One of The New York Times’s “Best Cookbooks of Spring 2019” • “Too often, ice cream is forgotten in the conversation about seasonal and sustainable cooking. Kitty Travers reminds us of the importance of both in her beautiful exploration of ice creams, sorbets, and gelatos.”—Alice Waters
Craft ice creams are all the rage, with new indie producers breaking the rules by creating unusual, exceptionally delicious flavor combinations. Kitty Travers, the creator of the beloved London-based brand La Grotta Ices, is changing our expectations when it comes to these cravable cold treats.
The ice creams, sorbets, and granitas featured in La Grotta are fruit-focused—the best produce goes into the ice cream and sorbet bases to ensure the purest taste of the fruit shines through. And when combined with unexpected herbs and other mix-ins, the results are eye-opening:
• Rhubarb and Angelica
• Guava and Lemon Leaf
• White Grapefruit and Pale Ale
• Tomato and White Peach
• Raspberry and Sage
• Chocolate and Caper
Featuring 85 photographs in a stunning design, the recipes in La Grotta will utterly surprise and inspire home cooks to explore homemade ice cream in delightful new ways.
Note—Features pages are listed in italics.
Ice cream was not so hot when I was growing up. It was usually
limited to the summertime treat of a 9 pence orange Sparkle (a uorescent ice
pop) in the park after school, or the occasional slice of a supermarket’s
economy sticky yellow vanilla brick (a rectangular length of ice cream wrapped
in cardboard). This would melt and refreeze over the course of being served
from its damp box, and turn into a curious foamy gum. But I still loved it.
As a teenager
living at home in suburban Twickenham my favorite cookbook was Cuisine
of the Sunby Roger Vergé, an inheritance
from my godmother (and one half of the Two Fat Ladies), Jennifer Patterson. The
recipes in it demonstrate the use of simple harmonies to enhance the avor of
each ingredient, while still allowing the beautiful, natural produce of
Provence to shine. Vergé called it “cuisine heureuse.” It left me pining for
something brighter than the supermarket foods I’d grown up with… something
transportive and sun-kissed.
It was a
relief to leave school, which I hated and had only a string of failed A levels
to show for. I went to art school and, to pay the bills, got a job at age 18
working as a greengrocer on the forecourt of the Bluebird Garage on the King’s
Road. I spent a lot of time spraying arugula with an atomizer, while the real
work was done by Alf. He arrived early from the market in Milan with a van full
of beautiful fruits and vegetables, from moonlight-yellow pears wrapped in
inky, indigo sugar paper to bunches of dusky black grapes tied with shiny lilac
orist ribbon.
I dropped out
of art school and spent the summer of 2000 in Marseille instead. On my return
to London I read a newspaper article about a man called Lionel Poilâne who was
opening a bakery in London to make this stuff called sourdough bread. I got the
bus straight over to the Pimlico shop to
nd the doors
wide open and the shop still being built, with Monsieur
Poilâne overseeing the installation of a vast brick oven. I was
emboldened after my summer speaking French and introduced myself to him,
winning myself the position of Poilâne’s
rst (and—for some years—only) British shop girl.
Paris
It was a hard sell at the beginning, with the bread at an
eye-watering £5.90 per loaf. People would come in asking if we made sandwiches
or sausage rolls or pies, and we had to try and encourage them to taste the
bread: the miraculous avor of its crackling crust a result of the magic that
can be achieved from just a few essential ingredients: our, water, and salt. I
worked as an assistant at the London shop and spent some time at the Paris
branch. In Paris I lived in a room above the bakery itself, and the smell of
those huge burnished loaves of sourdough bread baking in the ancient brick
ovens got me out of bed to work at 5:30 every morning. But although I loved
that company, and the chewy crust of that bread, I was looking for something
else.
Each morning
during the spring of 2001 as I got ready for work I had the telly on in the
background. It was screening live segments from the Cannes Film Festival. A
clip showed pop stars singing on the beach and their hair looked really shiny.
It seemed glamorous and appealing. Then I remembered that Roger Vergé, author
of my favorite cookbook, had a restaurant and cooking school in Cannes.
Poilâne was
friends with Vergé and when I handed in my notice and bought a one-way ticket
to Nice, he handed me a personal letter of recommendation to give to him. He
asked Vergé to take care of me and wrote that I sold bread “as though I were
selling diamonds.” I still have that letter in a suitcase, because pathetically
I was too shy to give it to Mr. Vergé. I didn’t have the con dence to work in a real kitchen. But I
couldn’t face going home, and so instead I took a waitressing job at a
beachfront hotel, and started a new career as Cannes’ worst waitress.
Cannes
It was incredibly unglamorous. I worked 16-hour shifts in tennis
shoes, nude tights, and a pleated aertex miniskirt. But that was when I found
an ice cream shop—a little glacièrewith tinted glass windows and green leather
banquettes just off the Croissette—and began a daily ritual. After a swim in
the sea and before work, I would eat ice cream sundaes for breakfast.
The menu
board changed daily and the avors dazzled me: cerise, abricot, cassis,
groseille, saffran,and calisson. It was nothing like ice cream in the UK. I was
astonished by the texture and how they captured the fresh taste of an
ingredient in a frozen scoop. I puzzled over how it was made, and the ice cream
seed was planted.
