Olive oil gelato

It's ice cream season again.  I love making ice creams, sorbets and gelatos.  There are so many fun flavours to explore, and making ice cream really isn't a big deal.  It just requires a little forethought.  And an ice cream maker.  I use the KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment, simply because it's a relatively good ice cream maker that doesn't require a ton of space and isn't super expensive.

So my first ice cream of the year is an olive oil gelato from Mario Batali's most recent book, Molto Gusto, altered slightly by me:

3 ½ cups milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
1 cup sugar
10 large egg yolks at room temperature
1 tsp salt
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
Red Gold volcanic clay sea salt (or other fun, coloured salt)

You'll want a tasty olive oil. I used this one:



Heat the milk, cream and ¾ cup of sugar and the 1 tsp of salt in a double boiler over medium heat until the sugar dissolves.



Meanwhile, beat the egg yolks with the remaining sugar, until light and fluffy.  Slowly add the warm milk mixture.  You want to make an emulsion, so it's important that you add the first bits of the milk mixture slowly.



Prepare an ice bath, with a bowl large enough to hold the egg and milk mixture set inside the ice bath.

Pour the egg and milk mixture back into the double boiler, and heat over low heat, mixing constantly.  You want to mix this until a thermometer sitting in the egg and milk mix registers 185° F.  Immediately pour the mix into the bowl sitting in the ice bath.  Cool and mix for a few minutes, then add the vanilla, cover and transfer to the fridge.



Chill overnight.  Now make the gelato using your ice cream maker's instructions.  In the case of the KitchenAid attachment, I freeze the bowl for 2-3 days prior to making ice cream.  Then, while the bowl is mixing, pour in the chilled custard.  (It has to be mixing, or the custard will freeze hard, and you'll make frozen chunks of custard instead of gelato).



Mix for 10-15 minutes, then add the olive oil.



Mix for another 10-15 minutes.  Then transfer to a container, and freeze overnight in a freezer to cure, or harden the gelato.

Serve with a drizzling of olive oil and a sprinkling of a sea salt (preferably coloured, for presentation purposes).



This is a fascinating gelato.  The flavour is rich and bright.  The salt is absolutely necessary (in the photo above, it may even be too lightly salted) to help cut the fat.  The olive oil and cream make this a really rich dessert.  It's tasty, but it's easy to have too much (think cheesecake).  One to two scoops at a time is a perfect serving size, so make this stuff for a large gathering, or you'll be swimming in it.  So, who's coming over for olive oil gelato?