Day 236: the bitter orange

This is actually the first year I’ve remembered to get my hands on some Seville oranges. I was still quite late, and they weren’t the best quality, but I’m truly won over by their mouth-puckering bitterness and heavenly cheerful scent. I cut one in half and plunged my teeth deep into its savagely-sour flesh, loving every drop of the jaw-clenchint juice I could draw out; also enjoying a Campari and soda (or three) with a shave of the peel and a spritz of the juice, too.

Nigella’s Bitter Orange Ice Cream

Day 236 is Nigella’s Bitter Orange Ice Cream, and I can’t get it enough of it. I scoffed my way through most of it in a day (shared a little). Don’t judge, I’m new to parenting - sleepless nights, zero snacking privacy, constantly being hounded, tantrums (mine and the kids’) - and I'm allowed my treats. Joking aside, parenting may be our biggest challenge yet but we are loving every blinking second of it.

I doubled the recipe, held some back and made a moussy pud by folding in a whisked-till-stiff egg white that I had waiting about in the fridge - which tied me over until the actual ice cream mix in the tupperware had, well, iced.

Personally, I’ve never gone in for wafers or cones with ice cream: they slow down my eating experience and interfere with that creamy luscioussness that makes ice cream so seductive in the first place. If eating ice cream was to be compared to a date-for-two situation, they’d be the unwanted chaperones and me and the ice cream the guys the guys that just wanna get on with it. (“It” these days being a 20-minute snuggle on the sofa with an episode of Schitt's Creek and a hot beverage).

The recipe for Nigella’s Bitter Orange Ice Cream can be found in Bites and on nigella.com (link below).