On my days
off I took the train along the coast to Italy. Ice cream specialities in
Piedmonte were hazelnut, coffee, and latte Alpina—even violet Pinguino’s(choc ices)—and in Liguria, green lemon and
bergamot. People seemed to go for an ice cream and a walk the way we in the UK
go to the pub. I walked and walked, discovering markets and eating ice creams.
Back home
that winter, working another stopgap deli job, I read The
Man Who Ate Everythingby Jeffrey Steingarten. My
favorite chapter was “The Mother of All Ice Cream,” about his search for the
best gelato in the world. I had a plan. Summoning the help of all the Italians
working in my deli, I wrote letters to every place mentioned in the book. I
attached my CV and asked to be given a chance to apprentice and learn the art
of making ice cream. I posted the applications and waited patiently. I didn’t
get a single reply.
New York
There was nowhere in the UK in which you could learn ice cream
making back then. But in 2002, I inherited a generous sum of money from my
grandmother. After sitting on it for some time, I decided to enroll in a proper
chef diploma course…in New York. I feebly hoped that afterward I might be able
to get work experience for Jeffrey Steingarten.
What I didn’t
expect was what happened at culinary school; I loved every second of it, and
for the rst time in my life I started
doing well at something. My head teacher—Chef Ted—said he’d pay thirty bucks at
Daniel’s to eat my coconut ice cream. I still remember the feeling of my skin
stinging as it ushed pink with happiness.
The
creativity and energy of what I experienced food-wise in New York wasn’t tied
to the old European traditions we still hang on to in Britain. There was such
positivity and invention! I snipped an article out of the New
York Timeslisting the city’s best ice
creams, from pumpkin at Ciao Bella to lychee and red bean at the Chinatown Ice
Cream Factory; when my course
nished I went
to “stage” (work for free) at my favorite of them all: Otto Enoteca, a pizza
and gelato joint that was already famous for its olive oil gelato with sea salt
and strawberries. This was really something. The head pastry chef at Otto was a
curly-haired, bandanna-wearing, old school New Yorker called Meredith Kurtzman.
She had a sensitivity for putting avors together that was original but never
sensationalist, and was scrupulous about the pure taste of the ingredients
shining through. I was happiest when I was sent to Union Square Greenmarket on
Monday and Wednesday mornings to buy ingredients. My heart was bursting with
pride to be walking the streets of New York in my clean chef ’s whites, and to
feel part of that city. It was late autumn and I would come back to the
restaurant with crates of pecan nuts, pumpkin, fresh corn, and Concord grapes
and tins of Grade 3 maple syrup, all to be spun into delicious ice creams.
New York was
still swelteringly hot, and at the end of the day I’d ll a container with house-made granita in
tart berry avors. The bar would top it up with soda water and a straw, and,
sipping it slowly, I’d make my way home to the tiny East Village studio I
shared with a small mouse and a quite large cockroach.
I would have
stayed if I could, but my visa was about to end. So I spent my remaining few
free days doing stages. One was at Prune. Gabrielle Hamilton was another
dazzler. She approved of my apartment having no aircon, and told me not to be
afraid of the heat when I was given the task of grilling bream one service;
instead, she said I should get closer to the
ery ames. Most important, she told me a new kind of restaurant had
opened in London: St. John Bread & Wine. She said I should go back and get
a job with Fergus Henderson.
London
It was 11 a.m. and the tables in the dining room at St. John had
been pulled together and laid for staff lunch. In the open kitchen trays of
fat, pink freshly boiled Scottish langoustines lay steaming by open windows
while Justin the baker was setting warm caraway seed and buttery eccles cakes
out on the counter.
I was allowed
to stage that day, and at the end of it was offered the job of pastry chef. In
all I spent ve years working for
Fergus at St. John Bread & Wine and then for his wife, Margot, at the
Rochelle Canteen. It was the greatest happiness I had known up to that point.
All us chefs were utterly devoted to Fergus and Justin and worked incredibly
hard for them. But what was special about St. John was its humanity. It wasn’t assumed
that you had to suffer to create beautiful food. Or contort the ingredients.
Dishes were presented simply to highlight the beauty of the ingredient (they
were mostly British) and not the ego of the chef. It was unprecedented and
brave at a time when most cooking in the UK was looking outward for
inspiration. A revelation for me was receiving a tray of Kentish strawberries
one day in the
rst week of
June. Small and fragrant and rosy red all the way through like sweeties, they
seemed miraculous.
The very rst ice cream I made at St. John was fresh
mint. I peeped across the kitchen to the dining room, and watched with delight
as the lady who had ordered it paused, looked down at her bowl with surprise,
and smiled.
Meanwhile,
every holiday I had I went to Italy, making my way to each gelateria mentioned
in Jeffrey Steingarten’s old essay—on returning to St. John I was able to test
out new recipes from what I’d learned.
