Pear-Caramel Ice Cream

It’s getting to be like the Iron Chef around here. ‘Cause you know, I’m constantly rushing around making six plates of bourgeois food with the help of my sous chef in under an hour. Yeah. What I am doing Iron Chef-like is throwing the secret ingredient into ice cream. Give me an ingredient, and I immediately think ice cream. Thankfully no one’s challenged me with eel or chicken feet.

My friend gave me the smallest, cutest, sweetest, most perfectly ripe pears from her pear trees, along with a jar of home made pear jam. I shamelessly tore into that jam, eating a quarter of the jar in two days. While doing so, I thought, “This jam would make a great ice cream topping…for pear ice cream.” I had to act fast. Those pears were about to melt and the jam was about to disappear.

I changed the original ice cream recipe to make it lower in fat; I substituted half of the heavy cream with half and half. The resulting ice cream is creamy, but not deadly. The best part about pear ice cream is the gritty texture. That is, if you like pear grit.

Pear-Caramel Ice Cream
Makes 1 quart
Adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Levovitz

3 medium ripe pears, peeled, cored, and diced into ¼ inch pieces
¾ cup sugar
1 cup heavy cream
1cup half and half
⅛ teaspoon coarse salt
a few drops of lemon juice

• Spread sugar in a large, nonreactive, heavy-bottomed pan. Cook the sugar over medium heat. Gently stir with a heat-proof spatula when the sugar begins to liquefy and darken at the edges.
  
• When the sugar is melted and turns deep amber, stir in the pear pieces. The caramel will seize and harden, but will melt. (This freaked me out and I thought it would never melt, but it did.) Cook the pears for 10 minutes.
• Remove from heat and stir in cream, half and half, salt, and lemon juice.
• Let cool to room temperature, then puree in a blender.
• Chill, then freeze in your ice cream maker.