This recipe is a great one to impress people with – it looks
stunning if served with a bit of care, it tastes fantastic, and it’s really
simple. The strawberry “soup” is rich, warm and frothy, with a good kick of
booze, and it’s perfect with plain, good quality vanilla ice cream slowly
melting into it. You might think the red wine would overpower the rest of the
flavours, but it complements the strawberries really well – so please give this
a go, even if you don’t normally drink red. The strawberry “soup” is adapted
from a recipe by Simon Rimmer on Something For The Weekend (click here for more
details), which is a really great source of recipes. My boyfriend Mike is a bit
addicted to this program and was desperate to try this out – I have to admit
that I was a bit dubious, but when I read the ingredients list and came up with
the idea of making it into an ice cream float, I was really glad I’d tried it.
Ingredients:
300ml red wine
200g icing sugar
50ml brandy
400g strawberries
Vanilla ice cream, to serve
Serves 4.
First of all, mix the icing sugar, brandy and red wine in a small pan,
place it on a medium heat and bring it to the boil. Then leave it bubbling
until it has reduced by about half (just a quick note – I’m sure most people
reading will know this, but if you’re reducing something you need to leave the
lid off!). Next, finely chop the strawberries and scoop them all into the
liquid, before taking it off the heat and pureeing it with a hand blender (see
the Kitchen Bits and Bobs page for hand blender tips – but note that if you
have a normal blender instead, you can easily just puree the strawberries &
then stir them in). Pop it back on the heat so that it’s warm but not hot, otherwise the ice cream will
just disappear as soon as you put it in! Serve in a tall glass with a scoop of
vanilla cream dropped into the top, and eat it as the ice cream slowly
dissolves into the boozy strawberry sweetness. Bliss.