What’s cooking today: Cardamom ice cream & turmeric tuiles

Wrap the tuiles around wooden spoon handles while still warm and pliable. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

By Tony Jackman

12 May 2021

This recipe was devised as a dessert to follow a curry; cool, crisp and refreshing but nicely spicy too.

The turmeric tuiles:

Ingredients

1/3 cup/ 80 ml flour

½ cup/ 125 ml castor sugar + 2 Tbsp

Pinch of salt

1 scant tsp turmeric powder

½ tsp cumin seeds

½ tsp fennel seeds

Whites of 3 large eggs

2.5 Tbsp/ 37.5 ml butter, melted

Parchment paper

3 extra Tbsp melted butter for the parchment paper

A little milk, as needed

Method

Allow yourself time for the batter to rest (see below).

Sift the flour twice in a large bowl, or even a third time. This is key to having a light batter which spreads effortlessly when baking.

Stir the sugar and salt into the flour, then whisk in the egg whites (be very careful not to allow any drops of yolk in) and the 2 ½ Tbsp of melted butter, quickly. Stir in the turmeric and seeds.

Leave the batter aside to rest for 90 minutes.

You want the mixture to be fairly runny, not stiff.

Preheat the oven to 180℃.

With the remaining butter, generously grease 3 or 4 sheets of parchment paper (on separate baking sheets if you have enough, or repeatedly use the same pan but with clean and freshly buttered parchment). Use more butter if you like.

Roughly 1 heaped Tbsp should make one tuile. Drip 1 Tbsp of the batter onto one part of the buttered parchment (which is now lining a baking tray), using your eye to estimate how widely it will spread.

Use a finger dipped in a little cold milk to spread them around into a circle about the diameter of a small saucer, as evenly as you can.

Leave enough space between each one for them to spread in the oven. Four to five tuiles is the most you want in one batch.

Have a cylindrical object to hand such as the handle of a wooden spoon or a slim rolling pin.

Wrap the tuiles around wooden spoon handles while still warm and pliable. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. On removing them from the oven, wrap a tuile around the handle of the wooden spoon or other object, pressing the edge in lightly and holding it down on a board. Leave it to rest and harden while you repeat that with the rest of them. Slip the spoon out of them for repeated use. You can use several wooden spoons/ objects or drape tuiles over upturned small bowls or glasses, to make little tuile “bowls” in which to serve ice cream or a cold pudding.

Repeat this process with the remaining batter; it should take three batches.

Sometimes the cool of the kitchen air will harden some of the flat tuiles in the pan before you can turn them out. If this happens, pop it back in the oven for a minute to soften it again.

The cardamom ice cream

Ingredients

Yolks of 6 large eggs

¾ cup/ 180 ml castor sugar

1 and ¼ cups/ 310 ml full cream milk

1 and ¾ cups/ 430 ml cream, not whipped

¼ tsp salt

16 cardamom pods

Method

Whisk the egg yolks in a metal bowl with ½ cup of the sugar until creamy and pale yellow. Set aside.

In a saucepan, heat the cream, milk and the remaining castor sugar with a hint of salt, on a very low heat. Add the whole cardamom pods. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, then leave on the lowest possible heat, or off the heat, for 10 minutes, stirring now and then, for the cardamom to infuse the milk. Taste it now and then until the cardamom flavour is to your satisfaction. Remove and discard the pods, counting them so that you know there are none remaining.

In a fine stream, pour the milk mixture into the bowl with the creamed egg and sugar mixture, stirring constantly, until all combined. Pour this back into the saucepan and put it on a low heat again, stirring or whisking all the while, until it thickens into a custard resembling a crème Anglaise and coats the back of a dessert spoon.

Pour it into a metal bowl (I use the same stainless steel one I used to mix the egg yolks and sugar) and put it in the freezer. I find that this recipe freezes perfectly, with no need for stirring after every couple of hours.

Remove it from the freezer about 10 minutes before serving, so that it softens slightly. DM/TGIFood

To enquire about Tony Jackman’s book, foodSTUFF (Human & Rousseau) please email him at [email protected]

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