I have a habit of obsessing over a certain food for a period of time. It involves iterations, experimentation and once satisfied, never looking back. I've had a few of these recently. I recently wrote about naan; the results of which I am satisfied. I've also been pining at different forms of ice cream and omelets. A staple among my friends have been Ricky Mo burritos.
I've made two batches of ice cream in the last two weeks. The first was avocado ice cream. My neighbor has an avocado tree that grows into our yard and we've been given free reign of the fruit that bears over our fence. As a result, we've grown quite accustomed to making a variety of avocado dishes. Some have been thrown into my omelets and other cooking endeavors. Most of the time, my roommates make it into guacamole. I wanted to try something different and conjectured as to the quality of an avocado ice cream in a discussion with a foodie friend. I found a recipe by Alton Brown that seemed simple enough. Borrowed an ice cream maker and set to making it.
Ingredients
12 ounces avocado meat, approximately 3 small to medium
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup heavy cream
Directions
Peel and pit the avocados. Add the avocados, lemon juice, milk, and sugar to a blender and puree. Transfer the mixture to a medium mixing bowl, add the heavy cream and whisk to combine. Place the mixture into the refrigerator and chill until it reaches 40 degrees F or below, approximately 4 to 6 hours.
Process the mixture in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's directions. However, this mixture sets up very fast, so count on it taking only 5 to 10 minutes to process. For soft ice cream, serve immediately. If desired, place in freezer for 3 to 4 hours for firmer texture.
The result was ice cream that tasted a lot like avocado. I guess that's to be expected, given the ingredients. It was a little bland. I would add more sugar or some other sweetener next time to curb the straight creaminess of the avocado. The avocados were also medium to big. This might have contributed to the avocado overpowering the milkiness. Regardless, it was a hit at the party and in the end, that's what really matters.
A more recent expedition into home made ice cream was banana ice cream. I needed to make more ice cream, lest I be forced to find another recipe that included heavy cream and milk (being lactose intolerant, I don't usually pursue dairy products. Ice cream is just too delicious to ignore!). I had mashed bananas in the freezer (another thing that took a few tries to make really convenient. I used to freeze whole bananas when they ripened. They were really hard to peel so next time I had peeled bananas in my freezer. Then they were really hard to mash. That's when I discovered peeled and mashed bananas were the best in the freezer, all you need is defrosting) that I had planned on for banana bread, but I made like a dozen loaves of banana bread in May and was kind of sick of it at this point. Ice cream was a great idea to finish up my milk, heavy cream AND bananas.
I subbed bananas for avocados in Alton Brown's recipe and this is what I came up with
Ingredients
5 bananas, mashed
1 tablespoon squeezed lemon juice
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup heavy cream
mix together all the ingredients well and refrigerate. Make ice cream following the machine directions.
This came out fantastic. The bananas are a lot sweeter than avocados to start with, combined with the mix of brown and granulated sugar gave it an excellent flavor. I would have done all brown sugar, but that would have changed the color of the ice cream to a less pleasant brown color. It might actually be a little too sweet, and would cut out the 1/4 cup of granulated sugar next time. The bananas were also really watery once defrosted out of the freezer. I'm not sure if that's a byproduct of defrosting somehow collecting water, or if the moisture simply separated from the bananas. This was good for the ice cream though, because it made it softer. I froze this batch after making it instead of eating it as soft serve. With the extra moisture, it retains its softness, rather than getting really hard in the freezer.
No comments:
Post a Comment