(As read by Alex Tuller and prepared by Dean Temple for the August 4, 2005, podcast)
It’s a nice time of year to have an ice cream, not that there is a bad time of year for one. Alex has always been fond of having ice cream at winter’s first snow. She can hold the cone as long as she likes and it never melts.
But this time of year is wonderful for the ice cream we can make. The milk we get – not entirely legal because of its rawness – from a local farm is thick and creamy with a rich yellow tint. We’re in the Hudson Valley, there are lots of dairy farms, you can use cartooned milk in the city. The eggs from chickens wandering free and determining much of their own diet. The sugar – okay, so I use the ordinary white stuff. Thanks to a brilliant suggestion from Alton Brown, I add a touch of peach (or often apricot preserves) in place of three tablespoons of sugar. And of course the vanilla bean and vanilla bourbon are fresh from Madagascar and the grocery store – expensive but worth it.
I add two cups of raw milk to a pot with one cup of cream and the whole vanilla bean, and turn the heat to medium. I separate an egg – I just use one, I don’t like it to become too eggy and custardy – and set it aside for now. I also stick a candy thermometer into the pot.
When the thermometer hits 175 degrees Fahrenheit, I temper the egg yolk with the hot milk-cream mixture. Then in it goes. Everyone says not to let it boil at this point. I have never tested what happens if you do, but I suppose the egg could curdle, and I know that changes the nature of the proteins in the milk. I think I know that.
I stir this until it thickens a bit. Nothing insane, just lightly coating the spoon. At that point I take the pot off the heat and stir in one cup of sugar, minus three tablespoons. Those three tablespoons are replaced with peach (or apricot) preserves. I also stir in a teaspoon of vanilla bourbon.
Now, this last step can be changed. If you want to cut your bean open and have your ice cream full of little black dots, you don’t need to do that. I don’t like paying for vanilla beans, so I wash mine off when I am done and reuse them, and supplement the ice cream mixture with the vanilla bourbon.
The next step is to put this crème anglaise of sorts into a container and leave it in the fridge over night. This does a couple of things, but the main point is to drop the temperature before it goes into the ice cream maker. If you don’t do that, you get great big crunchy, nasty ice crystals that make your ice cream lousy – and that would defeat the purpose here, wouldn’t it.
Then next day when you open it, it layer has formed on top, and it is noticeably thicker. And, it tastes brilliant. The raw milk – no longer raw I should point out because we cooked it – absorbs a spiciness from the bean that you just don’t get otherwise. At this point, I take the bean, as I mentioned, out and wash it and put it away to use again.
All you do now is put this into your ice cream maker. Ours says to go for 20-25 minutes, but I have found that 18 is perfect. After the maker is finished, and you have what looks like soft serve, put it back into a container, and into the freezer to harden. I put a small piece of plastic wrap over it to keep it from absorbing smells from the freezer, and from getting freezer burn. In a couple of hours, you can eat it. But I warn you, it kind of spoils you for most other ice creams.