Great Balls of Fire

"Here, you have to try this..." she said sliding a sliver of mango across the cutting board. It was topped with a lurid, almost pornographically red sauce. Just a couple of little dots of the stuff, but I knew—oh yes I knew—that in those few small dots of color existed pain... If you weren't careful. But I trusted my host, wrangled the slippery piece of fruit from the board and popped it in my mouth.

Amazing! The mango was juicy and sweet with that slightly funny mango aftertaste, but this time somehow more mango than the un-garnished chunk I had just robbed from the cutting board. The heat of the sauce "woke up" the mango. I was enlightened, just a little bit.

So I am sitting in a sardine can airplane a couple weeks later on my way home, when out of the clear blue, BANG!!! Mango Sriracha Ice Cream... No shit. My brain thought that up... I thought it was freakin insane, but I was hooked on the idea.

I didn't write down any quantities while I was concocting but I will do better next time and post an accurate recipe.

I filleted 4 ripe mangos and rough chopped the resulting flesh and chucked it into a pot with 2 tbsp of sugar. The pot then went over medium high heat until it start to sizzle a bit, basically a sauté. I reduced the heat to a simmer and cook hell out of it until it reduced by at least a third and everything is very soft. Since I am guessing at a time for this post I would say 20 minutes or so.

The next step was to puree the fruit into, well puree. I also added 1/2 cup of cream and 1 cup of milk. More simmering, then "DING" you have about 2 1/2 to 3 cups of mango milk that need to be strained.

You lose about 2/3 to 1 cup of solids. You could leave this in, but I think it makes for a stringy mixture...

This is not stringy...

My end result was 2 cups of mango mixture ready to add to a custard style ice cream base.

Pretty standard mix, or at least my version of a standard mix. Less eggs than normally called for.

1 whole egg
1 egg yoke
1 1/2 cups milk (I didn't use more cream because my mango mix was already so creamy)
1/4 cup sugar

Heat the milk in a pot to just simmering, you don't want to scald it. While the milk is heating mix the egg and yoke in a bowl with the sugar... beat the hell out of this mixture until it starts to thicken (I'll take pictures next time.)
Temper the egg mix with the hot milk, adding little bits at a time while whisking. I added a tbsp at a time until I had doubled the volume of liquid in the bowl... If you do this too quickly you will get scrambled eggs. Add the tempered mix into the hot milk and stir gently until the entire pot starts to thicken. It's gonna be like a thin custard or pudding.

Chill everything down so it can be stored in the fridge until ready to freeze... I used an ice bath.

Everything in the fridge over night for a through chilling.

The next day I mixed the ice cream base and mango mix together and then had to figure out how much sriracha to add. I did little test batches of the mango puree with various amounts of sriracha.

The one thing I couldn't get around is how raw sriracha tastes... It's really quite harsh. The solution??? Cook it.

2 tbsp of the chili sauce mixed with 1 tbsp of sugar to make what truly looked like a chili sauce glaze after about 5 minutes cook time. (I didn't get a picture, it was cooking too fast to stop and snap one.)

Once I had, or thought I had, an acceptable ratio of chili to mango, I poured the final mix into my super handy ice cream maker. The batches are small but the freezing is fast... 20 - 30 minutes for ice cream ready to serve soft or put in the freezer to firm up.

Now all I needed was someone to experiment on taste it. I got my chance last week when I had dinner with my dad and stepmother.

This is what I served.

The sauce is a basic blackberry puree. 1 quart of blackberries and enough sugar to make it sweet, (sugar quantity depends on the berries) boiled, strained of the seeds and chilled.

Reactions were, as expected, a little delayed due to the creep up factor of the sriracha. It's a little hit in the back of the throat. Lots of mmmmm's and ahhhh's and in general fawning praise, which is to be expected from parental units but I think it was honest reactions not parental pandering. A success on that night.

I also had a couple of culinary professionals evaluate this concoction. The reviews there were mixed... One chef said point blank that he didn't care much for tropical fruit, so that review was a bust. The other guy really like the texture but is a purist about flavor, so the mix of mango and chili was not really something he liked. The pastry chef at this local eatery agreed to give it a review when I made another batch. I would like a dessert persons opinion.

My final thoughts...
The sriracha might not be the best chili sauce to use for an ice cream because of the savory elements built into that sauce. I might try it with a really strong pepper jelly next time.
In the end I liked the flavor and the heat working together.

I will try this again with better recipe notes.

Cheers

Chris