Citrus & pistachio icecream

November 2, 2013

We sorted through a lot of our possessions during our recent house move, including our recipe books. Most time-consuming was the pile of handwritten, printed and newspaper-clipped recipes - I've been holding onto some of them since I was a teenager, and have used very few of them since moving to Melbourne. I edited my collection ruthlessly and vowed to make and blog the ones I kept.

This icecream made the cut. It was a print-out that I'd emailed to myself from my university desk in Brisbane. (I was a little surprised to find it now on the Woman's Day website, and I wonder how I originally stumbled across it.) I remember churning this in our yellow West End flat, freezing it in a big blue bowl, and walking it over to the house of Michael's brother and his girlfriend, to share after dinner.

This time around I made the citrus and pistachio icecream to finish a meal we'd prepared for a few of Michael's workmates. (We relied on two Ottolenghi faves for the main course.) It lived up to my happy memories of it - creamy, sweet and sour, with dots of colour and crunch. It's not a major hassle, either, using whole eggs rather than just the yolks, and directions that don't require an icecream maker at all.

Citrus & pistachio icecream
(seemingly found on the Woman's Day website)

1 cup milk
1 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
440mL cream
zest and juice of 2 limes
zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 cup pistachios

Gently warm the milk in a saucepan. In a medium bowl, whisk together the sugar and eggs. Gradually pour the warm milk into the bowl, whisking as you go. When it's all well mixed, pour everything back into the saucepan and stir it over medium heat but try not to let it boil. Keep stirring and cooking the custard for up to 10 minutes, until it's thickened. Take the mixture off the heat and allow it to cool for a few minutes.

Whisk the cream plus the zest and juice of the limes and lemons into the custard. If you're not using an icecream maker, stir in the pistachios and pour the icecream custard into loaf pans to freeze. Otherwise, churn the lemon-lime custard in an icecream maker and add the pistachios in the last 10 minutes. Freeze the icecream for at least 4 hours before serving.