Ice Cream...now with more thigh bone

Following swiftly on from our Ice Creams of London special, and before the sun disappears again behind some omnipresent rain clouds, I've knocked up a batch of some ice cream...but not as you know it!

With a dinner party coming up I felt some crazy urge to pull something extravagant out of the bag, and with the weather approaching 30 degrees (where has that got to :( ) I thought I could try something different with ice cream. Despite not actually owning, or knowing anybody, with an ice cream machine, I thought this would be a great idea. After trawling the web, I came across this amazing place in Portland, called Salt & Straw with flavours like Pear & Stilton, and Strawberries, honey balsamic and cracked pepper. Amongst these, one that did catch my eye was bone marrow and smoked cherries.

Femur me up

Bone marrow is great, adds a rich flavour to burgers and gravy, although I'm not a massive fan of it grilled on its own. That texture makes me gip! Previously, I've always bought it cut lengthways, and the bone marrow is easy to scoop out. Completely forgot this time and got some whacking great femur to work with. However, after boiling in water for 5 minutes I had to lure it out with a knife down the core of the bone, teasing the whole of it out in one great gloop

The rest of the ingredients, apart from a simple ice cream base of cream and milk (in a 2:1 split), were cherries in juice, Earl Grey tea, salt, and Jack Daniel's. To make the cherry mixture I decanted the juice from the cherries into a pan added some Earl Grey, a pinch of salt and Jack Daniels. It's a slight adaption on Salt & Straw's recipe (UPDATE: repeated this with some Lapsang Souchong, comes through a lot stronger) After bringing to the boil and simmering for 5 minutes I strained this, adding it back to the cherries to absorb this alcoholic concoction. This was left overnight. After this I added the milk to the cream, and then melted the bone marrow in a frying pan, then after sieving the bits out, the BM was added slowly to the ice cream base while whisking vigorously to emulsify the fat.

The salted alcoholic tea cherry juice was added to the BM-ICB and mixed in before the liquid nitrogen step. As you do...

-196 degrees of grey

Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble

Now word of warning. Despite Heston's aloof use of it, regularly throwing it around TV studios, liquid nitrogen is dangerous. I'm mainly using it as I have access and it's alot quicker than normal methods! I do recommend buying dry ice and using that technique, as is documented in the 'Heston at home' book. I've tried the bacon and egg ice cream, wasn't much of a fan of that. Anyway, getting sidetracked, to the ice cream mix I added the nitrogen slowly and mixed with a wooden spatula. After a while it becomes kinda of like a scrambled egg consistency

On the bone - just the way I like it

For those up to the task here's the recipe.
Ice Cream base
2 cups of double cream
1 cup of whole milk

Pinch of salt

half a cup sugar
Bone marrow

Cherry mix
Tin or jar of cherries

Few swigs of Jack Daniels

Couple of teaspoons of Lapsang Souchong