For me, the best ice cream is coffee ice cream. It is a perfect balance of bitter and sweet. Our version uses Turkish-style coffee and a bit of cardamom to add Arabic flavor. Because the coffee is so finely ground, we don’t strain it all out before we freeze it, which gives the finished ice cream a nice speckled look and texture.
- Combine the cream, milk, coffee, and cardamom in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Remove the saucepan from the heat and let the mixture steep for 10 minutes.
- Combine the egg yolks and sugar in a large heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water. (The bottom of the bowl shouldn’t touch the water.) Whisk until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture falls from the whisk in ribbons when you lift it out of the bowl, about 2 minutes. Add the cream mixture and stir with a rubber spatula, scraping the sides to prevent coagulation, until the mixture reaches 180°F.
- Strain out some of the coffee grounds, pour into a container, cover, and refrigerate overnight. Churn in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
Yield: 1 quart
Excerpted with permission from ZAHAV by Michael Solomonov. Copyright © 2015 by Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook. Photography © 2015 by Mike Persico. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Chef Michael Solomonov was born in Israel and grew up in Pittsburgh. He and Steven Cook are the co-owners of CookNSolo Restaurants, home to some of Philadelphia's most distinctive culinary concepts, including Zahav, Federal Donuts, Abe Fisher, Dizengoff, Rooster Soup Co., and Goldie. They are a combined four-time James Beard Award Winners, including the 2016 "Best International Cookbook" and "Book of the Year" awards for their first cookbook, Zahav, and a 2011 "Best Chef Mid-Atlantic" win for Solomonov and who in May, was named the 2017 JBF's "Outstanding Chef".
