SMOKED BACON AND EGG ICE CREAM

[johnfoyle]

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/food ... 307409.ece


Flavour of the month

What do ox tongue, Parmesan, foie gras and squid ink have in common? They all figure in the new wave of savoury ice creams. Is nothing sacred? Ed Caesar finds out who's got it licked

Published: 22 August 2005

Not so long ago, choosing ice cream was a simple business, involving a few basic questions. One scoop or two? Vanilla or chocolate? Flake with that? True, the choice expanded into Technicolor with the 1980s explosion of Häagen-Dazs and 1990s arrival of Ben & Jerry's, which both offered an endless variety of exotic flavours at premium prices, and sold ice cream like sex. But, broadly speaking, the ice cream you were eating was still the same animal as in the old black-and-white days - filling, sinful and, most importantly, sweet.

This summer, however, something has change - savoury ice cream is now all the rage. At the Morelli outlet in Harrods, where a bespoke ice-cream service is offered, customers are requesting such combinations as Parmesan and pear, Gorgonzola and honey, and, even weirder, Marmite. In Italy, meanwhile, the home of great ice cream, traditional flavours are being usurped by what is called gelato naturale - ice cream flavoured with all manner of vegetables and herbs, and with celery replacing the wooden lolly stick. And the less said about the barbecue-flavoured ice cream that is currently being pioneered in North Carolina the better.

It's not that savoury ice cream has never been around - there are some recipes, such as Camembert ice cream, that date back to 1800 - it's just that it has never been so terribly fashionable. The latest resurgence of the concept began with the emergence of "molecular gastronomy", and the experiments of chefs such as The Fat Duck's Heston Blumenthal in the UK, and El Bulli's Ferran Adria in Spain.

For those of you who have been looking the other way while The Fat Duck has picked up every award going, "molecular gastronomy" is the term used to define the scientific interest of chefs such as Blumenthal and Adria in the how and why of taste. It has allowed them to create combinations that would have been thought impossible, if not ridiculous, using the essence of various foods - the most famous example being Blumenthal's smoked bacon and egg ice cream.

But it was Ferran Adria who started the savoury ice-cream ball rolling at his much-fêted El Bulli restaurant in Spain(which is open only six months of the year so that Adria can dream up new taste riots for his customers). It was there that ice cream first turned up as a main course, with Adria's best-known variety being Parmesan flavoured, and his experiments in the medium have certainly played a part in his being hailed "the best chef in the world".

Anthony Flinn, who trained under Adria at El Bulli, and who is now making waves at his own restaurant, Anthony's, in Leeds, talks about the savoury ice-cream revolution with enthusiasm. No wonder: the Brie ice cream currently on his own menu is a big favourite with both diners and food critics. I ask him why he thinks savoury ice cream is so à la mode.

"It's just something different, isn't it?" he replies. "And that's got to be good. I went to a shop the other day to get peanuts for peanut ice cream, and the woman looked at me as if I were mad. So, if peanut ice cream is too much for people, then a lot of the stuff that's being made now is really going to blow their minds."

But how does Flinn discover that Brie ice cream, for example, is actually delicious? "It's all a question of playing around with taste, and seeing what works," he says. "It's about combinations. And, obviously, the more you can wow people, the better."

Flinn, though, is quick to sound a word of warning. "The whole savoury ice-cream thing has been around for seven years or so now - that's when chefs really started experimenting with it - and now it has been taken to the nth degree. It's like the whole combat-trouser thing. When Armani first brought out its first combats, they were really something, but when Topshop started selling them, you knew the value had been diminished a little.

"Everyone's doing savoury ice cream now, and that's why we're quite sparing in how much we serve in our restaurant. I've seen some terrible restaurants doing some terrible things with ice cream." Such as?

"Squid-ink ice cream? Who the hell thought of squid-ink ice cream? Why would you make it? Without sounding too pretentious, it's just a case of the controls being in the wrong hands. People are saying, what's the most insane, most provocative ice-cream flavour I can think of? And then they make it."

This certainly seems to be the mission of a number of chefs worldwide, for, as Richard Johnson, who writes on food for this paper, says: "Nothing says 'We want a Michelin star' more than savoury ice cream." So, we have Claude Bosi at Hibiscus in Ludlow serving ice cream of foie gras with a warm emulsion of brioche and balsamic vinegar. And Massimiliano Alajmo of Padua, who serves Gorgonzola ice cream with prune sauce, which sounds repulsive but is reputedly delicious. And Il Volto's chef Vittorio Fusari, who presents a summer risotto coupled with Parmesan ice cream and saffron jelly. And the Michelin judges seem to approve. Alajmo, Blumenthal and Adria all have three stars, while Claude Bosi has two.



At the other end of scale, though, there are some rank amateurs who are jumping on the bandwagon and giving savoury ice cream a bad name. It seems harsh to single out one manufacturer when there are increasing numbers of odd ice-cream related products on the market, but Udder Delight in Delaware surely takes the biscotti. The owner Chip Hearn has been pioneering barbecue-flavoured ice cream, which apparently tastes "a little like butter pecan", as well as "wasabi ginger", "black licorice", and the retch-inducing "mushroom pumpkin". The only point at which Chip had to admit defeat was with crabmeat ice cream, which wouldn't stick together. "If it doesn't work, it separates, it could freeze, it could be nasty," Hearn told The Washington Post.

