Chocolate ice-cream
Chocolate ice-cream
“...you have to allow yourself to be seduced by the world’s best chocolate ice-cream” (Nigella, p38).
I know that two weeks have gone by since I have added anything to this blog and I do apologise. I know that I mentioned my car accident in the last post and I did think that everything was sorted out regarding this particular annoyance. However, it was sadly not to be, because it seems that I have a fractured rib! I woke up last Saturday morning in absolute agony. It felt as though I had a ten-ton weight on my chest and I was having problems breathing. In fact, it freaked me out that much that I asked Chris to call an ambulance. It seems as though during the car accident I had managed to bear a hair-line crack on my rib, but it hadn’t been “forced apart” as it were. And then I suppose on Friday night I had managed to actually force this crack apart, meaning that my rib was then cracked. I spent the whole next week in bed – indeed, there was nothing else for it. The one saving grace of this boring seemingly unending period, was that I spent most of the time making my acquaintance with my new Nigella book – “Nigella Christmas.” And it does look absolutely amazing. In the middle of the book, there is a step-by-step menu – complete with timings – of Nigella’s Christmas meal. I am seriously – albeit nervously – contemplating making this meal and following Nigella’s timings exactly for a genuine Lawsonian Christmas feast. I have broached the idea with Chris and he seems supportive, so watch this space! Oh, and whilst on the culinary subject, I should tell you that the week beginning the 17th November, I am going on a 2-day course in Aylesbury on cooking in the classroom. Specifically, the course is a Government-backed programme for setting up and running an after-school cookery club. As an NQT, I can’t really implement this added responsibility until the summer term, but there’s nothing to stop me getting my apron on and picking up some good ideas for my future club! I think on the second day we will actually be doing some cooking, so I’m really looking forward to that. Nigella mentions in Feast, that she is involved in some programme or another which introduces food and basic cookery techniques to children, and I have always thought how interesting that must be.
Anyway, enough with the waffle. I am pressing on with the chocolate section and really enjoying it so far. I have always thought that, unlike so many of my friends, I am relatively impervious to the allure of chocolate, but strange how I am really enjoying this section. As I mentioned in the last post, this section has really re-awoken my elicit love of chocolate and I have continued buying my secret bars of white chocolate! I am also finding myself reading the “chocolate” recipes in Nigella’s other books. I have read the entire section in “Domestic Goddess” and absolutely can’t wait to try some of them. I have also really enjoyed the whole “last course” aspect of cooking. I am not much of a dessert-type cook and will usually rustle up a nice meal, but won’t bother preparing a dessert, but this section has artificially “forced” me to reconsider. It is interesting to think about what main course might partner a particular dessert and therefore create more of a whole meal than I might otherwise have done. I think I enjoy thinking of meals more than I do cooking them! I get a strange amount if pleasure from thinking of ingredients and techniques which compliment one another and the “theme” of a meal.
And I have also really enjoyed preparing for this recipe for chocolate ice-cream. Although I am not a chocoholic, I really do love ice-cream. This recipe got me thinking about ice-cream and it is true that I have a fondness for a number of flavours. If pressed, I think my favourite flavour has to be a classic, home-made vanilla. My favourite brought ice-cream must be Hagen-Dazs’s “pralines and cream” – have you heard of that delightfully creamy vanilla ice-cream swirled with liquid toffee and caramelised pecan nuts? I do have my own ice-cream maker, brought as a Christmas gift for me from Chris last year. Although, the shameful truth is that I have only made two ice-creams with my new contraption. I made a gorgeous vanilla following the recipe that came with the ice-cream maker (thanks Kenwood!) and a rhubarb ice-cream, following no recipe as such, but simply by stirring some cooled, cooked, pureed rhubarb into the above recipe for vanilla ice-cream. So it is certainly the case that I am looking forward to experimenting with some different flavours. My ice-cream maker could certainly do with the dusting off!
