2019-07-01_Louisiana_Cookin

Louisiana Cookin’ | July/August 2019 90

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What are some of your favorite fruits to work with?

Obviously, strawberries are top of the list. Peaches down

here are one of my favorite things to work with because

you can treat them in so many ways. You can roast

them, you can poach them, you can serve them fresh.

How did you get into making ice cream?

I petitioned my former chef Justin Devillier at La Petite

Grocery to get me an ice cream maker because I was

so passionate about playing with diff erent kinds of

ice creams, specifi cally because I think they’re really

versatile. You can infuse them with coriander and

cardamom and vanilla. You can drizzle them with

sauces. You can add texture and crunch by topping

them with meringues or nuts or brittles, or you can turn

them into a sandwich. It’s like a blank slate for pastry.

What's your favorite ice cream fl avor?

Ooh, that’s a really tough one. All right, if I’m thinking

of an ice cream that I personally make, I really love

coriander ice cream with a bittersweet chocolate sauce

on top of it. But if I’m buying ice cream in the store,

then it’s Coff ee Toff ee Bar Crunch by Ben & Jerry’s.

Tell us more about this ice cream sandwich.

Th e base is a vanilla bean ice cream, and I add a little

touch of rose water to it because I really think that

strawberries and rose play well together. A big problem,

especially when people are using home ice cream

makers with fruit-based ice creams, is that fruit has

such a high water content, so the ice cream can get kind

of icy and kind of dense and hard. So, when you roast

the strawberries, you’re reducing and releasing a lot of

that water and it becomes that thick syrup, and that will

really prevent the ice cream from being hard and icy.

And this is an olive oil cake?

It’s an olive oil and cornmeal cake. It’s super simple. You

don’t even need a mixer to make it; you can just whisk

it in a bowl. It’s incredibly versatile. You could add

orange blossom water or lemon zest to it. You could

use a variety of diff erent olive oils. We used a Spanish

extra-virgin olive oil, which I think is super fruity and

full-bodied. [Th is cake is] a blank slate as well.

What tips do you have for making this sandwich?

Patience. With a lot of ice cream makers that the average

home chef would have, the product’s going to be pretty

soft when you’re pulling it from the ice cream maker, so

it really helps to let the ice cream set in a shallow metal

container for a decent while before you try to assemble

the sandwiches. I think you would want to start a few

days ahead of time, unless you’re willing to eat it right

away, because it’s going to melt pretty quickly. Set a

shallow metal dish in the freezer, put the ice cream in

that, let it fi rm up overnight, and then, the next day,

assembling will be considerably easier. You can assemble

them and then place them back on a metal tray, put

it back in the freezer, and they’ll hold pretty well. You

could also wrap them in parchment paper if you wanted

to transport them. Buy dry ice if you’re going to hold

them in a cooler for a period of time.

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