cracked cardamom ice cream

cardamom Ice Cream

Note: allow time for custard mixture to cool, 6 hours or more. You can make this on consecutive days.

Ingredients: 

• 1 heaping teaspoon cardamom seeds - removed from the green pods (note: do not use ground cardamom powder. You can sometimes find whole seeds minus the green husks, or whole green pods. Smashing the green pods a bit in a mortar and pestle, or using the bottom of a saucepan, makes it easier to remove the seeds. See picture below)

• 1 cup whole milk

• 2 cups heavy (whipping) cream

• 6 egg yolks

• 2/3 cup granulated sugar

• 2 TBS brown sugar

• 1 pinch sea salt

Instructions: 

1. Prepare cardamom seeds. Pound them in a mortar and pestle or carefully whiz them in a spice grinder a few times, until you get a consistency like coarsely ground pepper (with some finer particles and some larger ones). Measure out 1/4 teaspoon of the ground cardamom and set it aside until freezing time.

2. Put milk, cream, half the sugar, brown sugar, salt, and 3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom seeds in a heavy saucepan and whisk to combine. Set over medium-high heat. In a medium metal bowl, whisk together yolks and remaining half of sugar. Watch the cream mixture very carefully until it just begins to foam and bubble on the sides–it will boil over quickly! Turn heat off and ladle some of cream mixture into the yolks, whisking together. Do this with a few more ladles full of cream mixture, then turn heat back on low. Pour contents of bowl back into saucepan, whisking the whole time, cooking gently over medium-low heat until mixture begins to thicken slightly–enough to lightly coat the back of a spoon. Remove from heat immediately.

3. Pour mixture into a clean bowl. To cool more quickly, set the bowl over a larger bowl with ice in the bottom. Cover with plastic wrap with a couple of holes poked in it–this will let steam out and prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate, stirring occasionally, at least 6 hours or overnight. Mixture must be very cold for most ice cream makers. 

4. When ready to freeze, get your ice cream maker ready, and strain ice cream mixture into a clean bowl with a fine mesh strainer, pressing on cardamom seeds to extract maximum flavor. Discard contents of strainer. Stir the 1/4 teaspoon of reserved, ground seeds into the ice cream mixture and freeze ice cream according to your machine's instructions. 

• Note: The purpose of reserving a few seeds for the end is to give the ice cream some flavor “surprises”: little extra bursts of cardamom in each bite.