Wild Fennel Ice Cream, Coated in White Chocolate and Bee Pollen - Recipe by Chef Aaron Schembri

Ingredients

Wild fennel cleanser:

37.5 g egg yolk
37.5 g raw sugar
6.25 g glucose
50 g fermented milk
12.5 g low-fat milk
37.5 g soured cream
25 g high-fat cream
1.5 g milk powder
18.7 g wild fennel + extra for garnish

Coating and garnish:
150 g yuzu juice
50 g water
2.5 g agar
100 g white chocolate
150 g cocoa butter
8 g dried wild fennel
8 g bees pollen
Liquid nitrogen (not necessary)

Stick/stone:

8 x 20 cm lemon verbena branches
8 river stones

Method

Wild fennel cleanser:

Place egg yolk, sugar, glucose and both the fermented and low-fat milk in the Thermo-mix, cook at 83 degrees for 25 minutes then, cool this mixture to 25 C.

Add the soured cream, cream, milk powder blend on speed 10 for 4 minutes, no heat.

Place the wild fennel in and blend on speed 10 for 5 minutes. Pass the mixture through a fine chinois.

Put the mixture into a standard ice cream churner and churn until set, place your churned ice cream into a piping bag and pipe into a silicon semi-sphere mat.

Cover and place it in the freezer overnight to set firmly.

Finally, place your extra wild fennel in the dehydrator overnight.

Please note: the semi-sphere size is entirely up to you, just ensure your branch is thick enough to hold the size of ice cream sphere. We use 30 mm /15 mm semi-sphere. You can also make the ice cream base and serve with herbaceous flowers, herbs and fresh berries on top.

Coating and garnish:

Heat water with agar cook out on a medium to high heat, using a whisk keep stirring until all of the agar has rehydrated about 3-5 minutes.

Add the yuzu juice at the end and set in the cool room. Once set, blend in a blender on high until it has a gel-like consistency place in a bottle for serving.

Warm the chocolate and cocoa butter to 60 C over a double boiler and set in a small pot for dipping.

Remove ice cream spheres and place on the end of your sticks, ensuring the stick has gone through 50 per cent of the ice cream, to ensure a firm hold.

Fill a small pot with liquid nitrogen. This must be a reasonably quick process, place ice cream sphere in the liquid nitrogen for 10 seconds, the dunk into the warmed coating, repeat this process twice.

On the second time, once the sphere has gone through the coating, immediately sprinkle on the wild fennel and bees pollen.

They can be kept in the freezer for the whole day before serving.

To serve:

Place your stick into the rock, place 1-2 small dots of yuzu gel on the ice cream and serve!

Please note: to make the gel fluid, you may need to do a larger quantity depending on your blender size. Yuzu could be swapped for lime or lemon. If you use liquid nitrogen, it will be a faster and more uniform process it isn’t entirely necessary; you can place the ice reams on a cold tray in the freezer between each coat.

Stick/stone:

Remove leaves from the branch and dehydrate at 70 C overnight. Set aside for later use.

Collect 8 beautiful river stones, drill a hole the same size as your branches, a tungsten drill bit is best for this.

Recipe provided by Kadota