Green tea and Buddha’s hand ice cream

SERVES 4

250 ml (9 fl oz/1 cup) milk

10 teaspoons green leaf tea

1 Buddha’s hand (use a green one as it is more intense than one that has gone yellow — see note)

500 ml (17 fl oz/2 cups) cream

1 egg, beaten

165 g (5¾ oz/¾ cup) sugar

Heat 125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) of the milk in a saucepan until quite warm but not boiling. Add the green tea and let it steep for a minute or 2 still over the heat. The tea will soak up most of the milk so pour in the remaining milk after the tea has steeped for the first minute. Pour the milk and tea through a fine sieve into a clean saucepan. Squash the tea leaves with the back of a spoon to extract as much of the milk as possible. Discard the leaves. At this point the milk will taste very bitter but don’t worry.

Using a vegetable peeler, peel thin strips of the green skin off the Buddha’s hand — all the fragrance and flavour comes from the skin. Add the strips of skin to the milk along with the cream, egg and sugar. Heat the milk over medium heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Allow the skin to steep in the milk for at least 10 minutes.

Remove the pan from the heat and remove the skin peelings. Transfer the mixture to a shallow bowl and place in the freezer to chill. Once cold enough, put it in your ice-cream machine and churn until you arrive at the desired consistency. Depending on your machine this could take between 30 minutes and 1 hour.

Put the ice cream in a bowl or container and leave in the freezer until you are ready to serve. Keep in mind that ice cream made like this will melt very quickly so it is often better to serve in a martini type glass with a little fruit on the top as a garnish if you wish. If you leave the ice cream in the freezer for a couple of days it will become harder.

Buddha’s hand is an unusual variety of citrus fruit. The fruit resembles a hand with finger-like segments. The peel is used to flavour desserts, salads and seafood. If you can’t find a Buddha’s hand, you can use the zest from 1 lime and 1 lemon as a substitute.