FEATURED RECIPE

Goat Cheese Marionberry Habanero Ice Cream

📷

Tyler Malek

Episode 45

featured in

Episode 45

Excerpted with permission from:

Salt & Straw Ice Cream Cookbook

We love Portland Creamery’s Sweet Fire chèvre so much that we devoted a flavor to it. Cheesemaker Liz Alvis tops her creamy, tangy triumph—from a herd of free-roaming goats in Molalla, Oregon—with syrup made from habanero chiles and the blackberry cousins called marionberries. To celebrate every rich, fiery bite, we make ice cream from her exceptional cheese and add streaks of marionberry jam infused with the floral, hot-hot-hot chile. Your favorite goat cheese will fit the bill and so will seedless blackberry or black raspberry jam, if you can’t get your hands on marionberry. The amount of chile is up to you, too, though remember that the bigger the wallop of spiciness, the sweeter the next lick of cold cream.

INGREDIENTS

3 cups Ice Cream Base (recipe follows) very cold
6 ounces (⅔ cup) fresh goat cheese, at room temperature
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ cup Marionberry Habanero Jam (recipe follows)

Directions

Combine the ice cream base, goat cheese, and salt in a bowl and use a stick blender to completely incorporate the cheese. If you’re using a frozen-bowl type of machine, cover and chill in the fridge until cold. Stir in the lemon juice, then immediately pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and turn on the machine. Churn just until the mixture has the texture of soft-serve.
Stir the jam with a fork to loosen it. Alternate spooning layers of the mixture and generous dollops of jam in freezer-friendly containers.
Cover with parchment paper, pressing it to the surface of the ice cream so it adheres, then cover with a lid. It’s okay if the parchment hangs over the rim. Store it in the coldest part of your freezer (farthest from the door) until firm, at least 6 hours. It will keep for up to 3 months.

ICE CREAM BASE

(makes about 3 cups)

INGREDIENTS:

½ cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons dry milk powder
¼ teaspoon xanthan gum
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1⅓ cups whole milk
1⅓ cups heavy cream

DIRECTIONS:

Add the cream and whisk until fully combined. Transfer the mixture to an airtight container and refrigerate until well chilled, at least 6 hours, or for even better texture and flavor, 24 hours. Stir the base back together if it separates during the resting time. The base can be further stored in the fridge for up to 1 week or in the freezer for up to 3 months. (Just be sure to fully thaw the frozen base before using it.)
In ice cream industry circles, we talk about “aging” a base. When you make this base and then stick it in the fridge overnight before freezing it, you give the proteins in the milk, which were stressed when heated, a chance to relax. No, it’s not 100 percent necessary, but it’s highly recommended. Your ice cream will be markedly better—the texture smoother, the milk flavor more robust—like the way stews taste better the day after you make them.

**Note: Following the instructions for the bases will yield a few more tablespoons than the amount called for in the recipes. This is intentional—so you’re sure to have enough base, even when a bit inevitably gets left behind here and there in the pan, in the storage container, and the like.

MARIONBERRY-HABANERO JAM

(makes about ¾ cup)

INGREDIENTS:

11-ounce jar seedless marionberry, seedless blackberry, or seedless black raspberry jam
1 fresh habanero chile, coarsely chopped, seeds removed if you prefer less heat

DIRECTIONS:

Combine ¼ cup of the jam and the habanero in a small saucepan. Cook over medium/low heat, stirring the mixture occasionally, until the jam liquefies and just begins to simmer, about 5 minutes.
Strain the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer into a bowl, then add the remaining jam and stir well to combine. Refrigerate until fully chilled. Stored in a glass jar with a tight-fitting lid, the jam will keep in the fridge for up to 6 months.

Reprinted from Salt & Straw Ice Cream Cookbook. Copyright © 2019 by Salt & Straw, LLC. Photographs copyright © 2018 by Andrew Lee Thomas. Published by Clarkson Potter, an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC.