Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Our friend Kevin has this amazing herb garden and brought us over a huge bag of herbs the other day. All sorts of delicious treats - parsley, sage, rosemary, (no thyme), marjoram and a mint. A lot of mint. I could figure out what to do with all the other herbs, but what was I going to do with all that mint? I decided that I would make some sort of dessert thing with it but couldn't figure out what until Joey reminded me that I had a Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker. I had bought it refurbished a couple years ago and totally forgot I had it. The one and only time I used it was not at all a success, but I thought, "What the heck?" I will try this again and went out on a search for Mint Ice Cream.

It's amazing how hard it was for me to find a recipe that actually used fresh mint. Finally I found one on Epicurious by Isaac Mizrahi. Now I am a huge fan of The Fashion Show so I just had to try this out.

I followed the recipe fairly closely, but I have adapted it. First off, I don't like food coloring and refuse to buy it and for this recipe the natural green of the mint comes shining through as you can see from the pictures below. Second, Isaac must be a huge chocolate queen because he calls for WAY too much chocolate. I have cut that in half and trust me you will want to follow my recipe below and do the same.

Ingredients

• 6 large egg yolks
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 cups whole milk
• 2 cups fresh mint leaves, loosely packed
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 4 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (original recipe called for 8 ounces)

Instructions

1. In large bowl, whisk together egg yolks and 1/2 cup sugar.
2. In heavy medium saucepan over moderately low heat, stir together milk, remaining 1/4 cup sugar, and mint. Heat until steaming but not boiling, then remove from heat.
3. Ladle about 1/2 cup hot milk mixture into egg yolk mixture, whisking constantly to prevent eggs from cooking, then slowly stir the egg mixture back into the hot milk, whisking constantly.
4. Place over low heat, and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens enough to coat back of spoon (finger drawn across spoon will leave clear path), 5 to 6 minutes total (do not let boil or custard will curdle). Strain through fine-mesh sieve into large bowl, pressing on and then discarding solids.
5. Whisk in heavy cream. Cover and chill until cold, at least 6 hours or overnight.
6. Process custard in ice cream maker, adding chopped chocolate during last minute of churning.
7. Transfer to airtight container and freeze until hard, about 3 hours.