Despite such nightmarish concoctions, there is clearly a huge market for savoury ice cream, a fact that was recognised two years ago by the British commercial giant Unilever. At the beginning of 2003, it announced "the biggest, most extensive programme in the history of ice cream" (whatever that means), and €100m (£71m) was invested, purely for research, with the savoury market forming a massive part of the company's investigations.

But are we really going to turn into a nation of savoury ice-cream nuts? Luca's, a well-known family-owned outlet in Edinburgh, recently decided to experiment with pea- flavoured ice cream in an attempt to encourage more children to eat vegetables. The ice cream was packed with peas, making it a vibrant green colour. It doesn't sound like anything I would have wanted to eat as a child, but apparently the youngsters up there are converts, and Luca's has ordered a new batch. "We were shocked," admits Yolanda Luca. "All the children seemed to love it, and one girl even asked for a second scoop. It was amazing. Personally, I thought it was disgusting. Whether it was just the colour that made it appealing to the kids, I don't know."

Despite such a glowing recommendation, I decide that my life will not be significantly enhanced by trying pea ice cream. At least I can count myself lucky that I'm not Japanese. In Tokyo, there has been a virulent strain of extreme ice-cream manufacture, which has thrown up such outlandish flavours as fish, chicken wings, ox tongue, eel, prawn, and octopus. The rush to create these ices has been attributed to cool summers, an elderly population, and the increasing popularity of frozen yoghurts, although the possibility of it all being a huge reality-TV stunt has not been ruled out.

Whether the entire savoury ice-cream frenzy will melt in the September sun remains to be seen. Top chefs still seem enamoured with ice cream as the stuff with which to create whole new culinary worlds, and a whole new price range on their menus. And now, with arrival of bespoke ice-cream making, anyone can satisfy their weirdest cravings. In the meantime, I'm going to stick with the flavour you're least likely to be served this summer - good old vanilla.

How to make Blumenthal's classic

SMOKED BACON AND EGG ICE CREAM

Ingredients:

300g sweet cured bacon
50g Alsace bacon
1 litre full-fat milk
25g milk powder
24 egg yolks
125g liquid glucose

Instructions:

Roast the bacon in an oven at 160C until it is slightly browned. Chop the bacon into small pieces. Add it to the cold milk, add the milk powder and leave to marinate overnight. Tip the milk and bacon into a casserole and add the milk powder. Put the egg yolks and glucose in a mixing bowl and mix at high speed with an electric whisk until they are white and increased in volume. Heat the milk mixture to simmering and pour a little on the eggs, while still mixing. Add this back to the pan with the rest of the milk and cook to 85C. Hold it for 30 seconds then remove from the heat. Cool by stirring it over ice. Pass it through a chinois sieve to remove the bacon. Put it in a blender and liquidise until smooth. Finally, churn it in an ice-cream maker.

[bobster]

I like bacon. I like ice cream. Why not?

[Otis Westinghouse]

I would love to go to the Fat Duck. Heston is a genius. Molecular gastronomy - just the name is enough to get you salivating.

[El Vez]

Hmmm.....bacon

[spooky girlfriend]

I think I'm actually coming down with something, so this combo doesn't particularly sound all that great, but if it's got bacon in it, ElVez is in.

[RedShoes]

Ok then - I'll say it:

Eeeeeeeeeew!

[BlueChair]

Yeah, I'm all for bacon and egg, but in ice cream form? That's as bad as that turkey flavored soda Jones Soda came out with for fun.

[Who Shot Sam?]

I'd try it. I like bacon, I like eggs, and having it all in the form of a cool treat in the summer sounds good to me. I've seen some pretty funky sorbet aand gelato flavors out there, so this does not surprise me.

[verena]

Eh ! Yuk !

[Tim(e)]

A friend of mine who works in a Japanese restaurant makes his own sesame ice-cream thusly:

Buy black sesame powder from your friendly local Asian food store, buy a tub of plain vanilla ice-cream, soften ice-cream, mix together and replace in freezer... it is scrummiumptious.

Another nice combination is to mix rich dark chocolate ice-cream with very finely chopped/minced chilli or chilli powder.

[BlueChair]

I like green tea ice cream

[Tim(e)]

I like green tea ice cream

mmmm.. macha ice cream

[selfmademug]

My local joint sometimes has Guinness ice cream. It's quite good. Not soemthing you'd like more than a teacup full of, but good.

[Mr. Average]

In Europe, specifically Italy and possibly other EU countries, it is quite a delicacy to pour small amounts of REAL Balsamic Vinegar over vanilla bean ice-cream. The REAL stuff costs approximately 150$US/ounce, or something outrageous like that. I mean the REAL stuff. Supposedly, you haven't lived until you have tasted it, as mutually exclusive as these two items would seem to be.

I, clearly, haven't lived.

