I have ice cream/gelato too infrequently to get a gadget for it, once or twice a year tops. Savoury for me, especially pie.

When I was a kid Nardinis was always excellent for ice cream whenever we visited one of Mums friends who lived in the area. Not sure how good it is now as the family that ran it kind of imploded when the father died IIRC. They also produced Daniela Nardini (who played Anna in This Life). Back on topic though.

I really like Ice Cream. It was a favourite of one of my Grandads who always said it wasn't a holiday until you'd had an ice cream (preferably every day).

Some time ago I acquired an ice cream recipe that just used double cream, condensed milk and whatever you wanted to use to add flavour. Very nice but also a heart attack in a bowl.

Nardinis - haven't been there for years. Decor hadn't changed since the 50s. Superb.

Not wishing to suggest any link to organised crime, far from it, but I noted with interest that the only other Nardini's restaurant opened in Moscow.

The best round here was Desanos, but then the recipe must have changed

This one will do for ingredients, although I make it slightly differently.
It's actually not tricky. Good vanilla ice cream is essentially just good custard, frozen. Follow the above to make the custard but make sure you don't over-thicken it, you want it quite runny. Then give it a bit of a whisk to get some air into it. Then either put it in the ice cream maker (should you have one) and set it going or, if you don't have one, pour it into a plastic tub with a lid. Stick in the freezer and after about a half hour or so take it out and give it a mix with a fork to stop the ice crystals getting too big. Then put it back in and give it another mix after an hour. Then every hour or so until you can't mix it, at which point you've got ice cream. Takes about four hours in my freezer.

If you want to make another flavour, leave out the vanilla and put whatever in. if you want chocolate (say) add melted chocolate to the custard before you freeze it. If you want a ripple ice cream boil whatever fruit you like with some water and sugar until it turns gloopy, strain it then let it cool. when you're doing your final mix with a fork (say after three hours freezing) add the fruit mix and stir slowly to ripple it through.

Good ice cream is actually really easy to do, it's just a bit of work. I really don't know why people bother to buy ice cream to keep in the freezer.

The same reason they buy pre-made pizza, sausage rolls, pies and even roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings FFS.

Seriously. People just don't want to know how to make stuff. Everyone is so damned filthy rich they'd rather pay Aunt Bessie to do it for them

Or do people just have other things to be getting on with rather than spend 4 hours making ice cream by hand?

If you have "other things" to be doing and you can't afford to pay someone else to make it for you, then you go without the delicious luxury.

I usually go without. I am not a princess so I'm usually too busy and too broke to have delicious cake.

And just to note, most of the 4 hours you're free to do other things. You don't have to watch the freezer. It's fine by itself.

Absolutely.
However, my point was that some people might balk at the thought of spending 2 hours over a 4 hour period making a tasty treat. You could do a full roast in that time.
Ice cream is not a quail's egg canape, is it?

It doesn't take anywhere near four hours. It takes about 20 minutes over a four hour period. You could do it while you were watching telly - nip out and give it a mix every couple of ad breaks or something. If you can't be arsed to mix a few things up then have a look at them once an hour for a while, it's not hard you're just lazy.

Still - from commencement of process to finished product = 4 hours. By your account. Your involvement varies, clearly.
Or, buy ice cream while out shopping, eat at your leisure.
I wasn't aware this was some sort of socio-economic indicator of being part of the rich, lazy bourgeoisie.
I shall return to churning my butter now, like a real person would.
Shop bought... pah...

With all due respect Prof that's a pretty spurious argument and I think you know it is.


actually, I'd say the reverse is probably true. To buy ice cream as good as home made in a shop you'd actually pay a fair lump of cash - say four quid or so for a tub. The ingredients will cost you a lot less and most of that will be on the vanilla. So making your own is actually better if you don't have a lot of cash. The problem is people are lazy and buy the ice cream that costs only as much as the ingredients to make your own do, which as Bratty says is full of additives and god knows what, and tastes god awful to boot.

Basically, if you're rich then buy ice cream. If you're not make your own, because the stuff you can afford to buy will only be half as good as the stuff you can make for the money.

I wouldn't say it was spurious, you said it took about 4 hours start to finish, with a bit of poking at it along the way.
As you say, making it at home usually works out cheaper than buying it off the shelf.

