Plate to Plate

It must be summer, because the ice cream maker has taken up permanent residence in our freezer, pushing out other, lesser items, like the half-dozen whole wheat everything bagels we dragged back from New York, or that not-so-great borscht I inconceivably made way too much of last autumn, or even the wonderfully chewy udon noodles that survived the hourlong trip back from the Asian grocery in Albany unscathed.

We do have our priorities, you know. You do not mess with ice cream and summer.

This whole part of the world knows very well that ice cream and summer go hand-in-hand. All over New England there are these delightful little dairy bars. Reeking with good old-fashioned Americana, they’re usually roadside stands selling fried clam strips, hamburgs (as they call them here), soda, and towering cones of sugarbomb ice cream. My visits to these places are few and far between, and for nostalgia value only — the food is not really my thing, but the stands themselves remind me fondly of my Dairy Queen filled childhood summers at the New Jersey Shore. Sitting at a weathered picnic table behind one of these dairy bars, with the humidity hanging heavy in the air, I can almost feel the salty ocean breezes and the sand crumbling between my toes. And then I take a bite of that high-fructose-corn-syrup-laden ice cream, and, well…back to reality it is.

Luckily, I can make own ice cream at home. Most ice cream recipes involve making a four- or five-egg custard, letting it cool, and then mixing it all up. The nice thing about frozen yogurt — aside from its ostensible healthiness — is that it requires no cooking whatsoever. No heat in the kitchen, no cooling five-egg custards (which are delicious, by the way), and the immediate gratification of ice cream on demand. Fresh-made frozen yogurt actually tastes like yogurt — with a pleasant tang — not at all like the “yogurt” peddled at those soft serve yogurt shops at rest stops off the highway. (Take it from me — I actually worked at one of those places in high school.)

This recipe features two things fairly singing with seasonality at our CSA right now. The strawberries are ripe and juicy in the fields, and the tarragon is growing in tall, willowy stalks up in the herb garden. I’d made a bit of compound butter with the two, then decided the combination would be just as good for dessert. And it is. The minty, anise-y tarragon provides a cool contrast to the sweet berries, and the smooth bite of the yogurt keeps both flavors from getting out of hand. If you don’t like tarragon, a little mint would probably be a fine substitute.

It should be said that homemade ice cream, and frozen yogurt especially, is best eaten the day it is made. But I didn’t need to tell you that, did I?

Strawberry Tarragon Frozen Yogurt

• About 8 oz. very ripe strawberries, hulled and sliced
• 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
• 2/3 c. sugar
• 2 tsp. finely minced tarragon
• 3 c. whole milk yogurt

1. Put the strawberries, vanilla, and sugar in a medium bowl to mascerate, breaking up the strawberries with the back of a fork, while you prepare the tarragon.
2. Add the tarragon and yogurt to the berries and stir. Cover the mixture with plastic wrap and chill until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is very cold, about an hour or so.
3. Freeze according to the directions provided by your ice cream maker. Eat it immediately, hovering over the frozen bowl with the biggest spoon you can find, or transfer the frozen mixture to a container and set it in the freezer to harden for an hour.