Milestones come in many sizes. Consider 18. On this birthday, the young American is vested with the authority to vote and, in most states, to acquire a tattoo, gun, credit card, lottery ticket and bottle of correction fluid. Which sounds like a terrible movie. She can also buy dry ice.
In anticipation, we ordered in. A huge squeaky cooler arrived; it held 18 pints of frozen custard and one hunk of dry ice. Shoving aside salted caramel and butter mint, we lifted the block onto the kitchen table.
Our underage scientist showed us how a penny, wedged edgewise in the ice, will shudder. How an ice chip, dropped in water, sublimes into fog. Or, if confined, into an explosion.
The sideshow made adulthood look promising. Though it wasn’t half as sublime as the rhubarb custard.
Rhubarb Frozen Custard
Prep: 20 minutes plus cooling overnight
Freeze: Several hours
Makes: 6 cups
1 quart half-and-half
3 egg yolks
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 cups rhubarb sauce (recipe follows)
Pasteurize: Whisk together all ingredients (except rhubarb sauce) in a large saucepan. Heat over medium-high, whisking constantly, until custard reaches 165 degrees on a candy thermometer. Whisk at 165 for 30 seconds.
Chill: Strain into a clean bowl. Let cool. Cover and chill overnight.
Churn: Mix together chilled custard and chilled rhubarb sauce. Churn in an ice cream maker (if yours is small, you may need to churn in two batches). Pack into a plastic container; press a sheet of plastic wrap onto the custard and freeze firm, several hours.
Rhubarb Sauce
Stir together 1 pound rhubarb, split the long way if fat, and sliced into 1-inch lengths, 3/4 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, lower to a simmer and cook, stirring now and then, until rhubarb collapses in a pink puddle, about 10 minutes. Cover and chill completely. Makes about 2 1/4 cups.
Provenance: David Gott, founder of David’s Famous Gourmet Frozen Custard, learned this recipe (lightly adapted here) from his grandmother. It inspired the recipe he uses commercially today.
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