Better than a Fiat, Not a Ferrari

My childhood summers featured homegrown corn and tomatoes, just picked beans and okra, crookneck and zucchini squash out the yazoo, and our own grass-fed beef. On weekend nights Dad would often grill a “grass-and-whatever-else-those-fool-cows-ate” steak in the huge concrete block “pit” he constructed with my nine-year-old assistance and we’d eat at the big round custom-poured concrete table on the patio. (Dad had a thing about concrete.)

Those meals often featured homemade ice cream and this, of course, is why people used to have children. You need a minimum of three – one to sit on a thick wad of newspaper on the ice cream maker to keep it from turning over, one to turn the crank, and one to disappear. Supposedly everyone takes turns sitting on the machine and freezing their butt off, cranking the machine until their arm is falling off, and then recuperating. Now that we have electric ice cream makers I see little reason to have children, but some folks are just old-fashioned I suppose.

At any rate, although I don’t have children I do have an electric ice cream machine. I bought a factory rebuilt Cuisinart ice cream maker (I’m chepa and I’ve been lucky with factory rebuilt equipment of all sorts) for $40 a couple of years ago and I make four or five batches of ice cream every summer. (By the way, Amazon currently has ice cream machines on sale.) Most recently I decided to make orange gelato.

According to Food Lover’s Companion: “Gelato doesn’t contain a much air as its American counterpart and therefore has a denser texture.” According to David Lebovitz, author of The Perfect Scoop, “Gelato means frozen in Italian, so it embraces the various kinds of ice cream made in Italy, and that’s the best definition one can offer.” Lebovitz, then goes on to say that typically, gelato machines move very slowly as they churn, and so introduce little air into the mixture – which echoes Food Lover’s Companion.

This particular ice cream is indeed dense which is why I call it gelato. It doesn’t have a custard base, which makes it easier to make, and the addition of orange liqueur makes it a bit softer than it would ordinarily be – another characteristic of gelato.

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Orange Gelato
Makes about 1 1/2 quarts.

2 1/4 cups freshly squeezed orange juice (strain to remove pulp)
1/3 cup (100 grams) granulated white sugar (or to taste)
1 Tbsp. orange zest
1/4 cup orange liqueur (such as Grand Marnier or Triple Sec)
1 1/4 cups heavy whipping cream — cold
1/4 cup whole milk — cold
2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
Candied orange peel (optional, see below)

In a small sauce pan, reduce orange juice by 1/2 cup to 1 3/4 cups. Add sugar and orange zest and simmer, stirring, until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature. Stir in orange liqueur and chill in refrigerator for 4 hours (until approximately 40 degrees).

Combine all ingredients and process in ice cream freezer according to manufacturer’s directions.* Then scoop into a container and chill in freezer for at least two hours until set.

Garnish with candied orange peel or candied ginger.

*Note: I’ve found that 24 hours isn’t long enough to get the container properly cold — I suspect because I keep opening the freezer for ice cubes in the summer — simply frozen (no sloshing) doesn’t work, it must be 0 degrees. So I give it 48 hours to chill before making ice cream.

Search on “ice cream” to find more of my recipes.

More ice cream recipes…

No-cook Ice Cream Base – kitchenMage
Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream Recipe – David Lebovitz
Very Berry Cherry Sorbet – Newlywife

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