While I was in Ballymaloe last week, actually at the school waiting for Darina to finish a class and have a meeting about Waterford’s Terra Madre, I noticed a familiar face running the shop there.

I must give you a bit of history here.

In the early eighties I worked as chef in a restaurant in Waterford called Ballinakill House run by George and Susie Gossip and their best friends and frequent callers were Tim and Darina Allen who used to arrive down with their kids for weekends and the same kids , as kids do, used to often end up in the kitchen.
The familiar face in the shop, whom I would not have seen for about twenty five years, was I was fairly sure one of these kids.

It turned out to be Toby, their younger son.
Once I explained to him my tenuous connection to his extreme youth he delighted me by remembering these times in Ballinakill and, in true Allen fashion remembering it through a taste.
“You are the chef who made the fantastic Pistachio Ice Cream!” he said.
I was, and he had made a friend for life by remembering.

My daughter Caitriona is here for the weekend and I was telling her the story of Toby and the Pistachio Ice cream and she suddenly remembered a chocolate Ice cream which I had made at home about the same time.
A chocolate Ice cream with chocolate chips in it.

Very impulsively I decided to make it immediately so it would be frozen enough to eat after dinner tonight.

Dark Double Chocolate Ice Cream
4x100g bars of very Dark (70%) Chocolate
3 Tablespoons milk
6 Egg yolks
110g Sugar
50ml Water
200g Cream
200g Crème Fraiche
2 Tablespoons Caster Sugar

Melt three bars of the chocolate with the milk either in a bowl over simmering water or at defrost in a microwave.
Let it cool.
Chop the other into chips.
Put the sugar and the water together in a small saucepan, bring to the boil and simmer together until the bubbles start to move slowly, about five minutes.

Beat the yolks with an electric beater until frothy and then dribble in the hot syrup slowly beating all the time.
Now continue beating these until they are cool, white and thick-another five minutes or so.

Beat the cream in another bowl until thick and then beat in the Crème Fraiche until that also thickens.

Now fold together the yolks, melted chocolate and the chips with the creams and pour into boxes and freeze.
Because so much air has been captured by this method you do not need to churn or stir.But do take it out of the freezer and put it into the fridge for about an hour before you want to serve it.