Fresh red currants are gorgeous in appearance and taste--luscious strigs strung with glowing, red globes bursting with wake-up-right-now flavour. This season's harvest from our three bushes yielded enough to make jelly and something else. What would be better than an ice cream blushed with pink and accentuated with equal parts tartness and sweetness?
This frozen dessert can be made conveniently without an ice cream maker. It's texture is between that of ice cream and sherbet--a silky lightness with a lingering richness.
Ingredients
(serves six)
The night before, pre-chill an one-liter, lidded, plastic container. The next day, wash and pluck the berries off their stems, reserving a few whole strigs for garnishing. Dry them.
Place the red currants in a suitably sized saucepan and heat gently for several minutes, mashing them from time to time.
Strain through a sieve or a Foley Mill. Stir in the sugar till dissolved. Reserve the red currant puree in the fridge.
Whip the cream until stiff using a balloon whisk (check the boutique tag for the ones I recommend)/rotary egg beater/electric mixer.
Plop half the cream onto the red currant puree.
Start to fold in by putting a wooden spoon under an outer edge of the creamy wodge, bringing the spoon up and over the cream while turning the bowl a quarter turn. Repeat a few times.
Add the rest of the cream and resume folding in.
Continue carefully to fold in until there are less and less pink and white swirls.
Keep at it until it becomes a solid pink colour, usually in five minutes.
Pour into the pre-chilled container.
Freeze until solid usually two hours (depending on your freezer).
Garnish with fresh red currants and serve with a digestive biscuit. The wholemeal, crumbly texture of a digestive was a nice foil, but others probably would go just as well. I suspect layers of crumbled up cookies and this ice cream would make an easy and delicious parfait.
In the potager, the blueberries planted in May are carrying a small load of green berries with a hint of the blue to come.
The onions got their fertiliser application required halfway through their growth.
In the flower garden, the hydrangeas are beginning to bloom.
Though the French lavender is just starting to bud, the shorter English lavender is fully flowering
Because of a sore paw, Dayo is still spending more time indoors than out. We are now so used to him rooting about we usually pay no attention as he settles down fairly soon only to find when grabbing a knapsack or as The Calm One quipped, a catnapsack, the feline resident chez nous is eager to tag along during our grocery shopping.
Dayo was cheered when receiving the latest postcard from our friend, +Arthur Huang, a conceptual archivist living in Tokyo:
À la prochaine!
RELATED POSTS
How to make red currant jelly
Making lavender water/drying lavender
How to transplant blueberries
RELATED LINKS
Arthur's website
The lowdown on wire whisks
This frozen dessert can be made conveniently without an ice cream maker. It's texture is between that of ice cream and sherbet--a silky lightness with a lingering richness.
Ingredients
(serves six)
- Red currants, fresh, stemmed, 500 grams
- Sugar, granulated, 200 grams
- Cream, heavy, 300 ml
- Cookies/biscuits for serving (I used digestive biscuits)
The night before, pre-chill an one-liter, lidded, plastic container. The next day, wash and pluck the berries off their stems, reserving a few whole strigs for garnishing. Dry them.
Place the red currants in a suitably sized saucepan and heat gently for several minutes, mashing them from time to time.
Strain through a sieve or a Foley Mill. Stir in the sugar till dissolved. Reserve the red currant puree in the fridge.
Whip the cream until stiff using a balloon whisk (check the boutique tag for the ones I recommend)/rotary egg beater/electric mixer.
Plop half the cream onto the red currant puree.
Start to fold in by putting a wooden spoon under an outer edge of the creamy wodge, bringing the spoon up and over the cream while turning the bowl a quarter turn. Repeat a few times.
Add the rest of the cream and resume folding in.
Continue carefully to fold in until there are less and less pink and white swirls.
Keep at it until it becomes a solid pink colour, usually in five minutes.
Pour into the pre-chilled container.
Freeze until solid usually two hours (depending on your freezer).
Garnish with fresh red currants and serve with a digestive biscuit. The wholemeal, crumbly texture of a digestive was a nice foil, but others probably would go just as well. I suspect layers of crumbled up cookies and this ice cream would make an easy and delicious parfait.
In the potager, the blueberries planted in May are carrying a small load of green berries with a hint of the blue to come.
The onions got their fertiliser application required halfway through their growth.
 |
| Scratch in a complete NPK fertiliser with a hand cultivator, and then water well |
 |
| Starting on the left, in the front are rhubarb and onions, in the back, red/black currants, grapes, and raspberries |
In the flower garden, the hydrangeas are beginning to bloom.
Though the French lavender is just starting to bud, the shorter English lavender is fully flowering
Because of a sore paw, Dayo is still spending more time indoors than out. We are now so used to him rooting about we usually pay no attention as he settles down fairly soon only to find when grabbing a knapsack or as The Calm One quipped, a catnapsack, the feline resident chez nous is eager to tag along during our grocery shopping.
Dayo was cheered when receiving the latest postcard from our friend, +Arthur Huang, a conceptual archivist living in Tokyo:
.jpg) |
| That's one brave tail hanging out in frigid, desolate space! |
À la prochaine!
RELATED POSTS
How to make red currant jelly
Making lavender water/drying lavender
How to transplant blueberries
RELATED LINKS
Arthur's website
The lowdown on wire whisks