Olive oil and sea salt ice cream

In August I was in Atlanta for a conference and one of my colleagues suggested that we have dinner at Ecco in the Midtown district. He had been there the night before but had enjoyed it so much that he wanted to go back there again.

Ecco was just the kind of upscale restaurant that I love – rustic Mediterranean cuisine, interesting cocktails, modern décor, highly interactive staff, and savor-every-bite food that didn't leave you regretting the price. The dessert menu was positively quirky and I was stumped, so I asked the waiter, who without hesitation recommended that I get the olive oil and sea salt ice cream.

My dinner companions winced but I had a good feeling about it, and indeed, it was unbelievably delicious: buttery, fruity, chocolaty and salty all at once. With the help of my friends, there was nothing left of it by the end of the meal.

I had to make it at home.

My housemate heard what it was and also winced, but I knew that Todd would love it, if only I could get it right. I Googled it and found a recipe, also by someone who had eaten at Ecco and couldn't forget the ice cream, but this recipe was a failure -- by the author's own admission – due to the use of supermarket olive oil (!).

So far I have made two batches of the stuff and I think I have it figured out close enough to share it. The tricks are to find the right olive oil (see below for a suggestion), and to make sure that you use a chunky salt that you add right at the end. You want it to crunch, not to dissolve!

4 egg yolks

1 cup light cream


1 1/2 cups milk


1/2 cup sugar


1/2 cup high quality, fruity and light extra virgin olive oil (such as Manzanillo from the Boston Olive Oil Company)

4 oz. finely chopped good quality bittersweet chocolate (such as Valrhona)

1 heaping tsp. coarse sea salt (I used sal de mer but we have some really chunky Hawaiian pink sea salt that I'm going to try in the next batch)

Heat the sugar and cream over medium low heat and whisk the egg yolks in a bowl. Once the milk/cream mixture is steaming (do not boil!), add a quarter cup of the warm cream to the yolks and whisk it together, gradually adding another ¼ cup of the cream, then add the whole mixture back to the cream on the stove. Stir constantly over low heat for about five minutes or until the mixture is slightly thickened.

Whisk in the milk and the olive oil, then chill the mixture for 3-4 hours. Make the ice cream in your ice cream maker per the instructions, giving it a good whisk first to make sure the olive oil doesn't separate. When the ice cream is done, add the chocolate and the salt. Leave the machine on only long enough to blend the last ingredients or the salt will dissolve too much.

Leave me a comment if you make this and let me know how it went!