Paul's [recipe] Corner

From Ep 3 Food Trail Tasmania

500 mils of full cream milk
5 egg yolks
200g of white sugar
1 tbls freeze dried ground Pepper Berries
¼ vanilla pod
Rind of one orange

Put milk in a saucepan and heat gently. Add the Pepper berry powder, vanilla beans scraped out of pod and the pod also and the orange rind. Heat to combine all the flavours but dont boil then let cool down a little. Beat egg yolks and sugar together. Add some of the warm milk to the beaten egg and sugar combo to combine and warm up and then add the egg mixture to the milk. Return to the stove and continue to heat, stirring often until the mixture thickens enough to lightly cover the back of the spoon – make sure you do not bring it to a boil.

Remove from heat and strain discarding the solids. Chill in the freezer and then mix in ice cream maker as per instructions for the mixer.

Note: the freeze dried pepper berries are fruitier and have much less heat than the air dried pepper berries. If you made this recipe with ground air dried pepper berries it would be very hot. Also the freeze dried pepper berries make a vibrant purple ice cream where as the air dried will make a much darker midnight blue coloured ice cream. You could also add the Pepper Berries to the custard mixture right at the end of the cooking process, before you chill it – this would probably retain the vibrant colour as I found once the pepper berry powder had cooked in the milk mix it lost some of it’s vibrancy and took on a slightly grayish tinge.