By Leslie Brenner
All of a sudden, we’re in the height of stone fruit season, and nectarines have been spectacular. This simple sorbet — adapted from a recipe in The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz — is fabulous on its own, and even more special with dropped into glasses of red wine.
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By Leslie Brenner
Last time I made bastani — the saffron and rosewater ice cream that’s one of Iran’s most famous and beloved desserts — my friend Greg closed his eyes, seeming to drift away to a faraway land, and said: “This may be the best ice cream I’ve ever had.”
After having tweaked my recipe a couple times, I knew I’d gotten it right.
There are several different ways to approach bastani. Traditionally, it includes salep (also transliterated as sahlab), a flour made from orchid tubers, which gives it a distinctive sticky-chewy texture. Sometimes bastani also includes nuggets of frozen clotted cream, or chopped pistachios folded in.
Egg yolks are another variable: Some versions use a lot of them, maybe six yolks for a quart of ice cream; others do without eggs entirely.
Whatever direction you take, chances are excellent that your bastani will be dreamy. How could it not? Rosewater and saffron are such an enchanting combination.
To make a custardy bastani, which is probably most common, combine and heat cream, milk, sugar and saffron, whisk the hot mixture into whisked egg yolks, slowly cook, stirring, until it coats a spoon, strain and stir in rosewater and vanilla. Chill it down and freeze in your ice cream maker.
I like bastani rich, but not heart-stoppingly so: Three yolks tastes just right.
And I keep it simpler — going for a smooth and velvety vibe; mine skips the salep and clotted cream. Chopped pistachios go on top as a final flourish, if I use them, along with dried rose petals. If you want to lean more into the pistachio vibe, go ahead and stir some in before you freeze it. Or skip the nuts, if you’re so inclined — it’s also delightful without them.
Want to try something really fun? Consider making the ice cream sandwiches known as bastani-e nooni or bastani-e nuni — a scoop of bastani between two round ice-cream wafers. Or you could plop a scoop into a waffle cone, for a pointy spin on that traditional treat.
If your goal, on the other hand, is to impress Greg, just serve a scoop or two in small dishes, and scatter those dried rose petals and crushed pistachios on top.
READ: Cookbooks We Love: David Lebovitz’s ‘The Perfect Scoop’ is the only ice cream book you’ll ever need
READ: For a luscious treat this weekend, make Gianduja-Stracciatella (hazelnut-chocolate) Gelato
RECIPE: ‘The Perfect Scoop’ Matcha Ice Cream
RECIPE: Syrian-Lebanese Rice Pudding
RECIPE: Sweet Pineapple Tamales
Our photo of ‘The Perfect Scoop’ shows the 2007 first-edition paperback, but our review refers to the 2018 updated and revised edition.
By Leslie Brenner
Backgrounder: Paris-based former Chez Panisse pastry chef David Lebovitz has a wonderful blog and website (which you should be following if you love sweets or French cooking); we always refer to his section on Paris restaurants when we find ourselves in the City of Lights. He is the author of many excellent books, including Drinking French, Ready for Dessert, My Sweet Life in Paris and others (he has published nine in total), and The Perfect Scoop is our favorite of them all. Originally published in 2007, Lebovitz revised and updated it in 2018, adding a dozen new recipes, and it is that edition that’s the basis of this review and the recipes we’ve adapted.
Why We Love it: Lebovitz is the undisputed king of ice cream, and we’ve been making his frozen desserts since way back when the book was first published. The recipes always work perfectly as written, but they’re eminently riffable, and even provide such a strong foundation that if you’re a confident cook, you can probably start creating your own recipes. Besides chapters on the frozen desserts themselves, there are also chapters on Sauces and Toppings (Classic Hot Fudge, Cajeta, Candied Red Beans), Mix-Ins (Butter Pecans, Peppermint Patties) and “Vessels” (Ice Cream Cones, Crêpes, Profiteroles, Brownies).
We’ve made or tasted probably at least a dozen frozen desserts in the book, which besides ice cream, also includes gelatos, sorbets, sherbets and sorbettos, frozen yogurts, ices, granitas and ice pops. Recently, we made up a batch of Lebovitz’s Watermelon Sorbetto, pouring into ice-pop molds and turning it into not-too-sweet watermelon paletas (so good!). His Lavender-Honey Ice Cream is one of our favorites ever; Peach Ice Cream is a Philadelphia-style (no eggs) classic you’ll love all summer long; Cinnamon Ice Cream is classic as well. At Christmastime, Egg Nog Ice Cream is killer, and any time of year, Lemon Sorbet is a terrific version of classic lemon Italian ice. (You’ll have to buy the book to get those recipes, but believe me, you won’t be sorry.)
Gianduja Gelato with Straciatella from ‘The Perfect Scoop’
Recently we fell in love with (and wrote about) the Gianduja (hazelnut-chocolate) Gelato swirled with the Stracciatella (Italian-style chocolate chips) found in the Mix-Ins chapter.
