Coconut Ice Cream (I Tim Kati)

Ingredients

• 400 ml Coconut cream, full-fat
• 200 ml Coconut milk
• 80 g Palm sugar, dissolved in a small quantity of warm coconut milk
• 1 generous pinch Salt
• 2–3 Pandan leaves, briefly blended with the coconut cream, then strained
• To serve
• 2 Fresh coconut halves, hollowed, to serve as shells; or use cones
• 30 g Roasted peanuts, whole or roughly crushed
• 50 g Sweet corn kernels, cooked
• 50 g Taro, cooked and diced
• 50 g Sticky rice, cooked

Method

1. 1
   Dissolve the palm sugar in a small quantity of gently warmed coconut milk, stirring until no granules remain, so that the sugar disperses evenly through the base rather than settling in pockets that would make the finished ice cream unevenly sweet. Combine with the remaining coconut cream and coconut milk in a saucepan and warm over low heat — the mixture should be steaming but never approaching a simmer, because a hard simmer drives off the delicate top notes of the coconut and leaves a flat, cooked flavour. Add the salt and stir; the surface should be glossy and uniform.
2. 2
   Remove the pan from the heat and allow the mixture to cool completely to room temperature, then refrigerate until thoroughly cold throughout, so that when it meets the pandan leaves in the blender the fragrance is captured rather than volatilised by residual heat. A cold base also churns faster and produces a finer, smoother texture.
3. 3
   Place the pandan leaves and the cold coconut mixture into a blender and process briefly — no more than a few short pulses — to release the leaves' fragrance without reducing them to fibre, which would leave a grassy bitterness in the finished ice cream. Strain through a fine sieve, pressing lightly; the liquid should carry a pale green tint and a clean floral fragrance that distinguishes Thai coconut ice cream from the merely coconut-flavoured.
4. 4
   Churn the strained base in an ice cream machine according to the machine's capacity until thick and creamy; the churning folds in air continuously so the freezing water forms countless tiny crystals rather than large ones, giving a smooth, dense result rather than an icy one. Alternatively, pour into a shallow tray and freeze, stirring and scraping thoroughly every 30 minutes for three cycles to break up the crystals as they form. The finished texture should hold its shape on a spoon — neither icy nor loose.
5. 5
   Transfer to a sealed container and freeze until firm enough to scoop cleanly. Serve in the fresh coconut half-shells or cones, accompanied by roasted peanuts, sweet corn, taro, and sticky rice; the ice cream should taste clean and purely of coconut and pandan — uncluttered.