And Nigella does have absolutely tons of recipes for ice-cream in many of her books, which I can’t wait to get to grips with. Certainly, in HTE, there is a whole host of ice-cream recipes. Obviously, there is the standard recipe for vanilla ice-cream and other fruited ice-creams, such as lemon and rhubarb, but there are also some fantastic ideas for using ice-cream in desserts, such as ice-cream sundaes, ice cream with fruits and pulverised chocolates. I am really looking forward to incorporating ice-cream into my culinary repertoire in these ways. And looking through Nigella’s other work, it seems there is barely a book in which ice-cream doesn’t feature in one way or another. In Nigella Christmas, for example, there is a really delightful recipe for a cake called – charmingly enough - “girdlebuster,” which is gorgeously filled with coffee ice-cream, however heavenly that sounds.
I am also looking forward to making this for other reasons than just renewed use of my ice-cream maker – certainly, the ingredients speak for themselves. I absolutely loved the Valrhona lacte which I used last week for the chocolate mousse and I am planning on using the dark Valrhona for this recipe. If it is anything as wonderful as last week’s chocolate, I am drooling in anticipation already! The recipe also stipulates the best cocoa available, and I do believe that I have found that in Green & Blacks cocoa, which I first used for Nigella’s birthday cake, first made last year. Since then, I have regularly kept this cocoa in my store-cupboard and am bound to love anything in which it features as an ingredient.
As I mentioned, these chocolate recipes are more suited to being deserts, and I have had to think of some suitable main courses. This recipe for chocolate ice-cream struck me as being very classy, simple and Italian (it is based on Cipriani’s version anyway), so I wanted a similarly-toned main course. As terribly stereotyping this is of me (the thought that pasta is synonymous with Italy is terribly close-minded; sorry), I read through the “pasta” section of one of my newest purchases; Gordon Ramsay’s “Cooking for Friends.” Chris and I both settled on Gordon’s recipe for fresh tagliatelle with stilton and mushrooms (a sort of Anglo-Italian hybrid), which I will serve with a fresh baguette. There were lots of fantastic recipes in that chapter, and I was hard-pressed to settle on the one I did. Certainly, there was also another very tempting recipe for penne with baked pumpkin and rosemary, but Chris particularly fancied the tagliatelle and so I went with that. I do think that Gordon’s new book looks fabulous, though, and be prepared for me to make many more recipes from this book along the way in my HTE journey.
In terms of quantities of the ice-cream, I am keeping them as they are in HTE, simply because I don’t have a clue how many people the version in HTE serves and these quantities look sensible enough. My ice-cream maker only has a capacity of 1.1 litre anyway, so I didn’t want to do anything as radical as double quantities. Who wants to be left with a pan of un-churned chocolate ice-cream?
Anyway, enough with the waffle. I am pressing on with the chocolate section and really enjoying it so far. I have always thought that, unlike so many of my friends, I am relatively impervious to the allure of chocolate, but strange how I am really enjoying this section. As I mentioned in the last post, this section has really re-awoken my elicit love of chocolate and I have continued buying my secret bars of white chocolate! I am also finding myself reading the “chocolate” recipes in Nigella’s other books. I have read the entire section in “Domestic Goddess” and absolutely can’t wait to try some of them. I have also really enjoyed the whole “last course” aspect of cooking. I am not much of a dessert-type cook and will usually rustle up a nice meal, but won’t bother preparing a dessert, but this section has artificially “forced” me to reconsider. It is interesting to think about what main course might partner a particular dessert and therefore create more of a whole meal than I might otherwise have done. I think I enjoy thinking of meals more than I do cooking them! I get a strange amount if pleasure from thinking of ingredients and techniques which compliment one another and the “theme” of a meal.
And I have also really enjoyed preparing for this recipe for chocolate ice-cream. Although I am not a chocoholic, I really do love ice-cream. This recipe got me thinking about ice-cream and it is true that I have a fondness for a number of flavours. If pressed, I think my favourite flavour has to be a classic, home-made vanilla. My favourite brought ice-cream must be Hagen-Dazs’s “pralines and cream” – have you heard of that delightfully creamy vanilla ice-cream swirled with liquid toffee and caramelised pecan nuts? I do have my own ice-cream maker, brought as a Christmas gift for me from Chris last year. Although, the shameful truth is that I have only made two ice-creams with my new contraption. I made a gorgeous vanilla following the recipe that came with the ice-cream maker (thanks Kenwood!) and a rhubarb ice-cream, following no recipe as such, but simply by stirring some cooled, cooked, pureed rhubarb into the above recipe for vanilla ice-cream. So it is certainly the case that I am looking forward to experimenting with some different flavours. My ice-cream maker could certainly do with the dusting off!
