What I owe to Japan? - GREEN TEA ICE CREAM & MOCHI; and my first time with a Philips Delizia Ice Cream Maker

I have been very busy lately in the clinic, mostly because there is an increase in oral surgery and extraction cases this time of the year, meaning I say the lines “Mag ice cream ho kayo pagkatapos or halo halo”/ “Take ice cream or yogurt after, a cold soft diet is the most comfortable at this time” quite often these days.

I  have been making homemade ice creams for quite some time now, even if I don’t own any ice cream maker. The recipe I use is a no-frill; super easy recipe that only requires egg whites and sour cream as its basic ingredients. More about that in a FUTURE post about “Super Easy Homemade Ice cream”. Well anyway, I came to know that my husband’s gracious aunt owns a Philips Delizia Ice Cream Maker and she’s willing to lend it to us since she has never used them. I elatedly accepted with extreme excitement, and came to get the machine the other night. I can finally make some custard base ice cream; I wanted to see its difference from my usual egg whites-sour cream base ones.

The first custard base recipe that came to my mind was the Green tea ice cream I got from one of F&B World living’s publishing; for I love green teas! I even wear a green tea perfume. Haha =)

So here’s how I made them and know later whether it’s really worth it to have some ice cream maker of your own.

Ingredients: (for 4 servings)

2 cups milk 

5-6 green tea bags (or 3 tbsp green tea leaves); I used Lipton's Clear Green

3/4 cup confectioner's sugar (caster sugar)

tip: using caster sugar will give your ice cream a finer and smooth texture since it dissolves quickly.

2 egg yolks 

tip: I have told you about the "Super Easy Homemade Ice Cream" right? So SAVE the egg whites for that; or make it into meringue, or anything; just DON'T discard it.

1 tbsp cornstarch

1 cup heavy cream 

(note: I could not find any heavy cream so I substituted slightly whipped whipping cream)

Directions:

 1) In a saucepan, boil 2 cups of milk. Remove from heat and stir in 6 green tea bags (I like strong green tea flavor, hence I used 6 bags. If you want it milder, stir in about 5 bags only.); and cover it to steep for 15 minutes. 

2) In a mixing bowl, beat the caster sugar into the yolks until pale yellow and thick. Beat in cornstarch. 

3) After 15 minutes, strain the milk mixture and remove tea bags. 

note: After straining the milk, I added 2 drops of green food coloring. As you can see, I wanted my Green Tea Ice Cream, well, GREEN; but I realized that the green tea bags that I bought was CLEAR. Silly me. =)

 Slowly beat warm milk into the egg mixture – this is called “Tempering”. You need to do this if you don’t want scrambled egg yolks. 

4) Then pour entire mixture back to the pan and cook over low heat; stir CONSTANTLY with a wooden spoon until custard thickens slightly. 

note: At this time, I wasn't contented with the "greenness" of this, so I added 2 more drops of green food coloring.

5) Remove from heat and pour the custard mixture into a strainer into a bowl, and cool slightly. 

note: I tasted this custard before adding the slightly whipped cream; it was perfect and this is the "green" tea color that I was aiming for.

6) While waiting for my custard to cool, I made some “mochis” to go with my ice cream. Original recipe for this was from Maangchi's Injeolmi. Here are the ingredients. 

7) In a microwaveable bowl, mix ½ cup glutinous rice flour, dash of salt and ½ tbsp of sugar.

 8) Add ¼ cup + 1/8 cup water, mix well. Cover it loosely with a cling wrap and microwave on high for 3 minutes. 

9) Put generous amount of Potato starch (cornstarch can also be used as substitute to potato starch) to a wooden chopping board as preparation for the microwaved mochis. 

10) Remove from microwave and mix with a wooden spoon (mochis tend to stick too much to metals) for about 20 seconds. Cover it again with a cling wrap and microwave on high for another minute. Once removed, mix as much as you can for it to be chewier then set aside to cool a little bit.

11) Transfer to the starched wooden board, generously coat your hands with potato starch and flatten the mochi dough.

12) Cut into bite size pieces using ceramic knife, (or coat your metal knife with the potato starch); coat with more potato starch to avoid them sticking to each other. Set aside. 

13) Let’s get back to the ice cream. Once custard is cooled, stir in the cream. 

note: After adding the cream, my custard mix lost its greenness so I took the liberty of adding 4 more drops of green food coloring. Note to self: must buy some MATCHA powder should I find one.

 14) You can already transfer this to another container, cover and freeze overnight. BUT since I have the Delizia, I used that. Before using it, I researched first how to properly use it. Manufacturer’s instruction says it only takes 30-40 minutes churning time and you’ll have some hard rock ice cream ready.

 BUT, after almost 2 hours, my ice cream mixture was still soft and gooey. So I ended up transferring it to a glass bowl , covering it with some aluminum foil and froze it overnight. What you can do to ensure your ice cream doesn't form “ice” crystals is to mix it every 30 minutes or so until frozen; but once or twice is enough in my experience.

15) Scoop the green tea Ice cream into a bowl and garnish as pleased. I garnished mine with some homemade sweetened adzuki beans (red monggo beans) and mochis.

The Green Tea Ice Cream was YUM, you can taste in each spoonful, the freshness of young green tea leaves; BUT I didn't get the color "green" that I was after so maybe next time I would add more green food coloring or buy myself some matcha powder instead.

The Philips Delizia Ice Cream Maker was a disillusionment last night ALTHOUGH I am not sure if the problem was because the machine was NEVER used or maybe the machine needed some dry run; or it has something to do with the recipe, which I doubt since it tasted great after freezing it overnight, .  But then again, maybe I SHOULD have been stricter and used HEAVY cream instead. Whatever it was, I won't be quitting on Delizia just yet and would still use it on my next ice cream recipe.  

I am not certain if we owe these treats to Japan but I remember that the first green tea ice cream I saw, was when the bubbly host of NHK'S "Oh Tokyo Tokyo" sampled some on one of her featured travel eats. I used to watch this show when I was a kid.

Let's just assume then that we DO owe this to Japan, and so while having some scoop of this, you might want to close your eyes too and say a little prayer for our Japanese neighbors. May there be no more earthquakes and tsunamis for them and for all of us.

Happy Eating! =)