Parmesan Ice Cream with Tomato-Garlic-Dark Chocolate Shell

Don't Call It Magic

Remember the Parmigiano-Reggiano ice cream that I had made a while back? I've been pondering ways to serve it, and some suggestions from our Faceboob page* by PDR, but the blessing and curse of ice cream is that it lasts a long time unless you eat it. Where most foods force my hand with their fleeting freshness, ice cream puts me into a cryogenic dream-state, adrift in possibilities.

Since I'd made a good bit of it, and a little goes quite a way, I decided to start with a twist on a neotraditional topping of a shell. How difficult could it be to make a shell? As it turned out, making a shell is as easy as melting chocolate and coconut oil, making the right shell is ... um, hard.

My original thought had been to do a tomato and garlic shell and another with dark chocolate to see which was more of a match. It took some playing around in the kitchen but I reached a tasty conclusion.

Do Call It Delicious

The tomato shell, well, the tomato powder didn't mix with the coconut oil. Also, since I could only get the oil so hot or risk waiting too long or melting the ice cream I had to use powdered rather than fresh cut garlic. The result tasted good, but didn't look so delicious. I'm still thinking about a better approach to the tomato shell.

The dark chocolate, (70%), was great, but when I mixed the three ingredients it was like a meal compressed into a tiny ball; savory, salty, and sweet. A triumph!

Before I try the tomato shell again I might give a pork and roasted garlic pie a la mode a try. It was one of the great ideas discussed on our Faceboob page. I'll report the results here.

*If you're not already following our Facebook page, (The NSA is), that is where most of the talk is happening. Check it out.

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