Sometimes the best things come from not thinking things through, like for example, most of us. The initial idea behind this dessert was a garnish for an upcoming lemon & thyme risotto. I found the pear would complement the flavours perfectly and rolled my sleeves up only to find out midway through that it would look bland presentation wise. Therefor I decided to adjust my sails and with a few alterations transformed the initial garnish into an actual dessert.
The base:
Ice cream generally consists of 4 main ingredients: Milk fat, sweetener, emulsifiers and flavouring.
Milk fat greatly contributes to both taste and texture of the finished product. Taste wise, fat contributes to the buttery and rich flavour and is the terminal bearer of the added flavouring to the ice cream. Also, high fat content prolongs the mouthfeel effect after consumption.
Texture wise, fat makes the ice cream smooth and creamy. Frozen ice cream is made up of tiny ice crystals, without sufficient amount of fat, the texture of the ice cream would be coarse and hard. This is especially important for storing ice cream. When ice cream is stored in a freezer it goes through recrystallisation, during which ice crystals increase in size leading to an even coarser texture. Fat solids stall this increase of crystal size during recrystallisation preserving the smooth texture.
Main role of adding sweeteners in ice cream is to enhance the natural flavour and provide sweetness. Sugar also greatly aids in creating a soft and smooth texture during initial freezing by reducing the growth rate of ice crystals. However, adding too much sugar on the other hand will cloak the flavour itself and produce an ice cream that melts too fast.
Emulsifiers are used in ice cream to produce a drier and smoother texture and to increase the resistance of melting during consumption, as well as increase the resistance of shrinking during storage. Most common natural emulsifiers in homemade ice creams are egg yolks and butter milk. Due to a number of reasons, I opted for not adding eggs nor buttermilk to my recipe but benefited from the high protein content in the ricotta to supplement the emulsifier needs.
The flavour:
Now that we have our base sorted out and explained, it’s time to build up the flavours. The star of the show, as can be read from the title is pear, with a little touch of vanilla extract to give it a slight boost.
There are numerous ways to incorporate the pear itself into the ice cream but I find achieving the Maillard reaction extracts the most flavours and releases the most water which in this case is a huge plus.
How long you want to bake the pears for is up to you, but I didn’t want to go too far as to overpower the subtle sweet ricotta taste which I quite love. As soon as they were completely tender, golden brown on the outside I popped them out of the oven and proceeded to blend.
