The Scoop on a Rich Life

It’s been exactly a year since three friends chipped in and bought me an ice cream maker for my birthday. I had wanted and asked for one, but having one in my possession gave me pause: a single woman, alone, with such a machine? Wasn’t this a recipe for temporary consolation leading to permanent misery?

I remembered what happened when I went far away to college and discovered the soda fountain in a nearby drugstore. Oh, what solace that counter gave to a timid, achingly lonely undergraduate! And that June, when I trundled off the plane 20 pounds heavier than I’d been at Christmas, my mother’s complexion turned from fresh peach to vanilla.

Would something like this happen again? Would I retire from the world to my own private gelateria, only to emerge a few months later as an inflated, lumbering version of myself?

On the other hand, I feared I might never use the thing. Like so many other household gadgets that seemed like a good idea at the time (pasta maker, cherry pitter, yogurt incubator), would it too hog shelf space only to wind up marked $5 on a blanket in my driveway?

I’m happy to report that the machine has neither caused significant weight gain nor suffered from prolonged disuse. In fact, the cunning little appliance has wrought some very pleasant changes in my life.

The first and best thing I did after unpacking the machine (other than promptly assigning the canister a permanent spot in my freezer) was to read Alice Waters’ recipe for old-fashioned vanilla ice cream: 3 quarts cold half and half, 1 cup sugar, 2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract, all poured directly into the ice cream maker, whisked, then processed. This is not the richest ice cream but, as Waters points out, it is very “cold-tasting.” Ice creams made with richer creams and/or eggs, she says, never taste quite as cold. “I like ice cream that makes my head hurt from the cold,” she writes. I agree.

Throughout my childhood, ice cream served the same function as swimming holes and swimming pools, air-conditioned libraries and standing in front of the open refrigerator: It was yet another way to beat the summer heat.

The simplicity of Waters’ recipe and her chilly aesthetic inspired me, and within 24 hours, I was making ice cream. Mine is not a high-powered, fancy machine, just a small housed engine and a canister whose thick walls are filled with some kind of freezable substance that stays cold long enough to turn liquids into semi-solid solids. The ice cream from my little Krups never gets as hard as the ice cream from those enormous several-hundred dollar models but, like the best soft-serve ice cream, it does impart that coveted, headache-courting coldness.

Perhaps the first change making ice cream wrought in my life was that I did not have to purchase or send thank you notes for my birthday present; I simply made fresh nectarine ice cream and delivered it to the three friends who’d chipped in on the gift. Already, my social life was improving.

An additional, simultaneous change was the sudden (and continued) appearance of high-fat dairy liquids in my refrigerator: pints of cream, quarts of half and half--heady stuff in a culture that thinks 2% milk is living it up in the butterfat zone. For a short, crazy spell, I caught myself muttering calculations: “1 tablespoon half and half has 20 calories and there are 4 tablespoons in a quarter cup, which means a half a cup of ice cream has at least 160, and a full cup has 320, and then there’s the sugar at 13 calories. . . .”

I was cured of these madwoman mutterings when somebody told me how many calories were in all those trendy, virtuous-seeming commercial fruit smoothies.

And I never had to eat ice cream alone. Ice cream is an intrinsically social food.

I found I did leave the house less often on ice cream-related errands. My friends and I ceased running to Campanile on a regular basis for Nancy Silverton’s creme frai^che ice cream, for example. Instead, I’d buy a carton of creme frai^che, thin it with milk, whisk it up with scrapings from the inside of a vanilla bean and sugar, then turn on the device. Shortly we’d have enough creme frai^che ice cream to cure our cravings--permanently, if we weren’t careful. Talk about rich. (I have to say my product isn’t as subtle or well-textured as Silverton’s, but there’s always hope. . . .)

Since my birthday fell in August, I also found myself newly armed and ready for the onslaught of fall fruits. I made a pear sorbet with scraped Tahitian vanilla bean. And pomegranate ice cream, a beautiful mauve substance studded with jewel-like frozen seeds that were particularly pleasing to chew--and oh, were they cold. And finally, I figured out what to do with the huge sack of oozing persimmons that invariably shows up at my door every autumn: a spicy, pumpkin-orange ice cream with a beguiling almost slippery smoothness.

