Fall Ice Cream: Apple-Quince-Lemon verbena

It's become harder to blog on a regular basis. I write less frequently, with sudden bursts of posts. Somehow I continue my average diet of 10 posts a month. Here we go.

A major disadvantage about cooking at night in Fall-Winter is the lack of natural light. I'm counting: only 122 more days to go to Spring. If you consider ice cream in combination with artificial lux an anomaly, don't think just yet that your ice cream maker should go into hiding.

Here is ice cream with Fall fruit, from Peter Bauwens' book on ice cream, IJs en sorbets uit eigen tuin (isbn 9789044716399) - Ice and sorbets from your own garden. The apples and quince were self-picked.

Apple-Quince-Lemon verbena Ice Cream

2-3 apples
1 quince
agave or maple syrup
a handfull of fresh lemon verbena leaves

Peel and cut the apples and quince in wedges, and stew until tender over low heat, with no extra water, or else the tiniest amount, in an enamel-coated pot. The idea is to let the fruit stew in its own juice. Start with the quince, and after about 20' add the apple. Let cool.

Add 1-2 tablespoons agave or maple syrup to taste, and add the verbena leaves. Give this a brief mix, then transfer to the ice cream maker. Make sure you add some syrup, Bauwens says, because the ice cream tends to taste less sweet afterwards.

Serve at once or store away in the freezer.

Meanwhile I have ogled Dr. Ben Kim's method of banana ice cream: by freezing pieces of banana and by later putting these pieces through the champion juicer. Out creeps creamy delight. So don't store away the juicer either.