Fennel Ice Cream

Prompted by a more ambitious friend, I finally dragged out my ice cream maker, which has been languishing in neglect for about two years now. It was schlepped from Berkeley to Brooklyn and back again, and then out here, with no use until now. Let this be a lesson: keep your appliances within easy reach, and you will use them more.

What was the occasion for the ice cream maker’s re-entry into cooking society? A terribly intriguing fennel ice cream that has been blowing up the blogosphere (Orangette was the immediate inspiration, but, of course, it all eventually goes back to Smitten Kitchen). I’d actually had fennel ice cream before (studded with candied fennel, to boot!) at my home away from home, Ici, so the absolute exquisiteness of the flavor wasn’t altogether a shock. The fact that it was so (relatively) easy to make at home, however, was.

Homemade ice cream is an intimidating animal, involving custard and churning and, in this case, crushing fennel seeds. But it turns out to be not terribly hard at all, if a little time-consuming (though I have a feeling that after this first round, things will go quicker in the future). After all, the ice cream maker is doing most of the work, you are just reaping the benefits.

The benefits here are many. The first and most obvious being that you get to pick your flavor, which can be anything your heart desires and your head can come up with. My former roommate always fantasized about a black pepper – peach ice cream. Someday. The second and less obvious, but perhaps even greater, benefit is one of those murky foodie words that gets tossed around a fair amount but rarely pinned down: mouthfeel. Literally, how the food feels in your mouth. There are few foods that I have encountered that could sum up this idea better than homemade ice cream. It simply feels thicker, richer, creamier, meltier, not just than Ben and Jerry’s, but also more than even my beloved Ici and other schmancy ice cream stores like it.

As with all things, you simply can’t beat making your own and eating it fresh, even, as it turns out, with something that is meant to be frozen. Though I would be surprised if this managed to survive uneaten for very long in your freezer.

Fennel Ice Cream

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, from Gourmet, brought to my attention by Orangette

Makes 1 quart

Ingredients

- 1 2/3 cups heavy cream
- 2 teaspoons fennel seeds, crushed (we used the back of a mallet thing in a bowl – I am confident you can rig something up even if you don’t have a mortar and pestle)
- 1 cup whole milk
- 3/4 cup sugar, divided
- 4 large egg yolks

1. Bring cream and fennel seeds just to a simmer in a small heavy saucepan, then cover and let steep about 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, bring milk, 1/2 cup sugar, and a pinch of salt to a simmer in a heavy medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring.

3. Whisk together yolks and remaining 1/4 cup sugar in a large bowl, then add milk mixture in a slow stream, whisking. Return mixture to medium saucepan and cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, until mixture coats back of spoon and registers 175°F on an instant-read thermometer (do not let boil). If you, like me, don’t have an instant-read thermometer, you can simply do the finger test: streak your finger through the custard on the back of the spoon. If the line you clear stays clear (if the custard doesn’t ooze back to cover it up), then you’re good to go.

4. Immediately strain custard through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl, then quick-chill by setting bowl in the freezer and stirring occasionally until cool, about 15 minutes. (Deb and Gourmet say to strain in a metal bowl that you set in an ice bath, rather than the freezer; not having a metal bowl or more than a cocktail’s worth of ice, I came up with this, which worked fine.)

5. Strain fennel cream through fine-mesh sieve into custard, pressing on solids. Continue to chill in ice bath until custard is very cold, then freeze in ice cream maker. Transfer to an airtight container and put in freezer to harden, about 1 hour.

Note: Custard with fennel cream can be chilled, covered, in refrigerator up to 24 hours.