Lavender & Provençal
My spring started with a quick hush-hush visit to the Provençal district of the French Rivera. If I may mention few of the highlights of my trip then the beautiful beaches, chic shopping, gastronomic delight, atmospheric cafes and open air markets cannot go without mention. You transcend into a different galaxy altogether. Keeping the description as short as possible since all this will be laced and presented in my next travel story. We will concentrate on the food aspect of my trip. If you are in Provençal then you should buy the dried herbs mix and the dried Lavender from the district. It is different from the all other online purchase’s I have ever done for my floral products. It almost fresh and pure as a plucked flower.
Lavender brings back sweet memories of my English singing classes with our beautiful teacher Zarin. She is as beautiful as the song and she played the piano wonderfully. I am sure this refreshes your memories of this famous 17th century English folk song and nursery rhyme.
Lavender’s blue, dilly, dilly, lavender’s green,When I am king, dilly, dilly, You shall be queen.Who told you so, dilly, dilly, who told you so?’Twas my own heart, dilly, dilly, that told me so.
Ice cream factory
Every summer we visited our grandparents place. Summers at my grandpa’s place were rollicky in spite of the scorching sun, personifying the adage “There were some problems only coffee and ice cream could fix”. My grandfather’s house was just a stone’s throw away from the ice creme factory. We would jump the fence running through our common well late in the afternoon, then sneak into the ice cream factory. The inside was cool as our freezer at home. There were huge freezers with moulds to freeze the ice cream sticks. There were all kinds of flavours like orange, cola, coconut, pineapple and mango ice creams. The very sight made me weak in my knees. My favourite is the orange stick which colours the tongue orange and lasts till the last lick (icy and juicy). Even after the ice cream was over I would keep admiring my orange coloured tongue in the mirror. One day I was happily coming back licking my coconut ice cream and to my horror I found my grandfather standing in front of me. Then started his verbal sermon on ill effects of the divine stick and so on so forth…lets not delve into the details ;-0 . I don’t know whether it was fear, scorchning heat or my grandfathers stern words the ice cream melted and fell on the road. This very memory of my dear ice cream factory and my grandfather’s scolding is very close to me. Memories are very precious, it is an event in your life you recall not only about what happened, but also how you felt – an emotional memory. We need them to relish our present because we cherish our memories. (wait…was that a tongue twister).
With age the liking for ice transformed into maniac love for ice cream. I keep making all sorts of ice creams not necessarily to feed my family 😉 for me. I eat ice cream for my myself and y daughter inherits the passion. I cannot say a no to her each time she asks ” Mamma ice cream”. On that note lets lick our new ice cream on the block Lavender Ice cream frosted with memories from my childhood and Provençal romanticism.
- 300 ml milk
- 3 large egg yolks
- 100 gm castor sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 300 ml double cream
- 2 tsp dried Lavender
- Heat the milk gently in a pan for 1-2 minutes without letting it boil in a bowl whisk together the egg yolks and sugar. Pour the hot milk over this mixture and whisk to combine, then return to the pan.
- Stir in the vanilla extract and the Lavender and cook over a low heat for 12-15 minutes, stirring continuously with a wooden spoon so the eggs don’t scramble,When the custard coats the back of the spoon, leave it to cool.
- Pour the cooled Lavender custard into a tub.Freeze for 3 hours until the mixture is slushy. Lightly whip the double cream. Remove the custard from the freezer and whisk the semi-frozen mixture well to break any ice crystals. Fold in the double cream until combined. Freeze for 2 hours.
- Repeat the beating and freezing once more to get a creamy texture, then freeze until solid.
- Scoop and serve it with your favourite sprinklers.
Look at those gorgeous pictures, hand and the model <3