VANILLA BEAN ICE-CREAM

from Guillaume Brahimi

This is the most luxurious and deeply satisfying ice-cream. Pastry-chef Kirsty Solomon from Guillaume at Bennelong says it is what many chefs would choose as their last taste on earth … having tasted it, we know why!

Makes 1 litre

375 ml cream

375 ml milk

2 vanilla pods, seeds scraped

150 g (⅔ cup) white sugar

8 egg yolks

Combine the cream, milk, vanilla seeds and scraped pods in a large saucepan and bring to a simmer.

Meanwhile, combine the sugar and egg yolks in a bowl and beat with electric beaters until pale and thick. Remove the beaters and gradually pour in the hot cream mixture, stirring until combined.

Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. Strain the custard through a fine sieve into a bowl set over ice. Make sure you scrape all the vanilla seeds from the bottom of the sieve back into the custard. Leave the mixture to cool on the ice for a while, then chill in the refrigerator for 2 hours. Transfer to an ice-cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

If you don’t have an ice-cream maker, you can freeze the bowl of mixture for 1½ hours. Remove from the freezer and stir well with a fork or beat with electric beaters, then return to the freezer. Repeat this every hour for another 3 hours or so (the more times you mix the ice-cream, the smoother and lighter the results). After the last mix, transfer the ice-cream to a container with a lid.