Then, after I ate orange buttermilk ice cream at Pinot at the Chronicle, I considered having a buttermilk pipeline installed in my kitchen. For those of my friends who actually limit their fat intake (and don’t just whine about it as I do), buttermilk is a happy solution in ice cream: It adds a rich, tangy dimension without undue calories or dreaded fat grams. I made a chocolate buttermilk ice cream (OK, OK, I added some real cream to the mix, but you don’t have to), and spicy molasses buttermilk ice cream that was especially good with an apple pie. When my editor came to dinner at the spur of the moment, I made a tart lemon-buttermilk ice cream; we ate ample mounds of the stuff: cold, cold, cold.

Having an ice cream maker, I discovered, made it so that I could offer a homemade dessert and impress my guests with sinfully minimal effort.

Not too long ago, a man I knew was coming over to see me. It was one of the first hot days of summer. I was boiling water for coffee when I noticed some half and half and some creme frai^che in the fridge. Impulsively, I decided to make ice cream too.

I pulled the machine’s canister from the freezer, poured in the sugar and creams, scraped a vanilla bean and set the whole thing to churning. When my guest arrived, the machine was making the diligent grinding noise of a small engine inching toward a great height. By the time there was fresh hot coffee, there was also fresh cold ice cream. I served great, cloud-like masses of the stuff along with crisp little cinnamon cookies.

This man, who happened to be very handsome and charming, ate wordlessly. When he looked up, his eyes were full of pleasant light.

“You really know how to live life, don’t you?” he said. “Making ice cream just like that!”

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The following recipes were developed by Charity Ferreira.

VANILLA BEAN ICE CREAM

2 cups heavy whipping cream

2 1/2 cups whole milk

1 vanilla bean

1 3/4 cups sugar

4 egg yolks

Pour cream and milk into heavy-bottomed pan. Split vanilla bean lengthwise. Scrape seeds into cream mixture and add pod. Heat over low heat to just below simmer. Stir in 1 cup sugar until dissolved.

Lightly beat yolks with remaining 3/4 cup sugar. Add small amount of hot cream mixture to yolks to temper and whisk to combine. Whisk tempered yolks into cream mixture.

Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens slightly, 10 to 15 minutes. Do not allow mixture to boil.

Strain. Cover and refrigerate until cold, about 4 hours or overnight. Freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions or in freezer (see Cook’s Tips).

About 5 cups. Each 1/2-cup serving:

356 calories; 52 mg sodium; 179 mg cholesterol; 21 grams fat; 39 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams protein; 0 fiber.

BUTTERMILK ICE CREAM

2 cups heavy whipping cream

1 3/4 cups sugar

4 egg yolks

2 1/2 cups buttermilk

This slightly tangy ice cream goes wonderfully with a scoop of strawberry sorbet.

Heat cream and 1 cup sugar in heavy-bottomed pan over low heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved.

Lightly beat yolks with remaining 3/4 cup sugar. Add small amount of hot cream mixture to yolks to temper and whisk to combine. Whisk tempered yolks into cream mixture.

Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens slightly, 10 to 15 minutes. Do not allow mixture to boil.

Strain mixture and stir in buttermilk. Cover and refrigerate until cold, about 4 hours or overnight. Freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions or in freezer (see Cook’s Tips).

About 5 cups. Each 1/2-cup serving:

350 calories; 86 mg sodium; 177 mg cholesterol; 21 grams fat; 39 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams protein; 0 fiber.

STRAWBERRY SORBET (LOW-FAT COOKING)

2 pints strawberries, stemmed and quartered

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 cup sugar

Puree strawberries in blender or food processor. Strain through coarse strainer. Whisk in lemon juice and sugar. Freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturers instructions or in freezer (see Cook’s Tips).

About 3 cups. Each 1/2-cup serving:

161 calories; 1 mg sodium; 0 cholesterol; 0 fat; 41 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram protein; 0.57 gram fiber.

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CHIEF’S TIP

If you don’t have an ice cream maker, you can still make sorbets and ice creams.

For sorbets, pour the base into a shallow, nonreactive container (glass baking pans and old-fashioned ice cube trays without the separators work well). Freeze the mixture until there is a 1-inch rim of frozen base around the edge, about 1 hour. Stir the mixture with a fork until slushy. Return the mixture to the freezer again until there is a 1-inch rim of frozen base around the edge, about 1 hour. Stir again with a fork until slushy. Repeat a third time, then leave the mixture in the freezer until it is almost solid, 1 to 2 hours, depending on coldness of freezer. Stir mixture again, then let mixture freeze undisturbed until ready to serve.

For ice creams, follow sorbet directions for freezing, but instead of stirring the mixture until slushy, beat it with a fork or in blender or food processor until smooth.

* More Recipes on H6.