gooseberry ice cream (vegetarian)

recipe by m-c

just the recipe

what I was looking for

I had gooseberries in the back yard, an ice cream maker in the kitchen, heavy cream in the refrigerator, my special simple syrup in the pantry. What do you think I was looking for?

what I made

A simpler version of Nigella Lawson's gooseberry and elderflower ice cream from Forever Summer (p. 233).

chit-chat

When I was young, I read the essays on the life bucolic that E. B. White wrote for Harper's Magazine and subsequently collected as a book called One Man's Meat.

(A classic, the book has been published by Victor Gollancz Ltd, London, 1943; Harper & Row, 1944; Harper & Brothers, 1950; Harper Torchbook, 1964; Harper & Row, 1966; Perennial Library, 1978; HarperCollins, 1978, 1982; Harper Colophon, 1983; Tilbury House, 1997; G. K. Hall & Company, 1997 -- and numerous other editions. A signed copy of the 1954 Harper & Bros edition goes for $100.00, but a Used: Good copy of the HarperCollins 1982 paperback goes for a buck plus postage.)

The book described a pastoral, busy life on his farm in North Brooklin, Maine: the plowing, the planting, the weeding, the harvest, the birds, the cows, the morning light, the silence, noisy with the sound of earthworms and falling leaves.

I was desolated to learn, after I had read the book five or ten times, that White and his wife weren't alone on that farm. No, they had hired hands aplenty, folks to work the hot, hard hours while White was inside writing imperishable prose about what needed doing.

I was naive about both the work of a farm and the work of writing, of course, but that shattering experience makes me feel duty-bound to explain that the gooseberry bushes are on my property, planted at my behest, and harvested among the thorns by me, but mulched, weeded, and generally spruced by a wonderful outfit called Sage & Stone here in Seattle, who have been helping me turn my yard into an edible garden. If you live in the vicinity, I recommend them.

grades for my version

The grades depend on whether you have your own gooseberries or not.

	own gooseberries		store‑bought gooseberries
healthy	B	A treat food.	B	A treat food.
fast	C	Not fast.	A	Fast.
easy	C	Not easy.	A	Easy.
cheap	A	Cheap.	C	Not cheap.
delicious	A	Delicious.	A	Delicious.

yield

Small portions for two.

equipment

   a basket    or       a bowl
   a blender
   an ice cream maker

the fruit

ingredients	Nigella, scaled	m-c	why?
fresh gooseberries	½ cup	½ cup	no change
water	2 teaspoons	---	not needed
Notes

   or       Go out into your back yard and pick all the gooseberries you can find, being very careful not to prick yourself on the gigantic sharp thorns. Pick them while they're still green; you want them sour. Later they turn caramel-colored and become sweet and insipid.

Or go to your greengrocer and buy some green gooseberries.

Or in a pinch buy a can of Oregon Fruit gooseberries (available from amazon.com), drain them well, measure out half a cup, and sharpen them up with lime or lemon juice to taste.

Pick the flower ends off the gooseberries. (If you're using canned gooseberries, the flower ends will be already picked off -- how? I wonder.)

Nigella wants you to cook the gooseberries with elderflower cordial and a little water to keep the berries from sticking, but I prefer the sharper flavor of the berries raw. (Of course if you're using canned gooseberries you have no choice, they've been cooked for you.)

the base

ingredients	Nigella, scaled	m-c	why?
cream	5 Tablespoons light cream, 5 Tablespoons heavy cream	½ cup heavy cream	easier, tastier [1]
eggyolks	1	---	easier, tastier [1]
sweetener	2 Tablespoons sugar	3 Tablespoons special simple syrup	easier [2]
flower flavor	2 Tablespoons elderflower cordial	2 drops orange flower water	approximately the same [3]
Notes
[1]	Nigella would have us make a custard base, with light cream, sugar, and eggyolks, then fold in beaten heavy cream. It's easier, and for a fruit ice cream, I think tastier, to use a plain cream base.
[2]	Simple syrup is so much easier to work with than sugar, and I will reveal my secret recipe below.
[3]	The flower flavor is very mild in the cordial, very strong in the flower water.

   Put the fruit, the syrup, the cream, and the flower water into your blender and puree them.

Ah yes, the secret simple syrup. Put six cups of sugar, six cups of water, and a pinch of salt into a pot and heat them up till the liquid is clear, 5-6 minutes -- long before it would begin to simmer. Cool the mixture to room temperature and store it on the countertop unless you're going to use it very seldom, in which case you should store it in the refrigerator. The pinch of salt is the secret.

Each gooseberries has a seed, and you might want to strain the base to remove the seeds, but I don't. The texture with the seeds seems, as Mark put it, more home-made.

   Make the ice cream according to the directions for your ice cream maker.

what I'd do differently next time

Now that I've made ice cream a dozen times (the gooseberry ice cream is only the tip of the ice‑cream iceburg), I've started making it with half-and-half, for a lighter texture -- and I'll specify that in just the recipe.

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