NOTE: This is a post I wrote last month, in the eye of the storm that was setting up our kitchen, but never got round to posting. Better late than never!
Last week we started receiving deliveries from different ingredients suppliers. We also had a couple farmers pop by to see our kitchen, and chat about the fruit they will be harvesting over the summer (and which we want to get our grubby ice cream-churning paws on!). Although the kitchen is up and running, we’re still sorting out other various aspects of the business, including pest control, waste disposal, cleaning schedules and various other important things, so we didn’t have time to photograph some of the beautiful ingredients which came into the kitchen over the course of the week, which included: blueberries, strawberries, a kilo of Ugandan vanilla pods, 10kg organic chocolate, a LOT of cream and milk and eggs, and lemons.
The lemons came from my mother’s garden. You would never mistake these lemons for commercially grown, physically identical fruit you buy in the supermarket. They were gnarly, different sizes, varieties and shapes, still had leaves attached, ripened on the tree (not in cold storage!), and juicy, flavourful and a pleasure to cook with. There were Cape rough and Eureka and Meyer lemons all jumbled together, delicate, green-tinted specimens, sunshine-yellow giant globes and sunset-orange fruit the size of ping pong balls.
When we have more time we want to make lemon ice cream with one variety at a time, to compare the flavours, but for now, we mixed them all together to make lemon ice cream that tasted sweet and tart and creamy, flecked with zest and tangy with lemon juice. A couple of our customers on Thursday night said the ice cream reminded them of lemon meringue pie. And although the lemon ice cream couldn’t compete in terms of popularity with our chocolate ice cream, we did notice that most of the people who were sent by other happy customers to try our ice cream, said they had tasted the lemon.
Thanks, Mum.
