Blue Cheese Ice Cream - It's a Thing here..

I am a sucker for things that are not really traditional food parings. I mean I love things that do go together - fish and chips, buttered toast, and cream on jam, but I do like a new challenge. Enter, Roquefort & Honey Ice Cream. Found on a menu at a not-very-posh bistro in the stunning town of Sant Malo. There were clearly less challenging flavours on offer, and I could very much have made a far more vanilla choice, but something about it made me want to dive headlong into the experience.

I mean with this kind of unexpectedness, all you have to do is ensure you are happy with both sides of the fence, and sit back. I love cheese, and I could have the words "ice cream" tattooed on my tongue. I am certain I would also try bacon trifle, raspberry omelette and a hearty chocolate stew, but it wasn't that restaurant.

Curiosity has a funny way of interrupting normal, with a sharp dig to the ribs. As we have been talking this month about the French cheese course and the fine line between appreciation and snobbery, it seemed only fitting to end with something a little unexpected. Something that sits squarely in the category of, "Whose idea was this?" Well dear reader, Cheese ice cream, it turns out, is not some newfangled kitchen "tee-hee"...

Across the world, people have been making frozen desserts with cheese for centuries. Italians make gelato with mascarpone and ricotta. In the Philippines, I enjoyed a bright purple Ube (a South-Asian variety of yam) ice cream topped with grated cheese. In Mexico, you can find ice creams flavoured with queso. Even a good old, humble cheesecake is really just cheese pretending to be dessert.

Perhaps Roquefort & Honey ice cream is not strange at all. And the French understand this instinctively. They don't approach food asking, "Will I like it?" or "Does it go?" They ask, "What is it? Where is it from? What can it teach me?" It doesn't mean they will sign off with Nationwide approval. They will never adopt the Yorkshire pudding or Baked Beans. But that's fine. Hands off.

It arrived tableside with little fanfare. Looking like it should, tight spheres of blue and ivory, like Delftware squash balls. It came with a poached pear, still with its stalky hat on, fat and glazed, like a freshly massaged Sumo. Presentation was absolutely bang-on. Vanessa does small, rapid hand claps when something like this is presented for her to eat. No habit-change when hers arrived. A slightly larger portion than mine, as I remember.

It starts with the taste of sweet cream, and was well frozen, which allowed that parade of taste sensations to move at a slow and steady pace. As it melts in the mouth, the creamy, bee-sweet honey made room for those earthy, tangy, salty blue cheese notes begin to float up my nose into my brain, which is scratching its head, wondering what to put in the experience report it would need to file.

It was sensational. So much so, that I begged for the recipe. I do that more than I should. It can prove annoying, but I really don't care. I got it. and now, so do you.. I present:

Roquefort & Honey Ice Cream

For the curious, the brave, and those who have never met a cheese they didn't want to sit down and have a chat with.

Ingredients

• 120g honey (the solid-at-room-temp kind).

• 110g Roquefort, crumbled

• 250ml double cream

• 250ml whole milk

• 4 large egg yolks

• A few grinds of black pepper, then 2 more.

  
  

Method

1. Warm the honey gently in a saucepan and set aside.

2. Place the crumbled Roquefort in a bowl.

3. Heat the milk until just warm.

4. Whisk the egg yolks in a separate bowl and slowly add the warm milk.

5. Return the mixture to the saucepan and stir until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.

6. Pour the custard over the Roquefort and stir until most of the cheese melts. A few little lumps are perfectly acceptable. I think it adds character.

7. Stir in the cream, honey and a few (then two more) grinds of fresh black pepper.

8. Chill thoroughly and churn in an ice cream maker. Just get one.

Serve with poached or roasted pears, figs, toasted walnuts or just put it in a sandwich...

On Platform 13, we often talk about curiosity as though it belongs only to grand adventures. A new country. A new career. A dramatic reinvention. A life change. But curiosity also lives in the little things. Stuff you've never tried. A flavour combo that shouldn't work, but somehow does. A conversation with someone whose life looks nothing like your own. A willingness to say, "I've never tried that before."

Perhaps that is all a new chapter really is. A collection of moments where we decide not to turn away from the unfamiliar, but to lean in just a little closer.

Which brings me back to Roquefort and Honey ice cream.

I made it. I liked it.

And I rather suspect that life becomes infinitely more interesting when we stop asking, "Why would anyone do that?" and start asking, "I wonder what that's like?"

After all, every wonderful thing in our lives was once completely unknown to us. Which is a good job. Otherwise no-one would have children.

On Platform 13, wholeness isn’t found - it’s remembered. Because loss is loss, worthiness is universal, and no one is alone. We are all in this together.