As part of my project to learn to cook favorite foods from my lifetime (and especially my life in ice cream), the third ice cream flavor that I’m working on is Pistachio White Chocolate from the venerable Gelato Classico in San Francisco. They now omit the white chocolate chips.
I got it right on the second try.
The first thing you need to do is make pistachio paste. I got the recipe from InsanityTheory. Put the following into a food processor:
- 500 g pistachios
- 250g sugar
- 1 tbsp glucose syrup (or corn syrup, or golden syrup)
- 1/3 cup water
This will make far more paste than you need for a batch of ice cream. It can be frozen.
Now for the ice cream, I started with David Lebovitz’ recipe, but found it way too sweet once I’d added the white chocolate chips. So I modified it. The fascinating part of this recipe is the omission of eggs, as they overpower the subtle pistachio flavor… Without eggs, ice cream is even easier to make!
4 cups whole milk
1/2 cup (65 gr) sugar
4 tablespoons (16 gr) cornstarch (also known as corn flour)
1/3 cup pistachio paste
1. Make a slurry by mixing 1/2 cup of the milk with 4 tbsp cornstarch, mixing until the starch is dissolved and the mixture is smooth.
2. Heat the rest of the milk along with the sugar in a saucepan
3. When it almost starts to boil, stir in the cornstarch mixture and cook at gentle simmer for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.
4. Remove from heat, scrape into a bowl, and chill thoroughly, preferably overnight. Just before putting it into the ice cream freezing machine, stir in the pistachio paste.
5. Add 100g chopped white chocolate during the freezing process.
