I am quite happy to admit when I am incorrect, not least because I have so few opportunities to do so — culinarily, at least! Outside the kitchen it’s a nonstop onslaught of realising and abegnation — but today I contritely retract my claim that mint chocolate tastes like toothpaste has fallen into my dessert. Now, supermarket mint choc-chip ice cream is still vile, with its dusty pellets of solidified cocoa-tinted vegetable oil surrounded by puffy, indiscriminately sweet frozen dairy. But when a beautiful woman tells me it’s her favourite flavour, what am I to do but promptly make several batches of it? And it turns out that my mint choc-chip ice cream isn’t just relatively more delicious than the supermarket stuff, or even than my dim expectations, it is in fact singularly sensational. Indeed, it makes my churlish toothpaste claim feel akin to those people who look at modern abstract art and say “my toddler could do that”.

There’s something particularly pleasing about eating food that’s icy cold in both temperature and flavour — like a 3D pun — the effect is not unlike being buffeted through an arctic tundra wind tunnel with each mouthful and the sensation is spectacularly inviting as ice-on-ice slides across your soft palate. Although peppermint is strident and vivifying and stands its ground, there’s a delicacy to it as well, and a sweet richness that responds so well to sugar (as borne out in that classic seasonal fruit, the candy cane) and the billowing fatness of the cream and egg yolks.

The chocolate — and I think it has to be milk, dark chocolate veers us back into food-that-tastes-like-hard-work territory — has its own mellow, fudgy sweetness that the treble notes of the peppermint skate over like, well, someone who can ice skate (unsurprisingly not a simile I’m coordinated enough to relate to). I’ve specified 150g but really, however much you want to add will be the right amount — this can bear quite a bit.

Despite the short ingredients list, I can’t pretend that making your own custard isn’t a little fiddly, but the flavour is so simple, so pure, that it benefits from the lusciously dense luxuriousness that a real custard denotes, and the resulting texture is like vapourised satin, interrupted only by bumps of chocolate. And, having made this several times, although the chocolate drops look neater, using roughly chopped chocolate from a block does somehow taste nicer.

I had visions of a pale pink ice cream, rather like the dreamy stuff Mr Lawrence arranges for the March sisters in the 2019 adaptation of Little Women — but the free range yolks I used were so heartily orange that adding drops of pink turned the whole thing a kind of vivid electric salmon, which, although it didn’t hamper the flavour, did not exactly have the ethereal quality I was hoping for. So, I went for the more obvious route and dropped in some green food colouring instead. As I said, I’ve made this several times, and with each iteration I’m astonished anew at my freshly evangelical feelings towards the glorious union of peppermint and chocolate. I make a lot of ice cream and this has easily ascended to the upper echelon of my favourite flavours.

I’ll not be tackling the abombination that is supermarket orange choc-chip ice cream, however — I can admit when I’m wrong, but I can’t perform miracles.

For more ice creams of varying difficulty and commitment, why not try my Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream; my Corn, Raspberry and Mascarpone Ice Cream, or my Chocolate Fudge Ripple Ice Cream.

Mint choc-chip ice cream

The ice cream that changed my mind about peppermint’s place in my dessert, this is LUSH and exhilaratingly minty-fresh. The custard requires some attention but the resulting texture and flavour is worth the toil. And — of course — it’s no-churn and you don’t need any machinery to make it. Recipe by myself.

• 4 egg yolks
• 100g caster sugar
• 600ml good cream (I used Lewis Road and I’m telling you in good faith that you can taste and feel the difference significantly)
• 5 drops food grade peppermint oil; or 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
• Green food colouring, optional
• 150g milk chocolate drops or milk chocolate bar

1: Whisk the four egg yolks with the 100g sugar in a heatproof bowl until well combined, then set aside.

2: Heat 300ml of the cream in a wide saucepan until the surface wobbles and the merest whisper of a hint of bubbles appear below, then immediately remove from the heat. Whisk a small quantity of the warmed cream into the egg yolks, to temper them — that is, to prevent them from being ‘shocked’ by the heat and immediately scrambling — then whisk in all the hot cream, spatula-ing out every last bit.

3: Wipe the pan with a paper towel and tip the egg yolk-cream mixure into it, returning it to a low heat. Stir with a silicone spatula constantly until it thickens into a good custard, at which point, immediately remove from the heat and continue stirring to prevent it seizing. Although the test of drawing a line down the back of your spoon through the custard to check for done-ness holds true, you really have to trust your senses here — the mixture will feel different, even sound different. Just don’t let it boil and don’t stop stirring, and if you’re feeling nervous, do as Nigella does and have a sink full of ice-cold water to plunge the base of the saucepan into and rapidly reduce the heat.

4: Once it has reached that level of thickness, carefully stir in the five drops of peppermint oil. Drop them onto a teaspoon first — one or two drops too many and it really will become inescapably toothpastey. Let the custard mixture cool to room temperature.

5: Lightly whip the remaining 300ml cream until just thickened and leaving a visible trail of lines as you drag your whisk through it. The high-end cream that I use seems to spring to life with just a few nudges of a whisk, but either way this should only be the work of a couple of minutes. Switching to a spatula, fold the cream and the cooled peppermint custard together. If you want to make your ice cream greener, here’s the point where you’d carefully add a few drops of food colouring until it reaches your desired verdancy.

6: Finally! Stir in most of the 150g chocolate drops or chopped chocolate. Spatula the entire mixture into a 1.5 litre freezerproof container, and scatter over the remaining bits of chocolate. I always refrigerate my ice cream for two hours before freezing, couldn’t possibly tell you if it has any positive effect but I’ve simply got into the habit of doing it and haven’t had time to investigate further. Either way, freeze your ice cream without touching it for about six hours, or overnight. As with most homemade ice creams, this will need to sit on the bench for 5-10 minutes before you hoon into it with a spoon.

Makes around 1.2 litres.

music lately:

As, by Stevie Wonder. The verses are deceptively innocuous and then the waves of the chorus hits and doesn’t stop and I suddenly feel dizzy and full of possibilities; it’s so beautiful.

Children of the Sun by the Folksmen; if you’ll bear with me, a song from the fictitious and shortlived electric period of this nonexistent parody 1960s folk band written as a cut song from a mockumentary; not an inviting combination of words to some, but for me, the A Mighty Wind obsessive, it all makes sense, and besides which this isn’t a comedic song, although it’s certainly doing its best to hit every psychedelic cliche, and does it so beautifully that I can’t stop listening.

Red Head Walking by Beat Happening. Lead singer Calvin Johnson’s voice is so sinister yet affable, like a vampire who enjoys surfing.

Man of La Mancha by Linda Eder, I shall simply never get over the little eyebrow raise-nod she does in the middle of her whistle tone.

PS: Again I’m bringing your attention to ReliefAid’s Gaza Appeal. Their latest message on 30 October reports that their team are “tirelessly delivering safe drinking water daily to families facing unimaginable hardship.” Further afield, if you have paypal you could also consider donating to Gaza Soup Kitchen — in their words, “in a world abundant in resources, no child should ever go to bed hungry. Right now in Gaza, every bite is a story of resilience and hope…your donation is their tomorrow.”

Finally, here in Aotearoa you can find out more about the powerful and momentous Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti and contribute to the kaupapa. When I last posted the petition against the vile Treaty Principals Bill, it had 96,000 signatures, the next night the number had doubled and it has almost doubled again now, though it has already been officially presented at parliament. Now is the time to write your submission against the bill, whether brief and witheringly terse or a floridly long and vituperative diatribe (guess which option I’m choosing).