And Nigella does have absolutely tons of recipes for ice-cream in many of her books, which I can’t wait to get to grips with. Certainly, in HTE, there is a whole host of ice-cream recipes. Obviously, there is the standard recipe for vanilla ice-cream and other fruited ice-creams, such as lemon and rhubarb, but there are also some fantastic ideas for using ice-cream in desserts, such as ice-cream sundaes, ice cream with fruits and pulverised chocolates. I am really looking forward to incorporating ice-cream into my culinary repertoire in these ways. And looking through Nigella’s other work, it seems there is barely a book in which ice-cream doesn’t feature in one way or another. In Nigella Christmas, for example, there is a really delightful recipe for a cake called – charmingly enough - “girdlebuster,” which is gorgeously filled with coffee ice-cream, however heavenly that sounds.
I am also looking forward to making this for other reasons than just renewed use of my ice-cream maker – certainly, the ingredients speak for themselves. I absolutely loved the Valrhona lacte which I used last week for the chocolate mousse and I am planning on using the dark Valrhona for this recipe. If it is anything as wonderful as last week’s chocolate, I am drooling in anticipation already! The recipe also stipulates the best cocoa available, and I do believe that I have found that in Green & Blacks cocoa, which I first used for Nigella’s birthday cake, first made last year. Since then, I have regularly kept this cocoa in my store-cupboard and am bound to love anything in which it features as an ingredient.
As I mentioned, these chocolate recipes are more suited to being deserts, and I have had to think of some suitable main courses. This recipe for chocolate ice-cream struck me as being very classy, simple and Italian (it is based on Cipriani’s version anyway), so I wanted a similarly-toned main course. As terribly stereotyping this is of me (the thought that pasta is synonymous with Italy is terribly close-minded; sorry), I read through the “pasta” section of one of my newest purchases; Gordon Ramsay’s “Cooking for Friends.” Chris and I both settled on Gordon’s recipe for fresh tagliatelle with stilton and mushrooms (a sort of Anglo-Italian hybrid), which I will serve with a fresh baguette. There were lots of fantastic recipes in that chapter, and I was hard-pressed to settle on the one I did. Certainly, there was also another very tempting recipe for penne with baked pumpkin and rosemary, but Chris particularly fancied the tagliatelle and so I went with that. I do think that Gordon’s new book looks fabulous, though, and be prepared for me to make many more recipes from this book along the way in my HTE journey.
In terms of quantities of the ice-cream, I am keeping them as they are in HTE, simply because I don’t have a clue how many people the version in HTE serves and these quantities look sensible enough. My ice-cream maker only has a capacity of 1.1 litre anyway, so I didn’t want to do anything as radical as double quantities. Who wants to be left with a pan of un-churned chocolate ice-cream?
Ingredients: Everything for this recipe is very easy to procure. Nigella specifies dark chocolate minimum 70% cocoa solids, so really you could use whatever you fancy. I would have thought that a good block of Lindt would be an appropriate option, but as I mentioned, I wanted to use Valrhona dark chocolate. We did our shopping in Asda, and be aware that Asda does not stock Valrhona of any kind (milk or dark), so I sent Chris off to Waitrose the next morning. Asda doesn’t stock good cocoa either, so Chris also picked up some Green & Blacks from Waitrose whilst he was there. Top tip: if you want to make this ice-cream, don’t do your shopping in Asda – go to Waitrose – you’ll end up there anyway!
Price: The eggs, sugar, milk, chocolate and cocoa totalled £10.36, but most of that was for the chocolate and cocoa. And yes, I did need *everything* for this recipe, bar nothing, so that is an accurate price guide.
