You can't beat home-made ice cream, and you don't need a machine to make it
Down in southern France is a small museum devoted to the work of the great chef Georges-Auguste Escoffier. Set in the house he was born in, it is less a kitchen than an inventor's paradise, for the creator of peach Melba was as interested in designing equipment as he was in inventing dishes. A whole section is devoted to making ice cream - no easy feat in Escoffier's time, when the phrase "pop it in the freezer" would have baffled whomever you said it to.
Real ice cream, the sort that has body and soul, can still be tricky to produce. You need top-quality ingredients plus plenty of love and attention. And that freezer. The challenge of making it is one of the reasons we have become so used to buying ice cream.
Some readily available makes are pretty good - I'm partial to Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia; Murphy's honeycomb; and Häagen-Dazs vanilla (with a generous slug of Pedro Ximenez sherry) - but they pale beside my mother's caramel ice cream or, dare I say it, my rum and raisin.
Too often people say that you need a machine to make ice cream at home. Ice-cream makers have much to recommend them - the serious ones have integrated refrigeration units and prices to match - but doing without is no great hardship. Essentially, all a machine replaces is the chore of having to stir your freezing liquid a few times, to stop crystals forming.
Doing without a machine is also a low-cost way to experiment. Not that I think you'll need much convincing.
All recipes serve 6
PX AND RAISIN ICE CREAM
100g raisins
100ml Pedro Ximenez sherry (or rum)
1 vanilla pod
750ml full-cream milk
6 egg yolks
200g caster sugar
1. Soak the raisins in the sherry overnight, covered with cling film. (Don't use old raisins from the back of the press; also, you can use rum instead of PX, but it lacks the sweet sherry's roundness.) Stir occasionally.
2. Split the vanilla pod lengthways, scrape out the seeds and put them, with the pod, in a saucepan with the milk. Heat until almost boiling, remove and allow to infuse for 20 minutes.
3. Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar until pale. Remove the pod from the milk and pour on to the egg-and-sugar mix, whisking all the time.
4. Pour this mixture into a clean saucepan and place over a low heat. Cook, stirring all the time and making sure you are scooping the mixture off the bottom of the pan as you go, until thickened. If you run your finger along the back of your wooden spoon you should be able to draw a line that remains in place.
5. Remove from the heat and cool. This is the point where you risk ending up with sweet scrambled eggs. If you are nervous, pour the contents into a bowl sitting in some ice, to cool the mixture down.
6. Transfer to a container and freeze, stirring two or three times to avoid crystals.
GREEN TEA ICE CREAM
300ml full-cream milk
4 tsp green tea leaves or 4 green tea bags
100g sugar
3 egg yolks
250ml whipping cream
Heat the milk until hand warm (ie you can stick your finger in it comfortably). Remove from the heat, add the tea and set aside overnight. Strain through a fine sieve.
Bring the milk to the boil. Remove from the heat and set aside. Whisk the sugar and egg yolks together until pale. Add the milk, whisking all the time. Follow steps 4-6 from previous recipe.
CHOCOLATE SAUCE
200g good quality dark chocolate
120ml strong coffee
100g caster sugar
100ml whipping cream
Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of gently simmering water. Add the coffee and caster sugar, and when the sugar has melted stir in the cream. Serve over ice cream.
STRAWBERRY SORBET
125g sugar
500g strawberries
2 tbsp Campari
Pour 350ml of boiling water over the sugar and stir until dissolved. Allow to cool. Combine the strawberries with the Campari in a blender and blitz until you have a pulp. Pass through a fine sieve. Combine the sieved pulp with the sugar syrup and set aside for an hour, to allow the flavours to develop. Freeze, stirring a few times so the crystals do not get too big.