John's parents sent us an ice cream maker for collective birthdays. Our next door neighbors, who had received the box and got us to open it as instantly as possible on returning from the airport, pounced on the recipe booklet, looked at one page and announced that we were making fresh strawberry ice cream. Not just strawberry ice cream! FRESH strawberry. They immediately sent a delegation to the store to attain fresh strawberries and cream.

I stayed in the kitchen eating olives and giving my opinion on figs in caramel sauce. My opinion: not very good, since the caramel was thin and the fig skins got really tough. Also the figs get BOILING HOT and coated with molten sugar such that eating one is very much like having a bomb go off in your mouth. Besides, I think figs are better with a counterpoint, like pepper or goat cheese. So let's not go any further into that.

Ice cream is good though!

This is definitely the kind of recipe that puts CREAM CREAM OH SWEET MOTHER OF GOD CREAM in ice cream.

Strawberry ice cream

lots of strawberries
juice of a lemon
sugar
milk
heavy cream
vanilla

Destem and chop the berries. Put them in a bowl with lemon juice and a couple spoonfuls of sugar. Stir it up and leave it to macerate for an hour or two, or however long you can stand. The ice cream unit probably needs time to freeze anyway. Then you can mash some of the berries if you want. The recipe wants you to mash half, but I for one want smooth ice cream with no big ice--I mean fruit--chunks, so I would mash them all.

Put a cup of sugar and a cup and a half of milk in a bowl. Mix them together until the sugar has dissolved. This might take a while; you might want to gently warm the milk to help things along. If you do that, cool it down again before you keep going. Add in TWO AND THREE FOURTHS cups of heavy cream. Jesus! I would almost definitely sub some milk for part of this in future. Also add in the mashed strawberries and a couple shakes of vanilla.

Mix it all up and process in your ice cream machine appropriately. If you had any unmashed strawberries, add them after about 15 minutes. Keep processing until everything is thick and creamy and delicious.

If you don't have an ice cream machine, you can do one of the physical effort methods.

Method 1: Get two sturdy ziploc bags: a large one and a small one. Put ice cream mix into the small bag and seal it securely. Put a mix of ice and rock salt into the large bag, then put the little bag in the middle. Make sure the ice and salt surround the little bag. Seal the big bag securely too, then shake and shake and shake and shake and shake oh my god keep shaking until the mix turns into ice cream.

Method 2: as above, except using a big coffee can and a little coffee can. This way you can kick the can to roll it back and forth between people, making method 2 at least a little less arduous than method 1.

Both of these are handy on camping trips, or if you just don't want an ice cream machine. Neither of them will hold the entire recipe from up there, but it halves easily.

Now have ice cream for dessert. Or have it for dinner. Whatever.

I like my ice cream with hot tea for maximum contrast.