Matcha Ice Cream from ‘The Perfect Scoop’
Lovers of Japanese sweets will adore Lebovitz’s green tea ice cream. Made with matcha and rich with egg yolks, it is quite simply the best we’ve ever tasted.
You’ll have to save for the winter, when mandarins (also known as tangerines) are in season and at their most flavorful, to fully appreciate Lebovitz’s Tangerine Sorbet. But do keep it in mind — with an incredible purity of flavor, it’s one of our all-time favorite winter desserts.
Nectarine Sorbet from ‘The Perfect Scoop’
You’ve Gotta Try This: In Southwest France, where I’ve spent a lot of time over the last three decades, my French in-laws have a delightful custom of slicing a ripe peach into their red wine glasses at the end of dinner. The peaches get macerated, turning them into a glorious, light dessert, so fab with the red wine. A few years ago, I tried to develop a peach ice cream recipe that would replicate those flavors, but never succeeded. Lo and behold Lebovitz’s recipe for Nectarine Sorbet, which he suggests scooping into wine glasses and letting everyone pour in red wine to their taste. Dare I say it’s even better than the real thing!? The sorbet on its own is pretty magnificent — and easy to make, especially as nectarines don’t require peeling.
Nectarine Sorbet is marvelous in a glass of red wine.
Still Wanna Make: Oh, man — where do I start?! Chartreuse Ice Cream is high on the list (will do that soon!), and so are Toasted Almond & Candied Cherry; Aztec Chocolate; Toasted Coconut; Dried-Apricot-Pistachio; and Prune-Armagnac (all ice creams). Among the dairy-free recipes, I feel a batch of Pineapple Sorbet coming on soon. And doesn’t Cucumber-Gin Sorbet sound like fun?
I’m guessing you’re half-way out of your seat and ready to churn; make sure your ice-cream-maker insert is in the freezer.
If You Don’t Yet Have an Ice-cream Maker: Do spring for one — it’s well worth it if you love ice creams and sorbets as much as we do. Our 15+ year-old Cuisinart finally died a month ago, and I bought a new one with a larger capacity — the Cuisinart ICE-70. It’s not inexpensive, at about $139 (at the moment), but I appreciate that it can churn up to 1 1/2 quarts of ice cream. (Note that it is not the 2 quarts its specs suggest; a full review is coming soon!) The New York Times Wirecutter highly recommends the much less pricey Cuisinart ICE-21 (my purchase was also based on a positive Wirecutter review, among others), but at three-quarters capacity, I believe that would cause overflow problems with many recipes, including some of Lebovitz’s.
By Leslie Brenner
Given the unwanted Covid-19 pounds I’m still carrying around (dieting soon, promise!), I have no business making ice cream like it’s going out of style. But recently when I made a batch of fresh Bing Cherry Ice Cream and put it in my ice cream maker, the ancient yet trusty machine chose that moment to die.
I bought a new ice cream maker — a bigger, better version of my beloved Cuisinart machine that had been with me for something like 15 years. (I’ll write about that soon.)
The maker worked perfectly for the cherry ice cream, but then I suddenly had to know whether it also made perfect gelato, as it has a dedicated gelato setting. Although gelato is simply the Italian word for “ice cream,” as David Lebovitz points out in my favorite ice cream book, The Perfect Scoop, it is “usually less sweet than traditional ice cream, and it is very thick and somewhat sticky.” He goes on to explain that its “distinctively dense texture” is the result of very little air being whipped into it.
Lebovitz’s recipe for Gianduja Gelato jumped out at me, as I love classic gelato flavors, and you can’t get much more classic than giandiuja. Pronounced jahn-doo-yah, the Piedmontese hazelnut-chocolate confection (which is sometimes spelled gianduia) is the sweet that inspired Nutella — but it’s a hundred times better, with much purer flavors.
Although traditionally gianduja is made with dark chocolate (along with ground hazelnuts), Lebovitz’s recipe calls for milk chocolate. It sounded wonderful, but I wondered whether the four ounces of milk chocolate would make the gelato as chocolately I hoped it would be.
Then I noticed that the photo in the book showed Gianduja Gelato with an upgrade: stracciatella, or chocolate chips. Made by pouring melted dark chocolate into the gelato just as it’s finishing its churning routine, stracciatella may be one of the most important inventions every to come out of Italy — easily as significant as the radio, the Julian calendar, or confetti. “The flow of chocolate immediately hardens into streaks, which get shredded (stracciato) into ‘chips’ as the ice cream as stirred,” Lebovitz explains.
Yes! I had to have stracciatelli in my hazelnut gelato. And man, oh, man, is it awesome.
I’ve been parsimoniously rationing the gelato, allowing my husband Thierry as much as he’d like, but myself just very small scoop every couple of days. Not much help for my waistline, of course, but it is definitely making our heat wave here in Dallas a wee bit more delightful. In fact, it’s one of the best desserts to come out of my kitchen in a long while.