How to Cook Well at Christmas with Rory O'Connell airs on RTÉ One at 7:30pm on Sunday, 22 December, and 7pm Monday, 23 December.
Ingredients
Serves 6-8
This method makes ice cream with an old fashioned taste and texture. I love it. Based on an egg mousse, it produces a rich and lovely result with a firmer texture than a custard based ice cream. This type of ice cream was often use to create extravagant multi layered iced confections known as "bombes", which are out of fashion now, but still fantastic to eat.
A thick syrup, poured on to beaten egg yolks creates a rich mousse. The vanilla and whipped cream are simply folded into the mousse and then the ice cream is placed in a freezer to set. Further additions are added to the cold or semi-frozen ice cream to be returned to the freezer to finish freezing. No ice cream machine is required here, as pure cream is used and due to the richness of that cream, the mixture requires no churning.
Serves 8
- 110g sugar
- 70ml water
- 4 large egg yolks
- 1200ml softly whipped cream
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract plus the optional addition of the seeds scraped from a 4 cm piece of vanilla pod
- 12 "mi-cuit" prunes, stones removed, torn into coarse quarters and soaked in 4 tablespoons of whiskey for at least 24 hours
- 160g Amarena candied cherries removed from their syrup, and coarsely chopped
- 100g of diced candied orange and lemon peel
Flaked Almond Brittle
- 110g granulated sugar
- 100g flaked almonds
Chocolate Sauce
Rich and dark with a lacquer like shine, chocolate sauce is a classic and it is easy. The most important ingredient is clearly the chocolate, so search for the best quality you can find. I use Valhrona, a wonderful chocolate from France and generally use the 62% cocoa solid version. If I need a particularly intensely flavoured sauce I will use 70% cocoa solids.
I serve the sauce with ice creams and some chocolate puddings. The sauce is best when freshly made but will keep in the fridge for several weeks. If I have stored it for a while, I always warm it up gently before serving.
Serves 6-10 as a sauce
- 150g best quality chocolate, 62-70% cocoa solids, finely chopped
- 75ml cream
- 75ml milk
- ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract or 1 tablespoon rum
Method
- Place the sugar and water in a heavy bottomed saucepan and bring to the boil. Stir the sugar gently a few times with a wooden spoon to encourage it to dissolve before the water comes to the boil.
- Once the syrup comes to the boil do not stir it again as it can cause the syrup to become crystallized. While the syrup is cooking at a gentle boil, whisk up the egg yolks to a light, pale and fluffy mousse. When the syrup reaches the "thread" stage it will look thick and have large bubbles breaking on the surface and when a metal spoon is dipped into the syrup, it will fall off in a slowish thick viscous stream, leaving an obvious thread at the end. If you are using a sugar thermometer the temperature of the syrup will be 106-113c / 223-236f.
- Remove the syrup from the heat and immediately pour on to the egg yolks in a quick steady stream with the whisk running at full speed all of the time.
- Make sure you do not pour the syrup down on top of the rotating whisk, but allow it to hit the side of the bowl and run down on to the egg yolks. If the syrup hits the whisk first, it tends to fly off and stick to the sides of the bowl and never come in contact with the eggs yolks. Continue to whisk to a thick pale mousse. This can take 15 minutes to happen. You will know it is thick enough when the whisk will almost stand up on its own in the mousse. Allow the mousse to cool. I put the bowl in the fridge for 20 minutes or so, and then with a rubber spatula fold in the drained prunes, drained cherries, candied peel, vanilla and cream thoroughly. Place in a covered freezer container and freeze.
- Once the ice cream is semi frozen, stir the mixture again to suspend the fruit in the freezing ice cream. Cover and replace in the freezer until frozen.
- Remove from the freezer 10 minutes before serving. Scoop into balls and serve scattered with the almond brittle.
Almond brittle
- Place the sugar in a low sided heavy based sauce pan and put over a moderate heat. Slowly the sugar will warm, melt and begin to caramelize. Use a wooden spoon and also tilt the pan backwards and forwards to encourage the sugar to caramelize evenly. As soon as an even light chestnut colour has been achieved, pull the pan off the heat and immediately add the almonds.
- Stir in gently to coat the nuts in the caramel and again acting quickly, scrape them out of the pan on to a sheet of parchment paper or a non-stick cooking mat.
- Spread out to achieve a thin layer. Allow to cool completely before breaking into bite sized pieces.
Chocolate Sauce
- Place the chocolate, cream, milk and vanilla in a small saucepan and all the while whisking, melt over a low heat until the sauce is a rich and glossy colour and sauce like in consistency. Keep the chocolate sauce in a warm place, such as sitting in the saucepan that you melted it in with the heat turned off.
- Several other flavours to add to Chocolate Sauce
- Replace the rum in the recipe with whiskey or brandy or an orange liqueur
- Omit the rum in the recipe and add a ¼ teaspoon of finely grated orange zest to the sauce at the end of cooking.