Sicily, Rome, Naples
Backpacking with my sister in Sicily one summer, I ended up eating
tangerine sorbet in Caffé Sicilia in Noto, and asking the waiter questions
about how it was made. He told me that years before, they had had a funny
letter from an English girl asking about their ice creams. I was taken into the
kitchen and there was my old letter pinned to the wall, complete with passport
photo. The elderly owner of the café came out to talk to me. He showed me
around the kitchen, giving me a piece of marzipan to taste made from almonds
from neighboring Avola and a lumpy lemon. He communicated that
although he was sympathetic, I could never learn how to make ice
cream like an Italian—we couldn’t have the same understanding of ingredients,
because he had been making it since he was “cosi!”…and gestured to knee height.
Well, there’s
nothing like being told you can’t do something to spur you on. I decided then
and there that I wanted to make ice cream with the same skill and understanding
that this man had. But, instead of trying to copy what Italians do so well
already, I would try to do my own thing—something relevant to the place I came
from—and make it perfect.
I left St.
John to set up La Grotta Ices and spent a few months cheffing for Margot
Henderson and Melanie Arnold while I saved up to buy my ice cream van. One morning
while I was chopping beets (wrongly, as Margot pointed out, “Argh…No! You gotta
still be able to see the SHAPE of the beet!”), Margot mentioned that the night
before she had been sitting next to Alice Waters (the pioneering
chef-restaurateur and force behind the sustainable food movement in California)
at a fund-raising dinner. Alice had recently founded a kitchen at the American
Academy in Rome where they hoped to feed the community of the academy using
locally grown, seasonal organic produce. They needed volunteers. I sent a
postcard to Alice at her restaurant Chez Panisse and waited. Six months later,
I was on a night train to Rome, where I lived and worked for a winter, before
returning to making ices again in the spring.
Working
abroad during the off season became an annual habit. The winter after that I
moved to Naples. I pictured myself renting a charming room in a crumbling villa
and topping up my winter tan on a balcony cascading with lemons. I’d nd a job, shop in the market every day, eat ice
cream, and maybe I’d try to write, too.
What I
discovered when I got there (apart from the fact that it was freezing cold and
rained almost every day for three months) was that this situation doesn’t
really exist in Naples. There are no ats to rent for single professionals.
Single people live at home with their families until they get married…and then
they stay living at home some more. Instead, I took a long-term lease on a room
in a B&B. Living with a depressed (he ate a LOT of Nutella) 19-year-old boy
and his pet chinchilla was not what I’d had in mind, but never mind—I pounded
the streets of Naples for hours each day, eating pizza frittaand sfogliatelle,and tried to look for work.
In Naples I
worked at two restaurants. A chef friend in London had tipped me off about
somewhere he’d had a good meal, so I went there rst. The two women running the kitchen
looked at me with deep suspicion and asked what the hell I thought I was doing.
Didn’t I know there was a crisis in Italy? There wasn’t enough work for
Italians, let alone foreigners. Plus I towered over both of them and was too
big for the kitchen. Nevertheless, I could come a few evenings a week and do
work experience if I wanted to learn. It was pretty terrifying. Rita and Nuncia
used to ght with each other like
wildcats—occasionally breaking off to complain that I was rolling the rice
balls too slowly—and would then attack one another again and have to be dragged
apart by the always-amused head waiter. Sometimes I’d catch Rita looking me slowly
up and down…“L’altezza è mezza bellezza”(half of beauty is height), she would mutter
bitterly before turning away with a sigh.
I managed to
get another day job, but the only place that would take me was a trendy modern
restaurant where the owner was a bit of a celebrity and the food sucked—the
pasta was gluey, and the sh was vacuum
packed and sous-vided to obliteration.
Nevertheless,
Naples was good. Piaggio Ape’s served as impromptu market stalls all over town,
piled high with artichokes that I gorged on—3 euros for a bunch of ten. Coffee
everywhere was dementedly good and thick, as only the rst oil-rich drips made it into your
drink—the scalding hot cup was whisked away leaving the rest of the coffee to
pour away into the drain. I would picture the underground pipes of Naples owing
with espresso.
La Grotta Ices
Now I am the happy owner of La Grotta Ices, nally established in 2008. The name comes
from the Italian for “cave” or “grotto,” and it was named as such in homage to
the rst cool, dark ice cream shop that
I discovered working in Cannes, and which set me off on my journey.
At rst the ice creams were made at home, with
two freezers in a bedroom, then under a damp brick railway arch in Bermondsey.
Since 2009,
they have been created in my workshop or “ice cream shed,” a
converted Victorian greengrocer in a beautiful historical south London square.
The La Grotta
Ices range changes weekly. My intent is to create inventive, not-too-sweet ice
creams that capture the bright avor of exquisite, ripe fruit but with a
supernaturally light, smooth, and sublime texture. The focus is on using
minimally processed, fresh, whole ingredients and using the con nes of the seasons and simple methods to do
so. Ices are sold from the back of a small white Piaggio Ape—the same vehicle
used to sell fruits and vegetables in Neapolitan markets.
La Grotta
runs from April to December. I sell scoops at markets and art fairs, and tubs
in shops around London, and in between that teach a longestablished class in
ice cream making at the award-winning School of Artisan Foods in
Nottinghamshire. For the rst three
months of the year—when it’s too cold to sell ice cream (it doesn’t melt in the
mouth properly at temperatures below 57°F)—I continue to work abroad.
What’s the
Difference Between Ice Cream
and Gelato?
