Let me tell you about something wonderful and a little crazy. Last summer (i know...but i had a 6 month old baby. and a full-time job!) our friend John Mark-- who is btw, literally the nicest, most wonderful, most thoughtful guy in the whole Delta-- brought us a giant paper sack of sweet corn from his farm. He's also the friend who supplied us with a raised garden bed full of the best soil for growing things ON EARTH, but I digress.
After we'd eaten enough corn on the cobb to turn us yellow on the outside, I decided I should try something a little adventurous. I mean, I love making ice creams, and I had Jeni's ice cream at home cookbook full of savory flavors and creams mixed with alcohol and herbs, so why not attempt a sweet-corn version? Luckily, there were some recipes out there that I could draw on to get the sweet-corn flavor while I used my favorite custard base. Also, I made an AMAZING blueberry sauce for this (I mean, seriously, blueberries and sweet corn...what's MORE summer than that?) The recipe's not on this blog but if you want it, leave a comment. But back to the ice cream...
Sweet Corn Ice Cream
Makes 1-1.5 quarts
What you need:
4-5 ears of fresh corn on the cob (you need the cobs, too!)
2 cups heavy cream
2 cup white sugar (divided 1/2 cup +1 1/2 cups)
2 cups whole milk
6 egg yolks
What you do:
Ok, first thing's first... you need to briefly boil your corn... just a little to make sure it's cooked a bit. Once that's cooled a bit, you cut the corn off the cob and cut the cobs in half.
Now you're ready to make my very standard and most favorite plain custard base. Put the corn cobs in a saucepan (JUST the cobs, now.) You'll fill the pan with the milk,
cream, and the 1/2 cup of sugar. Then, warm the milk and cream in a saucepan
until it steams but IS NOT boiling, stirring it pretty regularly. Just BARELY bring the mixture to a boil (but not quite boiling...it should be steaming, then turn off the heat. Let this sit for 10 minutes or so, steeping (consider this your corn tea!)
While you wait, you'll need to separate your eggs into a small to medium bowl and mixing in
the rest of the sugar to the yolks. Also, you'll want to use an immersion blender (how did I LIVE without this invention before?) or a regular food processor to puree' the corn kernels. You're going to add them in at the end, and you DO NOT WANT to chip a tooth on hard, whole frozen corn kernels, so this is an important step. Once that's done, set it aside for one of the last steps.
When the corn has steeped in the milk/sugar mixture, turn the heat back
on and let the mixture simmer. Once it's warm again, Take a few quarter
cups of the steaming milk and pour it slowly
into the bowl with the sugar and eggs. This warms the egg yolks up
slowly so they don't scramble. Then, I pour the sugar/yolk
mixture back into the saucepan. Note: You're going to strain the corn
kernels out in a bit, so don't worry about straining any scrambled egg
out just yet.
Now you can take out the corn cobs, and once that's done, you'll want to bring the
temperature back up to almost boiling here (you don't want to curdle the
milk but you DO want to cook the egg) stirring the whole time until it
has thickened enough so it will coat the back of a spoon. Add in about 2/3 of the pureed corn kernels and put the corn custard into a plastic bag and let it cool for 30 minutes or so (I make an ice in a roasting pan bath like the one below.)
At this point, you'll want to strain your mixture since you've got corn kernels and possibly cooked egg all up in there. (ick). I've got a really fine wire strainer, but cheesecloth works great, too.
Throw your strained custard into your ice cream maker and follow the directions. Once you're ALMOST done (think: the custard is starting to firm up) toss in the last 1/4 of the pureed corn. This gives yoru ice cream a little texture, and keeps it from looking just like super yellow french vanilla. Serve!
Now, just a note about this flavor. It tastes JUST LIKE sweet corn. I was crazy about it as this is one of my favorite things about summer, but some of my family found this a little weird. Again, I LOVED the heck out of it. But I also didn't want a whole lot of at once... a tiny bowl-full is about all I wanted. I found that the blueberry syrup gave it a more "desserty" feel, so you may want to try that too! :)
Labels: dessert, ice creams, summer, sweets, vegetables
