Cacio e pepe ICE CREAM
Awww yeeah, the deliciousness abounds
Earlier this year I fell in love with Cacio e Pepe. If you haven’t had it yet you are really missing out (unless you’re vegan in which case, why are you reading about ice cream?) Not only is a delicious dish but it is epically simple.
You basically mix 1 cup of finely shredded (think microplane fine) Grana Padano cheese, finely shredded Parmeseano Reggiano, about 3 tablespoons of freshly ground (a must) black pepper, and some water enough to create a paste. Then you add cooked pasta and, if need be, some pasta water. It melts and becomes this amazing sauce.
I love the flavor of black pepper and had been considering doing just a black peppercorn ice cream. But then it dawned on me why not go for broke and make a Cacio e Pepe ice cream?
mmmm…ice cream…base
I used this recipe from Smitten Kitchen as the basis but modified it to use just 6 egg yolks and swapped out 1 cup of the regular sugar called for with lite brown sugar. The result is a delicious buttermilk ice cream base that is perfectly rich despite halving the number of egg yolks called for.
The Hot Swirl
The spicy paste!
Wow, that section headline just sounds wrong. Anyway, I used a combination of spices to create the swirl. Here’s the thing, it isn’t perfected yet. I need to get it to be more drippy like a caramel or thick fruit syrup.