It is a question that tormented me for many years. And that many
people ask me. The literal answer is that gelato is just the Italian word for
ice cream…but here’s what most people will also explain:
1. Gelato is made with mostly milk and rarely contains egg yolks
(ice cream is generally custard-based). Gelato is consequently lower in fat.
2. Gelato is churned more slowly than ice cream, which means it
incorporates less air into the mix and is a denser, smoother product compared
to ice cream. Less air means that the avor of the gelato is more concentrated.
3. Gelato is served at a higher temperature than ice cream so that
it has a soft texture and can be scooped easily.
What you will never hear anyone (particularly gelato makers)
explain is just how they create all of these wonderful attributes. It’s as
though it happened by magic!
In most
cases, gelato compensates for the lower fat and less air by adding commercially
used ingredients less familiar to the home cook. Dry milk powder (milk solids)
adds richness and body to the gelato, making the texture seem creamier and more
dense. This is because although it is fatfree, it is high in milk proteins.
Sugars like glucose, dextrose, and trimoline allow the gelato to stay soft and
scoopable as though freshly churned, but because they don’t have the sweetness
of saccharose (sugar), the gelato doesn’t taste as sweet. They also help
prevent crystallization, which keeps the gelato smooth.
I choose not
to use either in my ice creams for a few reasons. First, dry milk powder has a
“cooked” taste that interrupts the sweet, pure avor of fresh cream and milk.
Likewise, glucose, dextrose, and trimoline tend to coat your tongue. Sugar is
much “cleaner” tasting and allows the other avors to shine. But there are other
issues to consider apart from taste. Dry milk powder contains roughly 50
percent lactose compared with fresh whole milk, which is 4.8 percent. Skimmed
milk powder is a prevalent ingredient in many processed foods, and as people
are consuming lactose in much higher quantities than we used to, it wouldn’t be
surprising to me if this turned out to be one of the causes of lactose
intolerance.
The perfect balance
You don’t have to use mysterious powders to make great ice cream.
The foundations of a perfect scoop are based on having the right quantity of
water, sugar, fat, solids (proteins), and emulsi er in a recipe, all of which are found in
milk, cream, and fresh eggs. Whole fruits add body. These ingredients need to
be frozen quickly while being stirred/churned. This incorporates some air (to
keep the ice cream light) and ensures the ice crystals are as small and even as
possible (to keep the ice cream smooth).
Ice cream
recipes have to be perfectly balanced to work. If you remove one element—like
the fat—for example, your ice cream will suffer and lose “body,” becoming thin
and watery. Likewise, if you take away the sugar, your
recipe will freeze into a hard icy block and be impossible to
scoop. A wellbalanced recipe will stand you in good stead.
How to Use This Book
I now have 13 years’ worth of crispy-edged, custard-splattered
recipe notebooks (and counting) in which I’ve recorded all my ice cream making
attempts. The early books are experimental—recipes I tried once or twice and
didn’t go back to. Throughout the middle ones you start to recognize the
favorites that I return to, making small changes and adjustments with each more
recent version. This book contains all the recipes that made it into the most
recent notebook—the core favorites. They have been honed and edited to leave
only those that work and are delicious, ones that I look forward to returning
to year after year.
The order in
which the recipes have been printed follows the spectrum of ices make
throughout the year. The “menu” is constantly changing as ingredients come in
and go out of season. You can dip in and out of the book as you like, but if
you use it as a seasonal guide you will
nd fruits that are more likely to be ripe, which means they taste good
and are at their best value.
The book
begins in January, mid-winter, a dry time for locally grown produce and a time
when I welcome piercingly bright citrus fruits into my kitchen. Amal lemons, leafy navel oranges, and bergamot
from Italy come into season now, followed by sweet and sour kumquats and the
extraordinary blood orange with its pitted peel heavy with rich oils and its
volcanic strawberry-avored tangy esh—it’s exciting! In February, I give in to
the lure of dazzling tropical fruits from overseas. The vivid colors and potent
avors of pineapple, passion fruit, papaya, lime, and mango bring energy to
this somewhat bleak time of year.
Early spring
ice creams employ the use of bracing kiwi, earthy rhubarb, confetti-like rice,
peach leaves, and delicate scented blossoms like mimosa
and clover. In late May, expect the rst cherries from the South of France and
the Gariguette strawberry from Brittany. British strawberries should be ripe
and red all the way through by June and are swiftly followed by softskinned
stone fruits: at white peaches, apricots, and nectarines.
By mid-summer
my ice cream scooping freezer displays a gorgeous selection of pinks, reds, and
purples: custards and water ices stained from juicy berries, blackcurrants, and
pêche de vigne.
Autumn is a
rich time for grapes, gs, melons, and
plums. Then later on, apple, pear, and quince make fragrant ice creams—perfect
for serving alongside a slice of fruit pie as the temperature drops and the air
becomes fresher. Fresh fruits are less available come November and so I turn to
richer avorings to use in ice creams—chestnuts, almonds, pine nuts, pistachio,
malt, dried fruits, and warm butterscotch. To celebrate the year coming to a
close the recipes become more festive—ricotta with candied fruit peel,
Barbadian rum custard, and also clementine and spiced lime sorbets.
