The reason for all of this strawberry ice cream is that I got a bunch of free strawberries at the Daley Center market on Thursday. I guess they had been on the vine a little long, so they were a little too dark and squishy. But free strawberries? Yes please! I decided I'd mush them up into ice cream and they'd be just fabulous.
Indeed, that's what you do for this stuff. You hull the strawberries, then run them through a food mill. You need two cups of strawberry puree, which is pretty much the most delicious substance on the planet.
You stir in some salt and let it sit, and meanwhile you make your cream stuff. Mix two egg yolks and some sugar until kind of creamy, heat some half and half, then stir the hot half and half into the yolk and sugar mixture. Bring it back to an almost-boil, at which time the custard gets a little thicker. Then you let it cool and mix in the strawberry puree, a touch of cream, and vanilla.
All that was last night, and then today I took the machine drum out of the chest freezer to make the ice cream. I crossed my fingers that there would be no problem with the ice cream maker, I needn't have worried. It churned up beautifully.
This stuff looked like some kind of ridiculous taffy or cotton candy. It was so fluffy and pink. I had two scoops after dinner, which really pepped up the meal because the dinner was just leftovers. The ice cream was wonderful; tasted like strawberry ice cream, except just more so. It looked like it should be that pink because of some kind of chemical or flavoring, but no. Just pure strawberries. Very, very good stuff.
Tomorrow I'm doing a variation on strawberry ice cream in my book, strawberry cabernet ice cream. Except I don't know if I have cabernet, so whatever red wine I have will have to do. I bet it will be a wonderful red color; I'm super excited!
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