I stick with Butterscoth or hot caramel.

[stormwarning]

I had wasabi ice cream recently. It takes exactly like it sounds.

[Extreme Honey]

...I can picture an obese florida woman eating this Ice Cream and complaining about the lack of such ice creams in Canada (but than again I might already have seen that on the most american show that's out there....)


Thank god I'm still young and smart enough to completely avoid these things...I feel pitty towards those poor man who are actually married to some of them... (here's a typical one...)

[invisible Pole]

Extreme Honey wrote :

Thank god I'm still young and smart enough to completely avoid these things

You mean young and smart enough to avoid ice-creams ??
Looks like I've never been young and smart.

[BlueChair]

Are you implying that obese Florida women can't be young and smart?

And why are you turning a new ice cream flavor in England into a US vs Canada debate like everything else?

[RedShoes]

...I can picture an obese florida woman eating this Ice Cream and complaining about the lack of such ice creams in Canada

All I wanna know is why Floridians (obese or not) would care if this ice cream were available in Canada?

[selfmademug]

the most american show that's out there

Actually I think it might be a British import, like What Not To Wear, though I'm not sure. Oh, and nice random pot shot at the disabled!

You may be young but you sure as hell ain't smart, as none of your posts make any sense. How you manage to even turn on your computer when you have both a massive chip on your shoulder AND something apparently large and angular up your ass is beyond me.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Yep, Wife Swap, a British classic. Like holiday swap it's basically subtitled 'The British Class System Is Alive and Kicking' (and definitely not in a wheelchair). Both take people from differing ends (normally) of the social spectrum, make all of their prejudices come true regarding how much they look down on people like them, and end up with a loud shouting match. Needless to say, it's utterly compelling. It can be genuinely interesting and even moving when people really learn things from it, as they often seem to do about their relationships in Wife Swap, e.g. that they are really a tyrannical nazi to live with. The change of scene is like a mirror held up to their true nature, not always, but often.

[Goody2Shoes]

Another nice combination is to mix rich dark chocolate ice-cream with very finely chopped/minced chilli or chilli powder.

A chef friend of mind makes this regularly, and it is faboo.

The experimental squid ink ice cream, as mentioned in the article, was less successful. Fortunately, it didn't make it to her menu.

[mood swung]

is there something wrong with vanilla, chocolate and/or strawberry? but the world's greatest ice cream achievement was surely the Dreamsicle.

[Extreme Honey]

Was my post so hard to understand and so abnoxious??
It's simple, when I was reading this article it reminded me of a very ignorant, obese and american woman (most likely from Florida, the state I hate the most). She's eating this Ice-cream and complaining about the lack of that type of flavour in Canada (she's just randomly bitching about like most of them do).
I added in Wife swap 'cause I just think it's fu**ing hilarious looking at these ignorant idiots. The perfect candidate for this show would be the woman I previously mentioned.
That's about it. I don't think it was that hard to explain. I didn't mean to stem another anti-US thang but it always happens. I don't any more pro-americans teasing me about it, it's not a hateful thought it's a random thought I was thinking.

Selfmademug, god knows why you act the way you do but as far as I'm concerned, you shouldn't post such a hurtful post here. As for the disabled, It was just a lil pic I found, nothing meant by it. But than again there's always something racist and stereotypical with you americans eh??? For your Information, I'm young and I'm sure as hell smart. Anywho, when I said I'm smart enough to avois these things I didn't mean Ice creams I meant obese american women. It's beyond me how they can actually get husbands, who probably cheat on them and don't even love them. What's wrong with a diet? Slelfmademug, again, that was a pretty nasty post man, you should be ashamed. Is it worth rushing to america's defence for the dumbest thing and making yourself look like a mean asshole?? C'mon man, it ain't worth it, just let the opinions about the US be. But than again I suppose I'm the same regarding posting hurtful things...

Anyway, let's forget about this whole shiza and turn our heads to real flavour:

----Honey and Nuts Ice cream!---- (Seems simple to make too)

[selfmademug]

Extreme Thomasso, the hilarious part that you don't get --because you waltz in here like you can peg everyone's complex and varied opinions out of your sheer perceptive genius-- is that I am usually criticized here for NOT jumping to America's defense; I am in fact highly critical of a good chunk of America's policies, foreign and domestic, very possibly some of the same ones you find abhorrant.

However, I don't take kindly to cowardly idiots who have a 2-dimensional idea of millions of people who live in this country, or anywhere for that matter. Sorry, so-called 'random' stereotyping of fat women being stupid, and stupid women being from Florida, and also the idea that a fat woman somehow couldn't 'get' a husband, IS hateful, or more accurately and simply, ignorant.

You could've found any "lil pic" you wanted. Is there someone who makes you post the words you do and then "it always happens" that they're denigrating generalized groups of people?

I can post about you because I'm reacting to specific things you wrote. You're making denigrating statements (written and pictorial) about people based on their size, where they live, and whether they can walk. And you think I'm the one making hateful statements and being nasty. You're a laugh. You set up straw men (or in this case women) to knock them down; it's an idiot's logic.

By the way, man, I'm not a man.