My recipes
are less sweet and have a slightly lower fat content compared to “super
premium” ice cream. The reason for this is that I like the avors to be bright
and not too inhibited by heavy cream and sugar. In my opinion, they are the
perfect balance of fresh fruit, milk, cream, and sugar—rich and satisfying,
with a good body and “mouthfeel.” This does mean, though, that it’s a good idea
to place the ice cream in the fridge for 10 minutes before serving, to make it
more scoop-able. If you prefer a richer-tasting ice cream, you can swap the
amount of milk for half-and-half in each recipe to no detriment.
Ingredients
One thing about not using the more commercially used ice cream
ingredients at La Grotta Ices (such as dry milk powder/glucose/dextrose) is
that the home cook can make exactly the same recipes that I make. Recipes have
been scaled down to domestic size and can be replicated at home with the same
success. Teaching my regular ice cream making classes at the
School of Artisan Food over the past seven years gives me a chance
to test them out!
If you feel
the same way about minimally processed ingredients, you can start by choosing
good dairy, like organic heavy cream and milk from trustworthy sources that
support the dairy industry. Buy good eggs, freerange at least, please, because
factory farming is gross. Large ones work best for these recipes. I like using
Turbinado sugar (you only need super ne
sugar for cake-making, though you can use it if you prefer) as it lends a
delicious rounded depth to the ice cream and is unre ned. Unless otherwise stated, all the
recipes in this book use unre ned
granulated.
In an ideal
world you might use fruit you’ve either grown or picked yourself. Failing that,
I recommend shopping at farmers’ markets or ethnic markets (where the produce
is often cheap and ripe), or buying from independent shops who care about
sourcing the good stuff. Picking your own from fruit farms gives you an
opportunity to nd harder-to-source
ingredients like blackcurrant and peach leaves. Ask rst but it’s really unlikely anybody would
miss a few leaves. Give fruit a good sniff before buying it and choose that
with the best perfume. Fruits will always taste best and be sweetest when
they’re in season and this is important when using them for ice cream, as you
want the avor to be strong and bright.
Some
ingredients might be difficult to come by—like mulberries. But the point isn’t
that this is something you can have whenever you want…it’s a treat to make
perhaps just once a year when you nd
that special cache— and remember it for the rest of the year.
If a recipe
doesn’t require using an entire fruit (say you’ve bought a really big pineapple)
then use the part from the ower end
rst. Most fruits (except berries, which are uniformly sweet) have a ower
end where the blossom used to grow, and a stem end where the fruit attached to
a branch. The ower end is always the sweetest part and will make your ice
cream or sorbet taste as good as it can. Test this out the next time you eat an
apple!
Unless you
live in a place where you get gluts of ripe fruit, good ingredients are
expensive, so be economical wherever possible to maximize their use. Unwaxed
citrus peels can be used for candying; lemon and clementine leaves can be
steeped in sugar syrup and used to add an extra dimension to sorbet and
granita. After sieving berries you can use the seeds
to make “pip juice.” Just mix them in a jug with cold water and
chill in the fridge overnight before straining the next day and—ta-daa!—a
gem-colored free fruit squash! Likewise, if you are able to pick your own
fruits, infusing ice cream bases with peach,
g, or blackcurrant leaves or fresh herbs makes a simple ice into
something unique and extraordinary and impossible to replicate in a shop-bought
product. Ice cream is a great carrier of avor, so have fun experimenting—just
Google to check whether it’s safe to eat
rst! (I once had to pour gallons of precious lily-of-the-valley-avored
ice cream down the drain after I discovered I’d infused the custard with
poison.)
Vanilla pods
also are such an extraordinary ingredient—derived from an orchid—and expensive,
too. It’s crazy not to get the most use out of them possible. Split pods
lengthwise to scrape the seeds out, then add both pod and seeds to the milk as
it’s heating. Once the custard is aged, scoop out the pod, rinse in cold water,
and leave to dry for a day. The pods can then be kept in a sugar jar for a few
weeks to avor your baking sugar. I hear you yawning…but at this point, you can
advance vanilla thriftiness to another level: remove the brittle sugary pods
and poke them into a three-quartersfull bottle of cheap vodka—the cheapest you
like. Every time you use a vanilla pod, add it to the bottle until you can’t
squeeze any more in. At this point, write the date on the bottle and hide it
somewhere for six months. When you look at it again it will have become a
half-gallon of viscous black vanilla extract. Not for vodka shots, but perfect
for any recipe that calls for vanilla extract and at a fraction of the cost of
the shop-bought stuff.
Methods
Wash fruits (unless speci
ed not to) in a sink full of clean, cold water then place on clean dish
towels to dry.
In ice cream
recipes where the fruits are to be used fresh and raw, I almost always
recommend macerating them in a mixture of sugar and lemon juice. This draws
color and avor from their skins and intensi
es their avor. Cooked fruit also intensi es in color after some resting time in the
fridge. Both parts of the recipe, the fruit and custard, should be the same
cold
temperature when they are mixed together before churning. This
helps to preserve the bright color of the ice cream and avoids the possibility
of the custard splitting, which can easily happen otherwise because of the
fruit’s natural acidity.
When making
sugar syrups, there is no need to weigh out your sugar and water separately.
