When­ever we have a guest over for din­ner, I always find myself strug­gling to come up with at least one new dish inspired by that per­son. For me cre­at­ing a sig­na­ture dish for that per­son becomes my gift to them. Recently we had a friend from Thai­land come for din­ner, and as usual I was rack­ing my brain for an idea. Then it came to me; in Thai­land the flavours of coconut and pan­dan abound in sweet and savoury dishes. Pan­dan, ‘bai dteuy’ in Thai or ‘screw pine’ in Eng­lish is a fra­grant leaf with some­what of a sweet grassy smell. It is usu­ally paired with coconut in desserts and in savoury rice dishes.
By now, you may be ask­ing your­self “Isn’t your blog called “Bukopan­dan?”. Buko is the young green coconut in the Philip­pines. The answer to that ques­tion is yes., but I have yet to cre­ate any dish that is made from coconut and pan­dan; this is the first. So, for a friend, my chal­lenge was to cre­ate a some­thing famil­iar to her taste buds, but not too eas­ily rec­og­niz­able.
Notes:

• The recipe below for coconut pan­dan ice cream fol­lows the tra­di­tional cus­tard method of mak­ing ice cream, using eggs. It will yield 1 quart of ice cream
• I used farm fresh eggs, since they have a lit­tle more stiff­ness in the yolks which is what I want in an ice cream base
• I used a kitchen-aid stand mixer, with the ice cream maker bowl.
• I also used pan­dan extract to boost the flavour of the pan­dan. This is not required, as we will cook pan­dan leaves in the coconut milk. Pan­dan leaves and pan­dan extract is avail­able in Thai Gro­cers or at larger Asian Food Grocers
• Con­sider adding a drop of green food colour­ing . This is very com­mon in  Thai­land and the Philip­pines — to colour dishes made using pan­dan.-  — - As with most ice cream make your base the night before.

Yosita’s Coconut Pan­dan Ice Cream

•    Ice cream machine, 3 quart sauce pan, and a wooden spoon, a strainer such as a chi­nois.
•    8 oz heavy cream
•    8 oz coconut milk
•    6 pan­dan leaves
•    1/2 cup sugar
•    1 table­spoon light corn syrup
•    a pinch of kosher salt
•    10 eggs yolks.
For the base:

In a medium saucepan heat the heavy cream, coconut milk, pan­dan leaves, 1/4 cup sugar, a pinch of salt, and syrup on medium until the liq­uid sim­mers. Turn the heat off on the mix­ture and allow to sit for 30 min­utes so the pan­dan flavour can infuse. Now we will get started on crack­ing eggs.

In a large bowl, sep­a­rate the yolks from the whites. You can dis­card the egg whites (or reserve them to be used in other recipes). Com­bine the yolks with the sec­ond half of the sugar until they are well mixed and thick­ened.
Remove the pan­dan leaves from the base. Tem­per 1/3 of the saucepan mix­ture into the bowl con­tain­ing the egg yolks and sugar. I like to add 1 table­spoon of liq­uid at a time and whisk until the yolks have warmed.

After tem­per­ing, add the tem­pered mix­ture to the base in the saucepan. Then cook on medium heat until sim­mer­ing. Turn off imme­di­ately. Add a drop of pan­dan extract for extra fla­vor or a drop of green food col­or­ing for more green color, and blend. Strain the base through a chi­nois into a medium sized bowl.

Pour 1 cup of the base into a cup. Cover the cup with plas­tic wrap and place in the freezer.  Cover the medium bowl with plas­tic wrap and place in the refrig­er­a­tor for at least 12 hours, but no more than a day.

The next day, remove the frozen cup from the freezer and add to the medium bowl. Let the bowl sit out at room tem­per­a­ture for 5 min­utes, then chop up the frozen base enough to allow it to go into the ice cream maker. Add the base to a kitchen-aid stand mixer for 20 min­utes, or fol­low the direc­tions on your manufacturer’s ice cream machine.