What I dislike is this attitude that you're lazy, or rich, because you choose to purchase something ready made. There are items which clearly are ripping you off in the name of convenience, to a greater or lesser degree. Like buying your own veg. Or bread. Or cheese. Or butter. Or eggs. Or meat. Or an oven ready, garlic basted, chicken that's been plucked, dressed and shrink wrapped in a foil tray. Or a tub of Ben & Jerry's.

You pays your money make your choice.

Modern convenience has a lot to answer for - increased cost of living, Obesity and other health related problems, world- economic problems etc. Having said that - it is just convenient.

Option 1: Drive to supermarket, buy ingredients for ice-cream, go home and stay there for four hours making ice-cream and trying to do other things (or sit on the 'net and waste time), eat ice-cream

Option 2: Drive to supermarket, buy groceries including ice-cream, drop things off at home, out to the pub/whatever to socialise, watch a movie, do something else, come home, eat ice-cream, sleep. You are not chained to remaining indoors.

The entire point of modern convenience is to save time and/or money so as to improve leisure time. Why spend hours making a lasagna when you can microwave one in six minutes?

I maintain the point that, in general, if you can make it yourself it will both cheaper and better than buying it in the shop. I believe that applies to a vast range of things that are relatively simple to make (obviously, there are things you can buy which need some cooking skill to prepare like souffles or sophisticated layered deserts maybe which you probably are better off buying) which are relatively little effort for the reward you get. Also, in the grand scheme of things, driving to the supermarket to get a ready meal and driving to the supermarket to get the ingredients to make the same meal and making it are, more often than not, roughly equivalent in 'personal cost/benefit'.

Also, I still don't agree that the time it takes it prepare something is somehow 'written off' and unavailable for other purpose. This doesn't stand up to analysis. If I get the ingredients for a chili together before I go to work, stick them in a slow cooker and switch it on just before I leave the house, then eat it for a meal when I get home after work, has that meal taken a whole day to prepare? Of course it bloody hasn't. It took the time it takes to get the ingredients together and switch the thing on. That's it.

Likewise the traditional sunday roast. That, if done properly, has a preparation time that is indeed hours. Are you stuck cooking for all that time? No. The traditional sunday roast is a meal almost designed for the fact you stick it all in an oven and then go off and socialise with the family/guests. You just need to pop back every so often to check on it. In the meantime you can have a chat, have a drink, play scrabble, do wii bowling, whatever you like. In many countries/cultures the preparation and eating of food is an essentially social process - people help, they bring ingredients or drinks, they act as waiters, they play with the children or just generally hang out. Then everyone sits down and eats together when it's ready. A meal can take hours to eat, let alone prepare. Only in a country where food is deeply unappreciated could cooking be considered 'a solitary chore'.

I can appreciate the notion that people sometimes simply don't have time to prepare food. I've been there - got home from work late, thought 'sod it' and ordered a pizza. However people who take that as their first option who are otherwise capable of doing so i.e. don't even generally contemplate the idea of preparing food themselves are one of three things

1) Overworked - sort your life out; if you haven't got time to cook because you're always at work you're going to be dead by 50 of a heart attack.
2) Are lazy - 'just can't be arsed' is about the definition of laziness as far as I can see
3) haven't ever been taught how to cook.

1 and 2 I rather consider someone else's problem and something I don't really have much sympathy for but the increasing likelihood of 3 worries me - if we as a generation of adults get out of the habit of preparing food and cooking it, who is going to teach our children to do it? It's a degree of dramatic licence but the fundamental issue is this - if we can't be bothered or don't know how to make lasagne or ice cream or curry or whatever, we're reliant on the supermarkets to provide it for us. And does anyone here want to put their hand up and claim the supermarkets really have their customer's best interests as their first priority?

Modern convenience has brought us meals that can be 'prepared' in minutes. It's also brought us traffic jams, people getting calls from work in the pub, 17 different types of 'coffee' and £2.50 for a cupcake. A moderation of convenience is fine by me. Really, I'm all for technology. Right up until the point where we get dependant on it, then I start to slowly back away.

Jesus, suddenly I sound like Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall. All I want is some decent ice cream!

Jon