SUMMER TREATS:A whim she describes as a 'mid-forties thing' led London restaurateur Morfudd Richards to purchase an ice-cream van and create unusual flavoured ices such as gin and tonic, star anise and saffron, or avocado and orange. LOUISE EASThas a lick
IT’S A RAINY evening in unlovely Clapham. Cars fret and fume, cyclists peer through dripping fringes, smokers idle outside Sainsbury’s. All of a sudden, an apparition emerges through the drizzle. Swirls of minty green and lavender decorate the bonnet of the vehicle. Huge purple butterflies quiver atop the roof. Fairy lights, feathers and enough plastic fruit to topple Carmen Miranda adorn the sides. Hand-painted lettering across the windscreen declares: “The ice van cometh”.
This is Lola’s On Ice, a battered 1970s van given a Merry Pranksters-style makeover, and if the exterior is slightly nutso, it’s nothing compared to what’s going on in the fridge.
Owner Morfudd Richards holds out a succession of tiny plastic tasting spoons, each dabbed with a different variety of ice-cream.
“Burnt orange caramel . . . lemongrass . . . gin and tonic . . . chocolate sorbet,” she pauses and shakes her head. “It’s such a shame I don’t have some of the more interesting flavours on board today.”
What Richards means by "more interesting" are the kind of culinary combinations to be found in her new cookbook, Lola's Ice-Creams and Sundaes. Welsh rarebit ice-cream on French toast. Japanese red bean ice-cream. Star anise and saffron. Horseradish. Parmesan. Avocado and orange. Blue cheese ice-cream served with a pineapple compote.
Richards rummages in a freezer box at her feet, and produces a foil-covered bowl. “This one isn’t really set yet. Red pepper and goats’ cheese. I like the sweetness of red pepper and then you’ve got a bit of saltiness on the back palate.”
It’s ridiculously good, and unnerving at the same time. While one part of my brain is cooing, “Mmmm, delicious creamy ice-cream”, a SWAT team from my subconscious is barking out, “Attention all taste buds! Goats’ cheese in ice-cream format! I repeat, goats’ cheese has infiltrated the dessert sector.”
In many ways, Morfudd Richards makes an unlikely Willy Wonka. A no-nonsense 40-something with a cut-glass accent, Richards had never thought of making ice-cream until a dilapidated pink Mr Frosty van caught her eye on eBay in 2004.
“I don’t even go onto the site much. I’m not sure why I was there,” muses Richards. “I just fell in love with it and thought, I’m going to buy it. It cost £500. I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do with it. I guess it was a mid-forties thing.”
At that point, Richards was the owner of Lola’s, a hugely successful neighbourhood restaurant in Islington she had first opened with a business partner, back in 1996.
As such, she was adept at dealing with tricky customers, trickier chefs (her first stint as a restaurant manager was at a new eatery owned by her sister’s then-boyfriend, an unknown chef called Marco Pierre White) and the whims of the London dining trade.
What she was not quite so up-to-speed on was engine mechanics. “I flew down to Cornwall to pick it up and it was in a pretty shoddy state. I was thinking, ‘Gosh, what have I done?’ It blew up within 100 miles.”
Undeterred, Richards spent a month giving her new van a paint-job (“I’d lived in Battersea for 20 years and hadn’t met one of my neighbours. By the end of the month, I’d made friends with the whole street.”) before tentatively starting to put together some ice-creams.
“To be honest I had no idea of selling them. I just bought the van and it just seemed the next logical step to make ice-cream. I never liked the Mr Whippy thing and after a while, I started thinking ‘whatever happened to old-fashioned ice-cream vans?’ I had this idea that I’d make the ice-creams in Lola’s and go out and sell them.”
After some none-too-subtle warnings, Richards elected not to start a turf war with established ice-cream vans, and started taking her van to parties (including Jamie Oliver’s), festivals and weddings. Business boomed, and when she received an offer on her restaurant in 2006, she didn’t think twice about selling.
“I just wanted a less stressful life, I suppose. It’s such a great feeling, driving an ice-cream van. Everybody smiles at you. And unlike in a restaurant, you never get a difficult customer in an ice-cream van.”
The Wonka-ish inventing process had really caught her imagination, too. Although customers still regularly opt for more traditional flavours such as banana, strawberry and chocolate, Richards decided early on that experimentation would be the heart of her ice-cream empire.
Inspired by meals at El Bulli in Spain, and Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck, Richards read books, talked to chefs and spent long hours in the kitchen. Richard Corrigan donated a recipe for horseradish ice-cream. Beetroot and tomato is an adaptation of a Skye Gyngell recipe to accompany pheasant.
“I base my combinations on things that I think work empirically even if it’s in a savoury context,” Richards says. “Something as simple as a tomato and basil sorbet works, because we know that tomato and basil are a good combination. You can put anything with anything – but it has got to make sense.”
