Some years ago, I had the great pleasure to spend a few weeks in New York City, Brooklyn to be exact. It’s ironic because my Dad is a Brooklyn boy, born and raised on Coney Island. I remember going there as a little girl and seeing the boardwalk with its loop-de-loop rides, eating Coney Island hot dogs and my home made pickles at my grandparents’ tenement home with its grapevines growing over the arbor that covered the sidewalk.

It had been several decades since I’d last visited. My grandfather died when I was in grade school and my grandmother moved to Florida. Here I was slated for a two week stint in the Big Apple piloting a train-the-trainer class for bank employees, in Brooklyn no less. My partner in crime was my colleague and friend Susan who loved to cook and eat good food. Lucky me! We poured through guide books and plotted our strategy to check out as many restaurants as we could.

Brooklyn was, and still is, a fascinating cultural melting pot. Jews, blacks, Italians, Russians and many diverse ethnic groups call this borough home. What this also means is that you can find amazing food on just about every corner.

While Susan and I enjoyed our gourmand scouting adventures in Manhattan as we dined our way from mid-town to the Village, the stand-our meal for us was dinner at Al Di La in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. In fact, we enjoyed it so much we went back again.

That was about six years ago and I still remember the home made ravioli filled with winter squash and softly coated with brown butter sage sauce, the beet salad so juicy and fresh…and the honey ice cream we enjoyed for dessert, a kiss of honey, light and airy, creamy goodness filling your mouth. I dreamt about that ice cream. It was good enough to bathe in.

So when I got an email a few years later from another friend, Alice, who had moved from Seattle and was ironically now living in Brooklyn, with a link to a cooking blog and a post about ‘Honey Ice Cream’,” I practically fell over my own footsteps as I flew across the kitchen to break out my ice cream machine. “I thought about you when I saw this,” she wrote. Oh dear friend, how well you know me!

This particular ice cream recipe is quite simple: four ingredients; no eggs. No heating and then reheating. I’ve made this recipe a few times, trying out different honeys: Tupelo from Georgia, Knotweed from Seattle (poor Big Papa as our neighbor’s invasive Knotweed was the bane of his existence for the first couple years we were together) and Mille Fleur honey. I was always a bit reluctant to follow the recipe’s suggestion to “use an aromatic honey like chestnut,” thinking it might be overpowering.

Then, last September, Big Papa and I made a three-day stop in Paris on our way to Armenia. I picked up a jar of French chestnut honey or, as they call it, “Meil de Chataignier.” When we were there, chestnut trees were dropping their fruit and carts with roasted chestnuts dotted the city. The French spread this strong amber-colored honey over toast or drizzle it over figs and a ripe blue cheese.

Mine sat in our cupboard for nearly a year, until this past weekend, when I decided it was time to give the honey ice cream recipe another whirl. I was looking for a sweet treat to pair with four Greengage plums – the only plums on our tree this year that Twitchy (our pain in the neck resident squirrel) left for us to eat. I chopped them up and mixed in a teaspoon of fresh French thyme from the garden, a squeeze of lemon and a tablespoon of brown sugar. Then I made the ice cream.

Wow! The flavors were mysterious and complex. Big Papa tasted “smoke” and I picked up “malt” and “caramel.” This is definitely not milquetoast honey. It’s all at once assertive and sublime. Big Papa and I liked it so much we both went back for seconds!

“”That buzzing-noise means something. If there’s a buzzing noise, somebody’s making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you’re a bee….
And the only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey…..
And the only reason for making honey is so as I can eat it. So he began to climb the tree.”

~Winnie the Pooh

Maison du Miel’s Heather Honey Ice Cream Recipe (borrowed from 101 Cookbooks)

• 2 plump, moist vanilla beans
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1/2 cup aromatic honey (chestnut, heather or eucalyptus)

Flatten the vanilla beans and cut them in half lengthwise. With a small spoon, scrape out the seeds. Place the seeds and pods in a large saucepan. Add the cream, milk, and honey. Stir to dissolve the honey. Heat over moderate heat, stirring from time to time, just until tiny bubbles form around the edges of the pan, 3 to 4 minutes.

Flatten the vanilla beans and cut them in half lengthwise. With a small spoon, scrape out the seeds. Place the seeds and pods in a large saucepan. Add the cream, milk, and honey. Stir to dissolve the honey. Heat over moderate heat, stirring from time to time, just until tiny bubbles form around the edges of the pan, 3 to 4 minutes.

Remove from the heat and let steep, covered, for 1 hour. Cover and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled.

Remove the vanilla pods, and stir the mixture again to blend. Transfer it to an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer’s instructions.
From The Paris Cookbook by Patricia Wells (Harper Collins, 2001)

Want more sweetness? Check out Wanderfood Wednesday!