No Churn Ice Cream

I saw this recipe last year in Good Food … actually, thinking about it it could even have been the year before.  Anyway, it was a very long time ago.  I duly bookmarked it, thought “Gosh, what a good idea!” and forgot about it.  What a mistake to make! All this time I could have been enjoying delicious, EASY, homemade ice cream!  Because we all know that food you’ve made yourself a) tastes better and b) has no calories, right? Right?

Just pretend you can see the ice cream for all the strawberries, yeah? I grew 3 of those babies! First helping of the year! Woohoo! (Helping is generous, yes, but my strawberry plants have not been happy this year so I’m ecstatic!) I can testify that this ice cream is delicious in many ways: on its own, with cherry sauce, with chocolate sauce and with strawberries.  I tested it well for you!

Makes 1.3 (ish) litres (a Mackie’s 1l tub and about a bowl full top of that) (The recipe said a large loaf tin)

600ml double cream
~200g condensed milk (1/2 a tin)
1 tsp vanilla extract
~1/3 of a vanilla pod

– Put the cream, condensed milk and vanilla extract in a large mixing bowl.
– Split the vanilla pod and use the back of a knife to scrape out the seeds and add these to the mixture.
– Use an electric whisk (or really epic elbow grease) beat the mixture until it reaches stiff peaks.  (Recipe said clotted cream consistency.)
– Scrape the mixture into your chosen receptacle(s) and freeze until solid.

 

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Holidays and Haydari

Hello! Sorry for the long break in posts, I went on holiday! Mum and I jetted off to Turkey for a week of R&R, sun, sea, sand etc.  It was lovely to get away from it all for a bit, it’s amazing how much better I feel with a tan, the wonders of vitamin D eh! We didn’t do too much, just chilled out by the pool/on the beach reading.  We did put in one epic day trip to Pamukkale though, so very very very worth it!

It took 4 hours to get there but I saw a lot of Turkey as it is rather that as a tourist resort. The women still work the fields by hand with scythes and hoes! Once there it was just an incredible site, absolutely unique.  It’s much bigger than you would think too.  We swam in Cleopatra’s Pool and I grazed my knee on a sunken Roman column. There were plenty of interesting ruins for me to geek about too!  On the outward journey we visited an onyx factory, and I won an onxy egg that was carved in front of us!  On the return journey we visited a carpet factory… I can now identify many types of carpet, yay!

Turkish food seems to be variations on several themes: meat (either on a stick or not), kofte (minced meat, eithr on a stick or not), tomato based casserole (cooked in various receptacles for various lengths of time).  All of these were ususally served with chips, rice, mashed potato, bread, tomato, cucumber, onion, cabbage/lettuce and carrot.  Turkish breakfast wasn’t that far removed we had hard boiled eggs with cucumber, tomato, a feta type cheese, olives bread and jam.  I certainly got my 5 a day! One thing I got really into was Meze, a mixture of lots of different salad things with bread for dipping.  My favourite, and, happily, the easiest to reproduce, was Haydari.  It’s similar to Tzatziki but this is yogurt with mint and garlic.

Serves 1-6 (depends how many other things you have going on)

~200g greek yogurt
2 cloves garlic, crushed
~ small handful fresh mint leaves
pinch of salt

– Put in a bowl and mix.
– Ta da!

The flavours develop well if left overnight but if you’re whipping this up in a hurry it’s good to go straight away.

TIP: To finely chop herbs put the herbs in a small glass/bowl/mug and use scissors to snip, snip, snip at the herbs until they’re as fine as you want them.

I served this with another of my favuourite snacks; houmous!  I simply take a tub of supermarket houmous and mix in a few spoons of red pesto and some chopped sundried tomatoes and job’s a good’un!