basil lime parfait

Lately we were invited by friends and they surprised us with “a perfect dinner”. We all like watching “Das Perfekte Promi Dinner”, a TV series adapted from the British “Celebrity Come Dine With Me”.  The German version features celebrities whose name in the majority of cases you’ve never heard of and most of them are either athletes decorated with a silver medal for something like hurdle race or so-called actors from soaps running on TV in the afternoon when most people are at work. Anyway, we love to slouch on the couch while watching other people sweating in their kitchen, working on the decoration in order to get a good rating from the guests at the end of the evening. That night at our friends’ house it was lovely weather and we had the aperitif  on the balcony and the four courses (salad, meat dish, dessert and cheese) inside. Everything was very good and each course had its perfectly matching wine, it was a great evening and we had a blast (by all means we had a perfect dinner and rated them 10!). The absolute winner certainly was the dessert: a basil lime parfait.

It was unbelievably good; creamy and velvety, basil kissed lime and cream, the flavor haunted me for the following three days. They were too slow mailing the recipe and when my withdrawal symptoms got unbearable I remembered they found the recipe on the internet. I looked it up myself and found it, originally from Holger Zurbrüggen, a VIP chef with a restaurant called “Balthazar” in Berlin. This is so good and refreshing and you don’t even feel the millions of calories. A couple of fresh strawberries are the best companions (because they’re unbeatbale as a team with basil) but you can serve it with most fresh berries and a little bit of lime juice. “Parfait” is French for “perfect” and now I know why this dessert has got that name.

Basil Lime Parfait

Serves 4:

100ml cream

100g sugar

a good handful of fresh basil

zest of one lime

3 egg yolks

1 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp mascarpone

100ml whipped cream

Mix the cream with the sugar and add the basil (leaves and shafts) and the zest of (a well washed) lime. Let it steep at ca. 50°C for about 15 minutes, then put into a bowl through a sieve and let it cool down a bit.

Whisk the egg-yolks and the sugar over a hot bain-marie until it’s creamy. Now add the basil/lime cream, the mascarpone  and finally the whipped cream.

Fill into glasses and put into the freezer over night. Best is to get it out of the freezer 10 minutes before serving with a fresh basil leave, strawberries or any other fresh fruit with icing sugar and lime juice.

homemade strawberry ice-cream

 Like most working people we love long weekends. You can do everything you normally do on weekends….and more.We usually have a long list with things to do like the laundry, grocery shopping, paying invoices, cleaning up etc. Once you’re done with it the weekend’s over and you wish one more day just for yourself, time to waste but in a pleasant way. This weekend is Whitsunday and luckily the weather’s great and we’re really enjoying the extra days off work. Last night friends came over and we had a nice dinner and lots of wine and fun. Today we got up very late before we cleared the traces and after the first coffee we realized that we had plenty of strawberries left from yesterday and we didn’t want them to go off. After a strawberry smoothie for breakfast we decided to make our first self-made icecream. We don’t have an icecream machine and at times I was so close to buying one because I’m addicted to icecream and simply love the idea of being able to make your favourite flavours yourself. To be honest – the professional icecream machines are too expensive and everybody told me it’s not worthwhile buying one of these cheap ones. Plus it might share the same destiny with our crêpe-maker (used twice), the hot stone (completely unused) or the juicer (I know, these can be great but cleaning it takes longer than it takes the fruit to grow).
Luckily you can also make it in a bowl which you put in the freezer – provided that there’s enough space. So I rearranged tons of frozen herbs, bread and potatoe wedges and finally had just enough space for a bowl.

We cooked the strawberries and other ingredients (see recipe) and put everything into the blender. The pulp’s colour was great, something between red and rose and it had a mouth-watering aroma. We were pleasantly surprised…you can make your favourite ice-cream so quickly! Off it goes into the freezer and almost ready to eat. What we didn’t know by then was the fact that it took about 8 hours until the ice-cream was solid. It felt like we stirred the mixture a thousand times and in the end we had to wait until the next morning until it was ready to eat. I have to admit that I had the first spoonful before breakfast…mmmhhh.

Here’s the recipe:

150ml water

160g caster sugar

1kg strawberries

Juice of 1 big(or 2 small)lemon

400ml cream

Before all else…it takes about 7-9 hours to make this icecream without an icecream machine, we usually start making it the day before. Let water and sugar boil for 2 minutes. Cut strawberries in halves, give them into the sugar water and let them cook for 5 minutes until they’re soft. Add the lemon juice, blend well, strain with a sieve and let it cool down. Then add the cream while stirring thoroughly and put the bowl into the fridge. You get the best result if you take it out every hour to stir, this will mix the colder bits from the side with the more liquid cream in the middle.

perfect bliss on a hot summer day

It was delicious and worth every minute we spent. It’s not as creamy as it gets when using an ice-cream machine though and I’m brooding over about making it part of my next Christmas wish list again.