Remember that cups and ounces are interchangeable when it comes to water—so
just weigh your sugar, then add the water to the same bowl or pan until it
reaches the desired weight.
Tempering
refers to mixing the uncooked egg yolks and sugar together, before slowly
adding the hot milk and cream in a way that avoids scrambling the eggs. To do
this, mix the yolks and sugar together with a whisk, and then pour most of the
hot dairy liquid over them in a slow stream, whisking constantly. Leave a
little milk at the bottom of the pan each time to prevent the base of the pan
from scorching. Whisk well to dissolve the sugar and any lumps of yolk, then
pour the mix back into the same pan and cook out over low heat to 82°C/180°F,
stirring constantly to make the custard.
Take care not
to mix the sugar and yolks together too early on; only do this once the milk
and cream are hot and steamy. Sugar (and salt) both have the effect of setting
the proteins in the egg yolks and will make hard yellow lumps in your custard
if they sit together for too long rst.
The ice cream
base (or custard) should be cooked to 82°C/180°F in every recipe where dairy or
egg yolks are used. This is called pasteurization and the reasons behind it are
twofold: rst, the custard base only
thickens at 80°C/176°F (this is the stage when most recipe books refer to the
custard as being able to “coat the back of a spoon”) and this makes your base
much silkier and richer in texture compared to an uncooked one. Second, it
ensures that if there happen to be harmful bacteria in the dairy or eggs—
unlikely nowadays, but still possible—they will be killed off at this
temperature. There’s no point trying to guess this stage when digital
thermometers are inexpensive and provide a quick, efficient way of monitoring
the temperature. The custard should be stirred constantly as it heats up,
otherwise the mixture may scorch or overcook in the corners of the pan,
scrambling the eggs. Use a heatproof silicone spatula to do this so that it
gets into the corners, or a heart-spring whisk rather than an old wooden spoon
(which have a tendency to smell like bolognese sauce—at
least mine do). Keep a close eye on the pan and never let the mix
boil, as this will also split the custard.
Use a
heavy-based, non-reactive pan made from stainless steel to cook your custards,
and for when you cook fruit. Other metals like aluminium may react to the acids
in the fruit, causing discoloration and a “tinny” avor. A heavy base means the
custard will cook more evenly and is less likely to scorch.
Cooling the
custard back down to room temperature so you can get it into the fridge as
quickly as possible is just as important as pasteurization to ensure it is safe
to eat. The best way to do this is by placing the pan of hot custard in an ice
water bath and stirring every few minutes until it cools. This simply
means lling a sink or large container
with cold water and ice cubes or ice packs. Carefully place the pan upright in
the water, making sure that the water level is equal to the level of ice cream
base inside—too high and the pan could upturn and too little and it will not
cool the mix efficiently. Stir the ice cream base occasionally and once it
reaches room temperature, remove from the water bath, cover, and chill in the
fridge.
Aging the ice
cream base means refrigerating it at 4°C/39°F for at least 4 hours, or
preferably overnight. This stage is not absolutely necessary if you are short
of time, but I highly recommend it as it produces dramatically better results.
Time in the fridge allows the fat molecules to mingle and bond with the water
molecules in the recipe. This makes the aged custard mix taste fuller, rounder,
and creamier. The ice cream will also hold its shape and have better structure
once scooped—making it less “drippy.” In any case, the mix should always be
fridge-cold before churning, otherwise your ice cream machine will have to work
harder to cool it down and it may not freeze sufficiently. There is no need to
age sorbet mixes, but these should be chilled before churning.
I like to add
the chilled fruit and custard together then liquidize them really well before
sieving the mix, to produce a perfectly smooth fakelooking but really delicious
highly aerated soft serve-style result. You can use a stick (or “immersion”)
blender to do this, or a Vitamix or NutriBullet works brilliantly if you have
one, but otherwise a standard upright blender will do the trick. Pour the
blended mix into a ne-mesh sieve or
chinois (cone-shaped sieve) then use the back of a small ladle to push it
through
with a plunging action. It might sound fussy to specify what type
of sieve to use, but this tip is a chefs’ favorite and takes seconds. It is
much more efficient than standing around trying to push purée through with a
spoon or spatula. The sieved mix can then be poured straight into your ice
cream machine and churned.
Aside from
the granita, which is still frozen in a freezer, the best way of making the
recipes in this book—if you don’t have an ice cream machine—is to go out and
buy an ice cream machine! They can be bought really cheaply nowadays and will
produce a smoother, less icy result than trying to freeze the ice cream
yourself.
If you insist
on making ice cream without a machine, you can freeze the mixture in a big
bowl. After 45 minutes, take it out from the freezer and whisk vigorously. Do
this twice, and then consecutively with a big metal spoon or spatula every 30
minutes until uniformly frozen.
In an ice
cream machine, churn the mix until it has increased by approximately 20 percent
in volume and looks thick and smooth like soft
serve ice cream. If the bowl of the machine has been pre-frozen
properly (unless you have a machine with a built-in freezing element) and your
mix is cold, this should take about 20 minutes.