(The dark Valrhona)
(Green and Black's cocoa powder)
Method: This is very easy to make and made even easier by the fact that you can make this up to the churning stage, and then chill it in the fridge until you are ready to churn and serve it. I made the ice-cream, chilled it whilst I made the pasta and then churned it whilst we ate the pasta – although there was a problem with this lest you try to emulate my menu (see below).
As I say, it is very easy to make this. Firstly, I beat the egg yolks with the sugar until pale and mousy and then beat in the near-boiled milk (this initial beating took about 5 minutes of very light whisking with my electric whisk and I wouldn’t even advise against the whole escapade with even a normal balloon-whisk, so un-strenuous was this). I don’t know about you, but I always find descriptions of what eggs should look like when whisked to the requisite texture, very unhelpful. For instance, Nigella instructs to beat until the mixture forms “pale ribbons.” If you are like me, there is really no tips for us lost souls, other than to say it is best to do your whisking whilst another is lurking nearby, who doesn’t mind clarifying for you. Chris is always my willing (ha!) victim. I didn’t beat the milk in *too* painstakingly slowly. I poured with one hand and whisked with the other in a steady, continuous stream – none of this drop-by-drop nonsense!
It is then just a case of adding chocolate (melted in a ban-marie) and cocoa (and do make sure to sieve) into the milky eggy mixture and cooking the whole thing until thickened. One thing I hate about ice-cream making is the dreaded cooking until thickening process. I am always intimidated by potential curdling. Luckily, you don’t have to cook this until custard-like, just until thickened. And this only takes about 5 minutes on moderate heat and thankfully it really does thicken in an obvious manner (you can feel it against the wooden spoon), so there really is nothing tentative here.
The thing that makes this ice-cream different to others (I suppose, although I am hardly the chocolate ice-cream making expert), is the addition of a caramel-like mixture, made by burning granulated sugar in a saucepan with water (basically, the base of any caramel). I was a tad nervous when making this, especially as Nigella warns to be brazen and let the sugar *really* burn! I do, though, like a bit of danger in the kitchen and so brazenly stuck it out without taking off the heat until the sugar was molten (and this doesn’t take long at all – 50 seconds at most (and see picture) ).
I then chilled this mixture in the fridge whilst I prepared the pasta (about 20 minutes) and began churning this as we sat down to our pasta. You will know when the ice-cream is ready. The instruction manual of your ice-cream maker will tell you anyway, but it is obvious when a mixture is ice-cream as opposed to not being ice-cream. Now, I served the ice-cream straight from the machine, but as I will explain later, this was a mistake, so my advice to you would be to decant the mixture into a shallow bowl and then store it in the refrigerator for at least half an hour before eating. Not that eating it straight from the maker was a problem – hardly! – but what is the point of making something if you can’t – later – impart advice? And plus, making it and freezing it means that it can be made further in advance, and what is that if not helpful? Indeed, even if you were to make this a few *days* in advance, as long as you let it “ripen” in the fridge for about 15-20 minutes prior to serving, I don’t see that there would be a problem.
As I say, it is very easy to make this. Firstly, I beat the egg yolks with the sugar until pale and mousy and then beat in the near-boiled milk (this initial beating took about 5 minutes of very light whisking with my electric whisk and I wouldn’t even advise against the whole escapade with even a normal balloon-whisk, so un-strenuous was this). I don’t know about you, but I always find descriptions of what eggs should look like when whisked to the requisite texture, very unhelpful. For instance, Nigella instructs to beat until the mixture forms “pale ribbons.” If you are like me, there is really no tips for us lost souls, other than to say it is best to do your whisking whilst another is lurking nearby, who doesn’t mind clarifying for you. Chris is always my willing (ha!) victim. I didn’t beat the milk in *too* painstakingly slowly. I poured with one hand and whisked with the other in a steady, continuous stream – none of this drop-by-drop nonsense!
It is then just a case of adding chocolate (melted in a ban-marie) and cocoa (and do make sure to sieve) into the milky eggy mixture and cooking the whole thing until thickened. One thing I hate about ice-cream making is the dreaded cooking until thickening process. I am always intimidated by potential curdling. Luckily, you don’t have to cook this until custard-like, just until thickened. And this only takes about 5 minutes on moderate heat and thankfully it really does thicken in an obvious manner (you can feel it against the wooden spoon), so there really is nothing tentative here.
