RCP: Savory Avocado Ice Cream

This was my first attempt at a savory ice cream and it's a little weird. I thought about it a lot before giving it a try. The idea was to serve a small scoop of this in a bowl of gazpacho. The gazpacho was to be the more or less standard, chunky version, with heirloom tomatoes, cukes, bell pepper, etc. I thought the icy avocado would be a nice blend with the tomato as it melted. I initially found a recipe for a sweet avocado ice cream in the excellent book Ices, by Caroline Liddell and Robin Weir. But sweet wasn't what I wanted, so I kept looking and found a recipe for a savory ice cream made with sweet peas. I made some adjustments to it and came up with the following. On its own, it's pretty weird stuff. The high fat level from the cream cheese, cream, and avocado gives it a texture like that of refrigerated butter. The avocado flavor comes out nicely with a bit of a smoky component to it and a touch of heat from the peppers. In the gazpacho, though, I thought it all got a bit lost in the tomato-cuke-pepper combo. Our guests really seemed to like it, though, so here it is.

Savory Avocado Ice Cream


3 ripe avocados
4 oz. cream cheese, crumbled
1 fresno chili, minced
2 T. lemon juice
½ c. heavy cream
½ t. salt
½ t. sugar
~ 1 T. tequila ( used a Cuervo Tradicional)

Halve avocados and scoop out flesh. Place in a blender with cream cheese, chili, and lemon juice. Add about half of the cream. Pulse into a thick puree. Add the rest of the cream, salt, sugar, and puree until smooth. Add tequila to taste and blend until mixed. Freeze in ice cream maker. If not served immediately, place in freezer and then allow at least 30 minutes of softening time out of the freezer before serving. Serve with gazpacho.

Adventurous, Mike.

I'm thinking a small scoop of this on top of grilled halibut, or maybe chicken.....

I wonder if I would like it sweet? That texture would be great...
Ihave trouble with savory, although I've loved basil orange sorbets (but it is sweet)..
b

Oh I love savoury.

You could crumble some crisp fried bacon (at the last minute so it didn't get limp) and mix it in or just top it for appearance and flavour....

Mmmm - bacon....

Before we were married, my wife-to-be made avocado sorbet (more like a granita, as it turned out) with a minumum of sugar. This was the first time I invited her for dinner and asked her to bring dessert.

I do not think that cream and cream cheese are appropriate to gazpacho. I think that had you thought it through more carefully, you might have been led to a winning formula - simply leave the dairy out of the "ice cream" and make a savory avocado sorbet/granita instead. This would marry better with the tomatoes, IMO. Also, a splash of sherry vinegar in the mix would accentuate the end result.

If you want to make it creamier with a non-dairy substitute - try almond milk. Almonds are often used in white gazpacho, so it might work in the avocado sorbet.

I considered doing a granita or sorbet version, but I actually wanted something creamier. I don't think that part of it clashed with the gazpacho, although it's definitely not a traditional pairing.

[Jenise]

Adventurous, Mike.

I'm thinking a small scoop of this on top of grilled halibut, or maybe chicken.....

You'd want to put ice cold on top of hot? Not me. From experience, though, I can attest to the beauty of avocado in a compound butter--mix with lemon or lime, garlic and chopped fresh oregano or cilantro, and put a scoop on grilled meat next to a rich red spanish rice, and you've got something incredibly delicious.

Mike--it sounds like a great idea for gazpacho. Would there have been something you could change to be happier with it, or is there no way to make it as tasty and interesting as simple diced, fresh avocado would have been?

Jenise -

In thinking about this one some more, it might have been better to serve a small scoop of the ice cream with the gazpacho as a "sundae topping". I think that would have prevented the avocado flavor from being lost in the gazpacho. I have some left over, so I'll give that a try if I can get around to making some more gazpacho.