The ice cream
can be eaten freshly churned—and is extremely good this way, but it will
quickly melt! If you are making it to serve later on, then at this point you
need to transfer the ice cream quickly into an airtight lidded container. Cover
it with a sheet of wax paper (plastic wrap tears when frozen) to avoid exposure
to the air before putting the lid on and freezing to harden for at least 4
hours.
Once frozen,
recipes will keep well for up to a month, if stored properly, unless stated
otherwise. To serve, remove the ice cream from the freezer and place in the
fridge for 10 to 15 minutes before scooping. Each recipe makes approximately 1
liter/1 quart, or 10 good scoops.
It took a bit of experimentation to create a recipe for lemon ice
cream that tasted bright and tangy and smelled as yellow as a just-scratched
lemon, but that was also ultra-smooth and creamy. Simmering the lemon juice to
reduce its water content, then adding fresh juice and carrageenan (a
seaweed-derived gelling agent), makes an intensely lemony jelly. This is
blended with zesty custard, resulting—truly—in the ice cream of the gods.
4 large Amal lemons or 6
unwaxed lemons 135 g/ ⅔ cup sugar
Pinch of iota carrageenan (or use powdered gelatin—it will still
taste great
but won’t be quite as smooth)
280 ml/¾ cup whole milk
180 ml/1 cup heavy cream Small pinch of sea salt 5 egg yolks
1. To make the lemon jelly: wash the lemons then zest and juice
them, and strain the juice to remove the seeds. Measure out the lemon juice
into two amounts: 200 ml/¾ cup and 50 ml/¼ cup.
2. Put the 200 ml/¾ cup juice in a small non-reactive pan and bring
it to a boil. Simmer until the volume of juice is reduced by half. This may
take about 10 minutes—keep pouring the juice into a large measuring cup every 4
or 5 minutes to check on its progress and don’t let it burn around the edges of
the pan. Take care to fully reduce the juice by half as this eliminates water
from your ice cream and prevents it from being icy.
. Put 2 tablespoons of the sugar into a bowl with the carrageenan
or gelatin and mix together. Pour in the remaining 50 ml/¼ cup fresh juice and
whisk until both the sugar and gelling agent have dissolved.
4. Add the 100 ml/½ cup hot, reduced lemon juice to the gel mix,
whisk well, and allow the mixture to cool to a jelly consistency. Cover and
chill in the fridge.
5. To prepare the ice cream: heat the milk, cream, and salt
together in a nonreactive pan. Stir often, using a whisk or silicone spatula,
to prevent it from catching. Once the milk is hot and steaming, whisk the egg
yolks and remaining sugar together in a separate bowl to combine.
6. Pour the hot milk in a thin stream over the yolks, whisking
continuously. Return the mix to the pan and cook over low heat until it reaches
82°C/180°F, stirring constantly to avoid curdling while making sure it doesn’t
boil. As soon as your digital thermometer says 82°C/180°F, remove the custard
from the heat, whisk in the lemon zest, and place the pan in a sink of ice
water to cool it down—you can speed up the process by stirring it every so
often. Once the custard is at room temperature, strain it to remove the lemon
zest, pour into a clean container, cover with plastic wrap, and chill in the
fridge overnight.
7. To make the ice cream: the following day liquidize the cold
custard and the lemon jelly together for a couple of minutes until smooth.
8. Pour into an ice cream machine and churn according to the
machine’s instructions until frozen and the texture of whipped cream, 20 to 25
minutes.
9. Scrape the ice cream into a suitable lidded container. Top with
a piece of wax paper to limit exposure to air, cover, and freeze until ready to
serve. Best eaten within a fortnight.
Variation—The hard green peel of bergamot fruit is so rich in
essential oils that its taste is considered too strong for many culinary uses,
but a Bergamot
Jelly ice cream has a avor like a breath of fresh air.
To make the ice cream, take two bergamot, zest one, and juice
both. Reserve the zest and measure 100 ml/½ cup juice. Follow the method for
the previous recipe, but reduce the sugar slightly. This time, don’t cook the
juice. Mix the carrageenan with 2 tablespoons of the sugar, then whisk in the
100 ml/½ cup fresh bergamot juice to form a gel. Make sure you don’t steep the
zest in the custard for too long, as it may become bitter.
Imaginary Neapolitan Ice Cream
Living in Naples in wintertime was annoying, if only because it
meant that very few ice cream shops were open. Instead I made do with a spremuta
d’aranciaevery couple of days from the aquafrescaioat the bottom of Via Toledo.
Draped with
bunches of plastic oranges and lemons and situated on one of the most heavily
trafficked corners of the city, the kiosk was typical of Naples. This relic of
the past served to provide the populace with cold mineral water—the real stuff
from underground springs—naturally sulphured and cooled over large blocks of
ice. Now it sold cans of San Pellegrino and Peroni, and always glasses of
delicious freshly squeezed orange and lemon juice.
The aquaiuoloat my local was called Marco. He looked like one
half of Right Said Fred and knew pretty much all the local news you needed to
know. He told me all about his mother, about how she used to bring a basket of
lemons from her parents’ garden in the hills above Naples to sell to the former
owner of the same kiosk—who used them to avor the water—until the day when she
took over the business herself, eventually handing it over to Marco. He
explained how he made lemon granita in the summer using a grattaghiaccio—a small box-shaped steel plane, built to slide
over the block of frozen lemon syrup and create crystals of shaved ice. I
expressed my regret at not being in Naples at the right time of year to try
this delicacy, but Marco said I could have his old ice shaver if I wanted…then
he thought twice, and said I could have it for 5 euros.
