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 16 oz 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 the 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
• 8 oz heavy cream
• 8 oz coconut milk
• 3 pan­dan leaves
• 3 oz sugar
• .5 oz sim­ple syrup
• a pinch of kosher salt
• 7 eggs yolks. Use 8 if not using farm fresh eggs

For the base: In a medium saucepan heat the heavy cream, coconut milk, pan­dan leaves, half the sugar, and syrup on medium for 10 min­utes. Turn the heat off on the mix­ture. While they are heat­ing, we will get started on crack­ing eggs.
In a large bowl, crack all the eggs. Sep­a­rat­ing the yolks from the whites. Keep the yolks, and dis­card the 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.

Remove the pan­dan leaves from the base. Tem­per 1/3 of the saucepan mix­ture into the bowl con­tain­ing the egg yolks and sugar. Mix well.

After tem­per­ing, add the tem­pered mix­ture to the base in the saucepan. Then cook on medium heat for 5 min­utes. Add a drop of pan­dan extract for extra fla­vor or a drop of green food col­or­ing for more green color.

Turn the heat off on a saucepan, then pour the base into the kitchen-aid ice cream bowl and begin churn­ing for 20 min­utes on low (or fol­low the manufacturer’s direc­tion on your ice cream machine). Cover the bowl with plas­tic wrap and freeze for 12 hours.

About 45 min­utes before serv­ing time, remove the bowl from the freezer. After 30 min­utes, churn again for 10 min­utes on low.