Rhubarb Ice-cream

Back to business!

It’s been a while since my last post, but the ice-cream frenzy is still on!

Last weekend, my friend Bastien had a few visitors : his brother and his girlfriend, who live in Youngstown, Ohio.  Bastien’s sister and a friend of hers also joined this happy family gathering.

Knowing that Bastien lives about twenty meters far from us, a sunny sunday afternoon was a perfect occasion for a casual, laid-back lunch, involving, of course, ice cream.

Rhubarb stalks had been flourishing on market stands for a few days, and this encouraged us to try to accomodate this tart but subtle ingredient.  Several ideas hit us : vanilla ice-cream with rhubarb pie,  strawberry ice cream with rhubarb pie, rhubarb ice cream with strawberry tart… We finally opted for rhubarb ice-cream, that seemed like an interesting challenge, to go with apple tart.

The rhubarb recipe from the Ices book did not convince us, so we tried a mix between a recipe found on the web, and the reliable Russell Recipe. Here are the ingredients :

• 2 cups of pureed rhubarb (see following recipe).
• 1 egg.
• 1 cup of liquid sour cream.
• slightly more than 1 cup of sugar.
• Whole milk.

Rhubarb stalks look tough and dry, but they act surprisingly : if you chop 5/6 of them and cook them with half of the sugar, they literally dissolve, lose their red and green stringy appearance and turn into a brownish purée. Process then the purée to avoid any lump, and save 2 cups of this.

Beat the egg with the sugar, add the cream and the sieved rhubarb mix. Add enough milk, and pour into the canister.

We went to crank in a back alley. As we were in the middle of the process, we were surprised to see our cheesemonger, the one that had sold me the cream, who came to see what the hell we were doing. He thought we were doing butter and wanted to offer to buy what he thought was a cream churn…

We went back to the flat to enjoy the dessert. The ice-cream revealed itself to be unctuous, creamy, with only a light sour kick. It was perfect to go with the homemade tart, but I’m not sure this would have been great on its own…