The thing that makes this ice-cream different to others (I suppose, although I am hardly the chocolate ice-cream making expert), is the addition of a caramel-like mixture, made by burning granulated sugar in a saucepan with water (basically, the base of any caramel). I was a tad nervous when making this, especially as Nigella warns to be brazen and let the sugar *really* burn! I do, though, like a bit of danger in the kitchen and so brazenly stuck it out without taking off the heat until the sugar was molten (and this doesn’t take long at all – 50 seconds at most (and see picture) ).
I then chilled this mixture in the fridge whilst I prepared the pasta (about 20 minutes) and began churning this as we sat down to our pasta. You will know when the ice-cream is ready. The instruction manual of your ice-cream maker will tell you anyway, but it is obvious when a mixture is ice-cream as opposed to not being ice-cream. Now, I served the ice-cream straight from the machine, but as I will explain later, this was a mistake, so my advice to you would be to decant the mixture into a shallow bowl and then store it in the refrigerator for at least half an hour before eating. Not that eating it straight from the maker was a problem – hardly! – but what is the point of making something if you can’t – later – impart advice? And plus, making it and freezing it means that it can be made further in advance, and what is that if not helpful? Indeed, even if you were to make this a few *days* in advance, as long as you let it “ripen” in the fridge for about 15-20 minutes prior to serving, I don’t see that there would be a problem.
(Whisked yolk and sugar with boiling milk)
(The melted dark chocolate)
(Making the caramel - living dangerously!!)
Result: This ice-cream looks absolutely amazing. Seriously, it has *the* darkest, silkiest brown colour. It is ten times darker brown than “normal” beige shop-brought chocolate ice-cream. It is a gorgeous, deeply dark, burnished chocolate-brown; just like a real chocolate ice-cream should be. It just looks so inviting. I have never seen homemade chocolate ice-cream before in my kitchen, and I suppose it was the appearance that shocked me the most. It is seriously worth making for the colour alone. How fabulous to produce something that deeply, intensely, smokily, chocolaty brown! And even though aroma is not something usually associated with ice-cream (why not?), this *smells* fabulous. It smells darkly chocolaty; just like an inviting slab if wincingly darkly bitter chocolate. Now, I know I have written about the churning issues I experienced, but I would learn from my mistakes, because I did feel that this detracted somewhat from the appearance of this glorious ice-cream. Because it essentially needed that additional freezing, the ice-cream didn’t stay in perfect “scoop” shape and tended to melt into an almost-sauce. However glorious that might taste, that wasn’t what I wanted to create. For Chris and I, this was fine – whatever – but for a more formal gathering, I would have been wringing my hands over the appearance of the ice-cream. Certainly, if you were making this to be scooped on wafer cones, then you will need that additional freezing (although – curiously – I would advise against this. See later).
However, *the* most important thing about this ice-cream must be the taste. Of course it must. With a title like “the world’s best chocolate ice-cream,” this recipe has a lot to live up to – more so than other – less self-congratulatory titled – recipes. So, does it deliver on taste? The answer must be that it does. If you are looking for a really chocolaty chocolate ice-cream, then you must try this. It is the essence, the Platonic ideal of chocolate ice-cream. It is impossible that any ice-cream could be richer or any chocolatier. In fact, it is this that sets this ice-cream apart from any other chocolate ice-cream (and despite my antipathy towards chocolate, I *have* eaten chocolate ice-cream. Hasn’t everyone?!), is the fact that it isn’t suggestive of chocolate, is not just chocolate “flavoured.” No, this ice-cream is literally the essence of chocolate in ice-cream form. It is *so* chocolaty that it hits you around the head and wakes you up more than ten very strong, very Italian espressos. I am sure that this must be to do with the fact that the chocolate used is good and very, very strong – with a high percentage of cocoa solids – and also to do with the fact that the cocoa powder should also be good, and therefore also very chocolaty. In fact, this ice-cream is so richly chocolaty, and the chocolate *really* able to be tasted, that I would strongly advise you to use the best chocolate that money can buy. The Valrhona works wonderfully here, as is hardly a surprise. So yes, this ice-cream was intensely, almost shockingly chocolaty, but it was also much more than just a very chocolaty ice-cream. It was also very dark, with very deep – almost bitter – notes. Yes, it was smokily dark. I am sure that this smoky darkness comes from the burnt sugar – indeed, Nigella says as much. And this is why I really would advise against serving this ice-cream in its traditional form – on wafer cones – it is really too smokily dark, too bitter, too sharp, too *adult,* to be appreciated in this more relaxed form. And I would also say that I would very much doubt, that even the *most* obsessed chocoholic could stomach more than a few “scoops” of this darkly bitter and smouldering ice-cream. I don’t really know if I could say that I *loved* this ice-cream. I am hardly someone who loves dark chocolate and this smokily deep, deep dark, bitter ice-cream is just the essence of dark chocolate. I appreciated this ice-cream as a really *good* ice-cream, but I really couldn’t have eaten more than a scoop of this.
