By Julie
Guten Tag! This week I am relaxing at my
parents‘ in Germany, enjoying the sunny
weather after having spent some very cold and rainy days in Pamplona the week
before. Browsing the Feinschmecker
magazine, I came across a fantastic recipe for cucumber ice-cream by a North
German top chef, Sebastian Zier, and fell in love with it at first sight. I was reminded of my honeymoon in the
Venezuelan Andes, where my husband and I sampled a meagre 8 flavours of a whopping 800 in the Heladeria Coromoto, which made it
into the Guiness Book of Records . Surprisingly, the best flavours in my
opinion were the vegetable ones – corn or avocado, for example, were fantastic!
You have
to know that both Diana and I love the Bulgarian soup Tarator, a wonderfully
light concoction of yogurt, cucumber and walnuts, which is perfect for the hot
summery days we are experiencing. However, I am almost certain that Tarator
ice-cream was missing on the menu of the Coromoto ice-cream parlour in Merida.
Hence, this week’s contribution to the blog will be a refreshing blend of
Balkan heat and North German coolness. Sounds
weird? You will love it!
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| © Diana Chaccour |
Ingredients
Yield: serves 4
50 g sugar
50 ml water
20 g glucose (=dextrose) powder (In Germany, this is sold in
pharmacies. It serves to give add some sweet creaminess to the consistency but
if you cannot find it where you live, simply use 60 g of sugar instead of the
original 50)
1 fresh cucumber
5 g dill (about two stems), chopped
50 g Greek yogurt
50 g plain yogurt
Salt
1-2 teaspoons lime juice
200 ml cream
40 g finely chopped walnuts
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| © Diana Chaccour |
Preparation method
Make syrup by boiling sugar, glucose and water
for about 2 min or until all the sugars have dissolved. Cool down completely.
Peel the cucumber partially (that is to say,
leave some very thin strips of the peel, it gives the final product a nicer
colour), cut it in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds with the help of a
small spoon. Cut the cucumber in rough cubes.
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| © Diana Chaccour |
Now blend the dill, yogurt and
sugar syrup with the cucumber using an electric blender. Add salt and lime
juice to taste and stir in the cream and chopped walnuts. Now transfer in a plastic or metal container to
your freezer.
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| © Diana Chaccour |
If you don’t want to have a hard frozen mass at the end, keep
mixing the contents every hour until frozen. This works really well if you
choose a rather flat container (or several smaller ones) for your ice-cream and
roughen up the half-frozen mass using a fork.
Alternatively, the lucky ones among you use an ice-cream maker. Now find
a place in the sun, feet up and enjoy!
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| © Diana Chaccour |
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| © Diana Chaccour |
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