So when Richards decided she wanted a black ice-cream, she first tried liquorice (too brown), then squid-ink, ending up with a frozen rice-pudding, based on an Italian risotto nero. “That seemed permissible to me, even though it sounds odd, because there’s a gelato in Sardinia which is basically an ice-cream with rice.”
Similar thought processes produced a crab ice-cream with sorrel sherbet (based on The Ivy’s crab cakes with sorrel sauce) and parsnip and cider ice-cream, which works, according to Richards, because the root vegetable often appears alongside apples in recipes.
Disasters include a chicken ice-cream (“horrible”), curried parsnip, and an iron-rich combo of broccoli and spinach. This last was an attempt to get children to eat their greens on BBC’s Sweet Baby James. Richards balked at the producers’ first suggestion – liver and onions – but won the kids over with her cauliflower cheese ice-cream.
She also won over an editor at Ebury Press, who saw the show and asked her to write a book. There’s a lot more to Lola’s Ice-Creams and Sundaes than squid ice-cream and wasabi sorbet though.
The gin and tonic sorbet is truly delicious, and I have Post-its marking the recipes in the book for burnt orange caramel, and fresh mint with chocolate brownie.
“I don’t think of myself as gimmicky,” Richards says. “Yes, of course, the van is a bit psychedelic – I want it to be wacky – but I hope that people take my ice-creams a bit more seriously.
Lola’s Ice-Creams and Sundaesis published by Ebury Press (£20)
Speedy summer fruit ice-cream
There are two red summer fruit ice-creams in this book – one is a custard-based ice cream and the other is this, a speedier version. I like to add raspberries to what is essentially a strawberry ice-cream because they bring extra depth of flavour. You could omit the raspberries if you prefer.
SERVES 8 (approx. 1.2 kg)
900 g strawberries
200 g raspberries
200 ml double cream
150 g caster sugar
Rinse the berries and drain them. Hull the strawberries. Purée all of the ingredients in a blender, then strain a couple of times. Churn in an ice-cream machine until firm or follow the still-freezing method. Transfer to a sealed container, covering the top of the ice cream with waxed or greaseproof paper. Transfer to the freezer until needed.
Still freezing method: Place the mix into a sealed container and put it into the coldest part of the freezer. After 60-90 minutes, remove the container from the freezer and beat the mix with either a fork or an electric whisk in order to make a uniform slush. Return the mixture to the freezer and repeat this process twice at intervals of 60-90 minutes. After it has been beaten three times, return it to the freezer for a further hour or so and it should then be ready to serve.
Gin and tonic sorbet with candied limes
The Gin and Tonic Sorbet is an adaptation of a recipe from the excellent book Ices: The Definitive Guide by Caroline Liddell and Robin Weir, which was an invaluable guide for me when I first started making ice-cream. The essential difference between this recipe and the one in their book is that I am more profligate with my gin – the consequence of which is that you should be patient with the time it takes to churn, since alcohol depresses the freezing point of the sorbet.
Gin and Tonic sorbet is probably the most popular sorbet at weddings and civil partnerships (oh, and also at children’s parties, where many parents are looking for a little sustenance).
Please be aware that this is not a very stable sorbet due to the amount of alcohol in it – once it begins to melt on a hot day, it will quickly turn to slush (even if it is stabilised somewhat by the addition of an egg white), so eat fast.
Please note that you will need to prepare the limes by putting them in the freezer the day before you want to serve the sorbet. You will also need a mandolin in order to make the limes, as cutting them finely with a very sharp knife does not yield the same results. Note: this recipe contains raw egg white.
MAKES 30 shot-glass-sized canapés (approx. 1.2 kg)
For the sorbet
3 tbsp glucose syrup (optional)
500 ml stock syrup (cooled)
350 ml gin
450 ml tonic water
juice of 2 limes, strained
1 egg white (optional)
For the limes
5-6 limes (preferably un-waxed)
100 ml stock syrup
Wash and dry the limes and put them in the freezer overnight. For the sorbet, mix all of the ingredients, except for the egg whites, together. Churn in an ice-cream machine or follow the still-freezing method until almost firm, then add the egg white, if using, to the mix and continue churning until the sorbet is firm. Transfer to a sealed container and cover the top of the sorbet with waxed or greaseproof paper. Transfer to the freezer until needed.
For the limes, pre-heat the oven to 50 degrees. Cut the limes across their heads with a sharp knife so that you create a flat surface. Slice the limes on a mandolin, making sure you use the guard to protect your fingers. Do not slice them so thinly that they lose their shape.
Put the limes in the syrup and leave them to soak for five minutes, then put them in an ovenproof dish in the oven. Let them dry in the oven on a low heat until they are crisp. Transfer to a sheet of non-stick baking paper until needed.
To serve, scoop sorbet into shot glasses or onto saucers, with a teaspoon, and top with the candied limes. The limes do not need to be perfectly round to be served. They can be served in halves or even just use the zest. The point is to evoke the spirit, as it were, of a good old G’n’T.
TIP There is no need to add egg white to the sorbet if you don’t wish to – it is just that it holds the sorbet together and stabilises it better if you do.