cooled the mixture quickly in an ice-filled bowl and refrigerated it over night.
The next day before work I brought another saucepan of water to the boil and dropped in one cup of shelled, unsalted pistachios. I blanched them for one minute to prepare them for skinning, a task that took far longer than anticipated. Sir - eager to help and sensing my mounting alarm - attempted to assist, but his notorious color-blindness rendered him unable to tell the difference between the undesirable brown seed-coats and the merrily-green nuts underneath. I excused him and labored on by my lonesome. The job took a full twenty-five minutes of my life (minutes that I will never get back, I am compelled to point out) plus I was late for work.
Lesson learned. Nuts take time.
After my workaday duties were complete I roared home in my trusty silver Element and retrieved my new ice cream bowl from the freezer. I considered my custard and decided it was too-too vanilla-looking - so I added a drop of green coloring, just to be whimsical. After all, one doesn't want to take ice cream too seriously, does one?
Into the bowl for churning! A few minutes before I adjudged the dessert to be sufficiently frozen I added the chopped pistachios. A few hours in the cold-chest and I had delicious ice cream with the texture of frozen nougat and an indefinably exotic aroma.
But since I didn't want to get too high-falutin', I also made marshmallow sauce to pour over the top. Indian spice met The Spot in the final result - and I didn't even have to leave the comfort of my own kitchen.
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| Pistachio and cardamom ice cream with home-made marshmallow sauce |
Marshmallow Sauce (from the big green Gourmet cookbook)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tblsp light corn syrup
a pinch of salt
1/4 plus 1/3 cup cold water
1/2 tsp unflavored gelatin
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Bring the sugar, corn syrup, salt and 1/4 cup of water to a boil, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Continue boiling without stirring until you reach 260 deg F.
Meanwhile, sprinkle the gelatin over the remaining 1/3 cup of water and let soften for a minute.
When the sugar syrup reaches its required temperature, carefully beat it into the gelatin.
Whip madly with your electric mixer until the mixture is cool, tripled in volume, white, and very thick - about 10 minutes.
Beat in the vanilla.
Refrigerate, uncovered, for an hour then cover and keep refrigerated for up to a month. It's great over ice cream and awesome straight off a spoon. Or so I've heard.
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