Ice Cream

My issue with fruit ice creams is not being able to taste the fruit, so to keep that flavor foremost, I cook the ice cream base on its own and then add fresh fruit. Less fat—no eggs in the ice cream base—allows the berry flavor to stand out.

This is a Thomas Haas signature, and it’s more of a combination of ice cream and granité than just simple ice cream. I fell in love with it the first time I made it for its delicate balance of fat and acid. It pairs well with berries and would be great in a smoothie.

Thai basil is spicier than sweet basil and more pungent. And that flavor pops when this ice cream is paired with cherries.

François Payard loves the combination of balsamic vinegar and strawberries and serves it every season. I wanted to tie the flavors together but in a different way, so I came up with this ice cream, which I pair with Strawberry Sorbet (page 236). You could just serve this with Slow-Roasted Strawberries (page 245), of course.

Rafael Gonzalez, a Cuban sous-chef at Jean Georges, thought I was prejudiced against Cuban flavor combinations. To prove him wrong, I made this ice cream to pair with Coconut Pain Perdu (page 127) and Papaya-Lime Compote (page 251). It’s got that faintly sour edge of cream cheese, which never seems to overpower other flavors, and a great mouthfeel.

The first thing I do when I feel a sore throat coming on is make some hot honey and ginger tea. And the more I thought about those flavors, the more I thought they would make a great ice cream. They do.

This very rich ice cream, with the lush mouthfeel of white chocolate, may be one of my sweetest recipes. Try serving it with ripe peaches and a drizzle of tarragon oil or basil oil (see page 187). You should be aware that this ice cream can take a long time to freeze in a home ice cream maker, and that it will need to cure in the freezer overnight before serving.

One bite of this ice cream, and you’re transported to a beach in the Caribbean.

This is it: pure vanilla flavor in a nice, creamy ice cream.

This dessert is a delicate balancing act showcasing the diversity of citrus. Each element supplies a different taste and texture: the creamy ice cream, the chewy grapefruit, the crispy sticks, and the airy curd.

In this dessert, you get the same flavor twice but with different textures: creamy ice cream and slightly chewy strawberry leather. Fruit leathers are an ideal way to incorporate secondary flavors, like herbs, and making leathers is really easy.

If you have always wanted to try making ice cream at home but haven’t wanted to invest in an ice-cream maker, give this recipe a try. Semifreddo is a very rich, creamy dessert, but the lemon juice and limoncello make this one seem very light, despite all the egg yolks and cream.

A simple way to make spumoni in the shape you remember is to use tall 10-ounce paper cups, like the ones you get when you order a soda. You can make the layering process simpler by spooning in a level layer of vanilla ice cream, then chocolate ice cream, then flavored whipped cream. If you’d prefer to serve one large spumoni instead of individual ones, prepare the spumoni in a 6-cup soufflé dish, layering it into the dishes as described below. Let the frozen large spumoni stand at room temperature 10 to 15 minutes before inverting it onto a serving plate. Cut it into wedges to serve.

This ice cream is just fun. We use the natural starch in the popcorn to thicken the ice cream base; then we use a whipped cream canister to create small popcorn like bites in the liquid nitrogen. You can serve the popcorn ice cream in a bowl (with spoons on the side, of course), and watch grown-ups revert to childhood as they discover your secret.

We created this ice cream on a whim one day. We were debating what to do with a batch of grilled potatoes that were striking for their sweet, smoky flavor. Aki tasted and joked that they would make an amazing ice cream, and Alex took the idea and ran with it. We were both surprised by how good the resulting ice cream tasted, and it has since become a staple in our repertoire. Ice creams with a savory slant are becoming more common, especially in warm weather. We like to serve this with caviar, steak tartare, and as a garnish for chilled potato leek soup.

Meyer lemons are believed to be a cross between the Mandarin orange and the common lemon. They are available seasonally and have a delicate floral aroma and less acidic juice than common Eureka lemons. Here we make a traditional lemon curd and then thin it to make the ice cream base. If you want to use just the curd, simply eliminate the milk. We use it to balance the richness of the curd and produce a smooth, creamy ice cream that is not overly heavy on the palate. The bright Meyer lemon flavor really makes this a standout.

This is an unusual use for an underutilized vegetable. Parsnips are naturally sweet and flavorful, with a delicate earthy flavor. This ice cream was originally developed as part of a caviar dish with sake-cured steelhead trout roe, nasturtium leaves, and fruit leather made from tart cherries. Its creamy color makes people think of vanilla or sweet cream, but once they taste it they are caught, intrigued by the unusual flavor, and they often make a game out of guessing what flavor it is. The caviar dish was a great success, and since then we’ve paired the ice cream with strawberry pie, chocolate tarts, and rhubarb crumble. It goes almost anywhere vanilla ice cream does and adds an extra layer of flavor and an element of surprise.

Brown butter refers to butter that is heated quickly in a sauté pan until the milk solids just turn golden brown; it is then used immediately for cooking. It is a delicate operation because if heated a few seconds too long, the butter solids turn black and an unpleasant bitter taste is all you have to work with. Brown butter has developed a cultlike following and is now made specifically to be used as a flavoring agent in nontraditional recipes from sweet to savory. While we were working on ideas for increasing our output of brown butter, Michael Laiskonis, pastry chef at Le Bernardin, blogged about his experiments with brown butter. He shared a technique of reducing heavy cream until it separated into clarified butter and milk solids. This led to a discussion in the blog comments about the best way to extract the most milk solids from dairy and how to get the best yield of brown butter solids to play with. The discussion culminated with a tip from Cory Barrett, the pastry chef at Cleveland’s Lola Bistro. He suggested using nonfat dry milk to increase the yield of caramelized milk solids, and recommended letting them brown slowly in butter, then steeping them overnight to increase the butter flavor. This is why we love the Internet. It brings like-minded people together. Thanks to Michael and Cory, we now have access to a new approach, which yields a bounty of brown butter solids to be integrated into innumerable dishes. For our brown butter solids, we melted 2 sticks (224 grams) of unsalted butter and added 1 cup (80 grams) of nonfat milk powder. One of our favorite uses for brown butter is this ice cream. Just wait until you taste it.

The brilliant white milk ice cream with a chewy texture of my childhood was made with sahlab (also known as salep; see page 46), the ground root tuber of a member of the orchid family, and mastic, a hard resin exuded from the lentisk tree. It has become something of a mythical ice cream, as it can no longer be found in Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt, countries that used to make it. Sahlab is very expensive, and what you buy is often adulterated. Be careful not to use too much mastic, as the taste would become unpleasant.

This is a modern version of dondurma kaymakli without sahlab. Mastic and rose water give it an exotic allure. The mastic, a resin exuded from the lentisk tree, is sold in small, hard, translucent lumps, like crystals. It must be pounded or ground to a fine powder with a pestle and mortar, together with a pinch of sugar.