From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil Lemon Ice Cream

So I was in New York recently visiting Limey and N and their behbeh, and barely had I dropped my duffle bag and plopped my weary ass down when Limey approached me with an ice cream carton and said "you have to taste this."

And despite my slight concern that this was going to turn out to be one of those "fun" new parent tricks where you innocently taste some ice cream and then they go "HAHAHAHAHAH IT'S MADE FROM BREAST MILK!!!!" I went ahead and tasted it.

And it tasted goooooooood. "Is that . . . basil?" I asked. And it was. It was basil and lemon ice, and the minute I'd had one spoonful, my only thought was "I must have more of this."

And then after we'd polished off the carton between the two of us while driving around Brooklyn to prolong the behbeh's naptime, I thought "I must have more of this." And so I told Limey "I think I'm going to try and make this."

So shortly after I got home, I started scouting Basil Lemon Italian Ice and Basil Lemon Ice Cream recipes. I found this Lemon Basil Sorbetto, which I will likely try next, but for the moment I went with the Basil Ice Cream recipe from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop. . . with a little twist based on some of the recipes I'd seen during my googling.

Now, I'm sure some of you have spent the last few minutes freaking out at the thought of basil ice cream, and I don't blame you. It may not sound natural. But it is so fresh and clean and goooooood. I only wish I'd discovered it earlier in the summer, because it would've been such sweet relief during the hottest part of the year.

Mise en place, bitches:

So you'll need: 1 cup or 25 g of basil leaves. That's slightly less than that handy packet contains, so now I have additional basil for all my other basil related needs. You'll also need sugar, heavy cream, milk, salt, 5 egg yolks, and a lemon.

So you're going to take a packed cup of Basil leaves, 3/4 cups of sugar, and a cup of the cream, and put them in your blender or food processor.

I'm using the food processor part of my blender/food processor two-in-one, because that seems like the natural thing for basil. That's where I make pesto, after all, so naturally, all other basil related chopping should be done with the same apparatus.

Fwap that around in the food processor until the leaves are ground as fine as possible.

You'll end up with something that looks like you should be paying an angry Eastern European woman $75 to spread on your face while she clucks her tongue and says supportive things like "ulch, ze pores. So yooge."

Take half of that, and put it into a large bowl. To this bowl, you're going to put another cup of heavy cream. Mix that together.

The other half of the basil/sugar/cream mixture is going into a medium sauce pan. To it, you're going to add a cup of milk, and a pinch of salt.

Stir that and let it heat on the stove until it is warm through, and a beautiful greenish color.

So pretty!

Now, by this point, you should've separated five eggs, leaving the yolks in a medium bowl and doing whatever you will with the whites. Perhaps you want to make some meringues. Perhaps you feel like eating egg white omelets. Whatever you like. No one will judge.

You add the warm basil/sugar/cream/milk/salt mixture very gradually to the egg yolks whisking constantly.

This allows the eggs to come up to temperature slowly, so you don't cook the eggs and end up with a bunch of dreadful little egg bits in your ice cream.

Once you've added all of the basil mixture to the eggs, you're going to transfer the whole set up back to the saucepan. Working over medium heat, you're going to stir the mixture constantly, scraping the bottom as you go. You want the mixture to thicken into a custard that will coat the back of your spoon/spatula.

Custard accomplished, you're going to pour it through a mesh strainer into the OTHER half of the basil mixture, in the bowl where it's been chilling out with the extra cream.

Mmmmm. . . .strainerlicious.


Stir the custard into the cream mixture, and then zest a lemon directly into the mix. THEN you're going to transfer the whole operation into an ice bath.

I know, right? There are so many different steps and apparatuses! Apperati? Whatever.

Stir the mixture in the ice bath until it's cool, then transfer it to the refrigerator to chill it thoroughly. This will take a couple of hours, which gives you time to clean up the first phase of the process.

Anyway, after it's thoroughly chilled, you're going to put it in your ice cream maker, and do your thing according to your machine's instructions.

BUT: halfway through the freezing process, you're going to pour in the juice of one lemon. This is an addition I'd seen in a couple of the recipes online, and I did it partly because I wanted to amp the lemon factor up a squidge to approximate the flavor of the ice I'd had in New York.

I also did it partly because I wanted to use up the lemon I'd zested for the ice cream. Zested fruit goes moldy much faster than other fruit, and it looks creepy and awful to boot.

So once it's finished spinning in the machine, transfer it to your freezer container(s) and let it ripen for 4-ish hours or overnight.

And when it's done, you're going to have something that's kind of an . . . interesting greenish yellow color.

But it's going to taste SO GOOD. It makes me think of Caprese salad, a bite where you get the crisp, bright taste of the basil smoothed out by the creaminess of the mozzarella. And the sweetness of the ice cream and the sour bite of lemon just help the flavors marry and pop even more wonderfully.

So I have a lot of thoughts about what to do with this ice cream. I really want to try it in a glass of Prosecco, maybe with a dash of Limoncello added in.

But I thought I'd introduce it to you in a delicious and slightly whimsical plating.

It's a Dessert Caprese! I made a thin syrup of balsamic vinegar and a bit of sugar, and put a line of that down the plate (it spread some; I really should've let it thicken more). The sliced strawberry stands in for the tomato slices. And for the basil/mozzarella, I took a single scoop of the ice cream, sliced it, and alternated it with the tomato slices on top of the syrup.

And then I ate it, and out of nowhere, I started singing "you are so beautiful, to meeeeeeeee." Because that's how goddamned good it was.

So the moral of the story, kittens, is that sometimes things that sound odd are really freaking delicious in like a life changing sort of way.

And also, if someone offers you a taste of something out of an ice cream container, you eat it. Even if there is a solid chance that it could be made out of breast milk.