Vanilla Ice Cream. Slater styleeee.

It's been a while since I played with my new ice cream machine and also quite a while since I had a 'Dom Pedro' (recipe to follow soon).  So this week I hunted out Nigel Slater's faithful vanilla ice cream recipe, and the rest is history.

Ingredients - serve 6

600 ml whole milk (or half and half milk and cream)
1 large vanilla pod
6 egg yolks
150 g caster sugar

(Make sure your ice cream machine is prepared, I had to put mine in the freezer for 24 hours.)

Method

1. Put a large clean bowl in the fridge.
2. Put the milk (or cream and milk) in a saucepan.
3. Slice the vanilla pod in half and using the tip of a sharp knife scrape out the sticky black seeds and add to the saucepan along with the scraped vanilla pod.

4. Bring the mixture almost to the boil, turn the heat off and leave for 30 minutes for the vanilla to flavour the milk.
5. Beat the yolks and the sugar in a bowl until light and fluffy.
6. Remove the vanilla pod from the saucepan and pour the milk mixture through a sieve and into the egg mixture, stirring until you get a thin custard.

7. Put the custard in a saucepan over a moderate heat bringing it towards the boil, stirring all the time (including in the 'corners' of the pan) until it is thick enough to thinly coat the back of your wooden spoon.  DO NOT BOIL OR OVER HEAT OR IT WILL CURDLE!

8. Remove the bowl from the fridge and pour in the custard.  Allow it to cool and then pop in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before pouring it into your prepared ice cream machine and churn until done.

Vanilla ice cream is not always the star of the show, being more of a wing-man to a 'proper' pudding.  However, South Africans seem pretty hooked on serving it with chocolate sauce, do the same with this homemade version and you'll be king or queen of the night.  Yum yum yum.