A SERIOUS SUMMER TREAT

One of the great pleasures in life has got to be homemade ice cream.

When you make your own ice cream, whether it be with a hand-cranked freezer or one of those snazzy self-refrigerating machines, there’s something about that fresh lick-off the dasher flavor that Kicks Major Ass.

When you make you own, you have complete control over the flavor. You are no longer restricted to what’s in the Stoopid-Market Freezer Case. And, as our good friend Gary F. is wont to quote, “All ice cream flavors are good – some are just better than others.”

Unexpectedly – for those of use weaned on the traditional vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry, anyway - a flavoring agent that goes well with ice cream is tea. I love Japanese-style green tea ice cream, and I am frustrated by the fact that Häagen-Dazs makes this flavor – but does not sell it in the United States. They even make a green tea ice cream sandwich!

Many varieties of black tea work well, too. Earl Grey ice cream is pretty damn tasty…but for a real Summer Treat, I like to use the Republic of Tea’s Blackberry Sage tea to make this ice cream, adapted from a recipe in the Chez Panisse Desserts book by Lindsey Remolif Shere:

Blackberry Sage Tea Ice Cream

1 cup boiling water
2 tbsp (loose) or 4 bags blackberry sage tea leaves
2¼ cups whipping cream
¾ cup sugar
3 egg yolks

Steep the tea leaves in the boiling water in a glass bowl for 5 minutes. Strain through a paper filter or a fine-mesh strainer to remove the leaves (if you have used loose leaves); set aside.

Add the sugar to one cup of the cream in a heavy saucepan and warm, stirring occasionally, until the sugar dissolves. Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl just enough to mix them and stir in a few spoonfuls of the hot cream to warm them, then dump the egg-cream blend into the hot cream that’s still in the saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture coats the back of a spoon.

Strain the mixture through a medium-fine mesh strainer into a container and then add the rest of the cream, then the tea. Chill thoroughly, then freeze according to the directions for your ice cream freezer.

This is excellent served with blackberry cobbler or alongside a slice of blackberry pie.