Gelateria
della Scimmia (the monkey) was another local hangout —one of the few gelateriethat remained open; it was the kind that
specialized in huge shiny mounds of ice cream with whole candy bars or
pineapples or sometimes toys embedded in them. The kind that most likely relied
on foamy packet mixes of avorings and a heavy hand with the blue food
coloring. It sold banana ice cream, shaped on a stick and dipped in chocolate.
To be honest these were delicious, and were my treat of choice on a winding
walk down from
Spaccanapoli to the harbor on my days off. But it was not the kind
of ice cream I had fantasized about eating in Naples—the kind of thing you read
about in recipe books…
But Naples
likes fast food, strong coffee, shiny puffy jackets, wraparound sunglasses, and
neon trainers—not lemon leaves and muslin. So I have had to make my own
imaginary Neapolitan ice cream—real Neapolitans would rather eat a hot dog and
french fry pizza and a frozen banana.
The avor of this ice cream is mild and creamy, just lifted by an
oily spritz of lemon. Soften in the fridge for 15 minutes before serving with
Espresso Granita (this page) and Date Shake ice cream (this page).
100 g/3½ oz whole blanched almonds
1 large Amal lemon
140 g/⅔ cup sugar
400 ml/1½ cups buffalo milk or rich, creamy Guernsey milk 3 large
egg yolks
1. To prepare the ice cream: place the almonds in a food
processor, grate in the zest of the lemon (save the rest of the lemon), and add
a couple of tablespoons of the sugar. Pulse them together until ne and gritty, but don’t over-grind or the
mixture will become oily.
2. Heat the milk in a non-reactive pan, stirring often to prevent
it from catching. When the milk is steaming hot, whisk the egg yolks and remaining
sugar together in a separate bowl until combined.
3. Pour the hot milk over the yolks in a thin stream, whisking
continuously. Return all the mix to the pan and cook over low heat until it
reaches 82°C/180°F, stirring all the time to avoid curdling the eggs, while
making sure it doesn’t boil. As soon as your digital thermometer says
82°C/180°F, remove the pan from the heat, add the ground almonds and stir them
in, then cover the pan with plastic wrap and place in a sink of ice water to
cool. Once the custard is at room temperature, scrape it into a clean
container, cover with plastic wrap, and chill in the fridge.
OTHER RECIPES
INDEX
ABOUT KITTY
Amal Lemon Jelly
Imaginary Neapolitan Ice Cream
Buffalo Milk, Almond, and Amal Lemon
Novellino Orange Jelly
Kumquat Custard
Carrot Seed
Oroblanco and Pale Ale
Citrus Tour
Blood Orange and Bergamot Sherbet
Mimosa, Seville Orange, and Rice
East Street Market
Mango
Papaya, Green Chile, and Lime
Passion Fruit Sour
Pineapple and Lemongrass Guava and Sugarcane Tamarillo
Banana, Brown Sugar, and Rum
Italian Kiwi
Kiwi
Rhubarb and Raspberry Ripple Blackcurrant Leaf Water Ice Peach Leaf Milk Ice
Pigeon Fig and Pineau des Charentes
Rhubarb and Angelica
Montmorency Cherry Sherbet
Pea Pod
Gariguette Strawberry Prune and Earl Grey Elderowers
Strawberry and Elderower Cucumber and Sour Cream Mint Chip
Swiss Vanilla Apricot Noyau
My Favorite Flavor
Peach
Tomato and White Peach Nectarine and Tarragon Strawberry Salad
Wild Blueberry
Leafy Blackcurrant Custard
Loganberry
The Lemon Verbena Bush
Lemon Verbena
Green Gooseberry Fool
Pink Gooseberry and Hazelnut Crunch
Mulberry Granita
Fake Mulberry
Yellow Peach and Basil
Melon and Jasmine
Blackberry and Rose Geranium
Apricot and Rose Petal
Pêche de Vigne
Fig Leaves
Fig Leaf and Raspberry
Green Walnutsand Nocino Liqueur
Green Walnut
Wild Fig and Watermelon
Vanilla Plum
Damson and Grappa
Prickly Pear
Pear, Myrtle, and Ginger Bramley Apple and Bay Leaf Uva Fragola
Crème Caramel
Pomegranate and Bitter Orange Granita Sheep’s Milk Yogurt and Wildower Honey
Quince
Quince Custard
Pistachio Ice Creams
Pistachio
Satsuma Miyagawa Medici Almond Espresso con Panna
Chestnuts
Roast Chestnut Cremolata Butterscotch and Agen Prune Sea Salt, Rosemary, and Pine Nut Black Malt Vanilla
Chocolate Ice Creams
Chocolate Caramel
Chocolate Treacle
Leafy Clementine Granita
Looking for a Date
Date Shake
Espresso Granita Ricotta and Canditi Lime and Botanicals Barbados Custard Citrus Gel
Nougat
Pietro Romanengo
Candied Fruits
Choc Ices
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