Kitchen Diaries: Lemon Ice Cream

So when I was preparing what I was to serve on Friday night earlier in the week, it appeared as if summer had arrived. The weather was balmy and, I thought, lamb meatballs (not from Nigel I’m afraid but delicious nonetheless) followed by Nigel’s lemon ice cream would constitute a perfect meal. Perfect for late (warm) March. Then the weather turned so we ended up eating ice cream at the end of a cold, miserable pea-souper of a day. But the meatballs definitely needed the zing of a light, refreshing desert, and this definitely did what was required.

An added bonus was that making this ice cream was an absolute synch. Ten minutes of whisking and the cream lay in “slovenly folds” (a beautifully apt, and beautifully sexy description for cream don’t you think?)

The rest of the ingredients – a tiny list of lemon zest and juice, yoghurt, store bought meringues and curd – simply folded into the cream before pouring the lot into a tub and bunging it in the freezer. Nigel suggests it only needs to be left 4-6 hours in the freezer. I left it overnight. It did need to be taken out a good 45 minutes before serving, however.

The ingredients, whilst a straightforward list, all available from my local supermarket at 8pm on Thursday evening, are not for the faint of heart in the dairy department. You need a whopping 500ml of the aforementioned whipping cream. And Nigel says you need “artisan-made” lemon curd. Well sorry Nige, but Painsbury’s (nice one, Nairn) don’t really run to artisan-made food. Prince Charles’ Duchy range was the best of a mediocre bunch and I’m sure it was good enough. Essentially, I assume you need to aim for a curd that actually tastes of lemons because that’s a lot of cream that you have to influence with flavour. Although you do use an entire jar of the stuff plus the juice and zest of two actual lemons, so it’d be quite difficult for the end product not to taste of the fruit. A final note on the ingredients: Nigel mentions 4 small meringues. Don’t go by this instruction – weigh them out. I actually used 8 of the medium sized meringues I had bought.

Apparently, this makes enough ice cream for 4 people. That would be 4 people who had either not eaten for a month or particularly craved dairy products or were just greedy. 4 people who had just eaten lamb meatballs ate about a third of the entire tub and that was in generous portions.
It’s not terribly exciting to look at – sometimes no bad thing – but I added pomegranate seeds and sprigs of mint which I think looked quite pretty. And quite Christmassy. Like I said, perfect for late March.
Naomi x

Kitchen Diaries: Chickpea & Sweet Potato Curry

It seems like substitution may also become a bit of a theme. Personally, I don't think that's a problem. I like to think that one doesn't always need to follow a recipe to the letter unless, of course, one is making pastry or mayonnaise in which case I, at least, do as I'm told.

A good case in point for not doing what I'm told however is Nigel's recipe for chickpea and sweet potato curry. I've made this on a number of occasions and it's always turned out well - as have variations on the theme.

The substitutions I made this evening, to no detrimental effect, were:

• Butternut squash instead of pumpkin (a rather significant ingredient, despite the recipe's title)
  
• Dried chilli flakes rather than fresh (I don't know about you, but cutting fresh chilli makes my skin burn and I'm not sufficiently suburban to own a pair of washing up gloves...)
• Tinned tomatoes and passata not 500g of fresh toms
• Tinned chickpeas rather than fresh (life being too short and all that)
  

I've also found that no harm comes to the curry if you play around with the spices. Whilst shelling cardamom seeds may be a slightly irritating exercise, cardamom is a fantastic spice so I added a few more than Nigel suggests.

And one final note on this recipe's flexiblity: if you're a committed carnivore, adding chopped lamb to the curry around the same time that you're frying the onions and garlic should satisfy.

With or without meat, what results from 20 minutes easy cooking is a delicately flavoured but robustly textured curry. My preference is to serve it with brown rice. And despite all the messing around that I do with the recipe, it is worth taking on board one piece of Nigel's advice: the curry definitely tastes better the next day.

Naomi. xx