RECIPE TESTING: THAI ICED TEA ICE CREAM

In Level One I had the idea to make a Thai Iced Tea ice cream. This deep, reddish, smokey, tea mixed with half-n-half and sweetened, condensed milk is a creamy treat that should be a perfect ice cream. The first step was finding the tea (right) which I did easily in a place called Tongin Mart Inc., in Chinatown.

Now the testing begins. I tried to adapt a recipe for Earl Grey Ice Cream from "The Ultimate Ice Cream Book" by Bruce Weinstein, the ice cream book I've been using since I bought my Cuisinart ice cream maker a few years ago.

THAI ICED TEA ICE CREAM 1.0
1 Cup Milk
3 Heaping Tablespoons loose Tea or five to six bags
3/4 Cup Sugar
6 Large Egg Yolks
2 Teapoons all-purpose flour
1/4 Teaspoon Salt
1 Cup Half-and-Half
1 Cup Heavy Cream

1) Bring the cup of milk to a boil in saucepan, remove from heat. Stir in leaves or bags, cover and steep for 15 minutes.
-At right the thai tea steeping in the milk in a saucepan on the stove. Next time I'll remember to cover it.

2) In a mixing bowl, beat 3/4 cup sugar into 6 egg yolks til thick & pale yellow (blanchir). Beat in 2 teaspoons flour and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Set Aside.
- At right, the yolks and sugar whisked and at rest. By the way, the ingredients on the bag in which the tea came were: Thai Tea, Star Anise Seed, Food Coloring FD & C Yellow #5. A 16 oz. bag of the tea was just $3.95.

3) Strain leaves from milk, add half-and-half and simmer. Slowly beat hot milk and half-and-half into egg yoks and sugar. Pour mixture back into pan on low heat. Stir with whisk til custard thickens slightly. Don't boil or scramble! Remove from heat and strain into a clean bowl. Cool then stir in one cup of cream. Cover and refrigerate until cold or overnight.

4) Stir the chilled custard then freeze in your ice cream machine per manufacturer's insctructions.

I have a Cusinart ice cream maker (left) which I bought about three summers ago. I've used it over the past three years for making successful flavors from coffee, vanilla, cream cheese and peppermint to less successful ones like Roquefort. The machine is easy to use. There's an on/off button, a switch for one or two bowls to churn at a time, two churning bowls, two plastic pieces to churn the ice cream as the bowls turn, and two plastic covers so that the ice cream doesn't spill or splatter.

One thing I learned quickly was that the ice cream wasn't thick enough after the first 20 minute go round in one of the churning bowls. I think there's a salt water within the walls of the bowl (to keep the temperature of the bowl very cold) but after twenty minutes that water starts to melt. If you want to serve the ice cream immediately it needs to go through a second churning in the second bowl (still frozen in the freezer). Otherwise it's like soft-serve.

I followed my standard practice of putting the ice cream through once in a churning bowl for 20 minutes and then a second time in the other bowl then let it harden in a plastic container in the freezer overnight.

The next day it wasn't as red as I'd imagined. It tasted good, but I realized it missed something from some standard recipes: condensed and evaporated milk. Next time I'll substitute the recipe's sugar with condensed milk.

Using a scooper I balled up the ice cream and then rolled them in two test coverings, one a lightly toasted coconut, the other a finely ground popcorn powder I thought of the other night trying to fall asleep.

The winner here was the coconut rolled ice cream. I still think it would need to be served with something else, perhaps some sticky coconut rice (I'll have to test some recipes) and a little bit of chocolate syrup (or a lighter thai iced tea ice cream and a deeper red reduced thai iced tea cream as a syrup instead). I'm not done with the popcorn powder but it needs to be sieved to remove the small bits of kernel and it's not suited for this type of ice cream. The popcorn powder could be done in two ways, salted or sweeted with sugar. More to come.