Now, as I have already written, the texture of this ice-cream was probably the one problem that I could claim to have with this ice-cream, but that isn’t so much a problem with the recipe as with me. I have – ashamedly – lost the instructions to my ice-cream maker, and so – as I wrote – served the ice-cream straight from the ice-cream maker. FYI, this makes for a very soft, almost sorbet-textured ice-cream, which can be spooned into very soft scoops, which spills out into an almost-sauce around the edges. As I have written, this was fine for us – why would we care? However, I have now been storing the remaining ice-cream in the refrigerator for two days now and I can inform you that it makes for a much more traditional texture. It can be scooped with an ice-cream scoop. But, despite all this, I should tell you that however you eat this, it makes for the most velvety smooth, silky ice-cream ever: And that is a real positive aspect of this recipe.
This is hardly a problem, but this ice-cream – as I have written – was *very* rich and I would have liked something to balance this richness. In retrospect, I am hardly going to prescribe 1970’s style wafers to serve alongside, but I do think that some form of tight-crumbed biscuit would be nice. Some very good quality, possibly Italian, biscuits would be lovely. Whilst writing, I think that those wonderful macaroons from HTE would strike just the right, balanced note.
And I should also let you know how we found Gordon’s pasta. It was absolutely heavenly. Gordon really does have a chef’s insight into flavours that live together. The flavoursome, savoury stilton and the aromatic herbs in the pasta went together perfectly and were the perfect topping for the silky pasta. I now cannot wait to sample more recipes from that book.
So, overall: I enjoyed this ice-cream a great deal, but it is not for wimps! It is deep, dark, chocolaty, strong, rich, smoky and bitter. If you are a chocoholic and like the sound of the above, then you *must* make this. As I say, I am not such as chocoholic, so I don’t know how much of this I could greedily snaffle down, but certainly, if required to make a chocolate ice-cream, I would always return to this classic recipe for the very essence of chocolate ice-cream.
(Cooking and thickening the now chocolate custard)
(The mixture pre-churning)
Other person’s perspective: Chris described this as very strong and very rich. He, like me, did say that he couldn’t eat a lot of this, but we both enjoyed what we ate – one “scoops” worth. He said that this was really nice and chocolaty and that using really good chocolate makes this extra special – concerning which, I couldn’t agree more.
(Churning the ice-cream in the ice-cream maker)
Future changes: Even though I have written about how rich this is, I wouldn’t want to change anything here, because it just wouldn’t be fair to the recipe. This recipe is *for* a very rich and dark ice-cream. If I was to make this again, however, I would certainly make it in advance (maybe more than a day) and then store it in the refrigerator. I would also serve it with some balancing bland biscuits of some sort, and I would certainly halve quantities. It is far too rich to eat it in the quantities specified in HTE.
(Gordon Ramsay's fresh tagliatelle with stilton and mushrooms)
Rating: I would rate this ice-cream as 4/5 for pure enjoyment factor Chris rates this as a definite 5/5, therefore it receives a balanced 4 ½ / 5 rating.
