(Chicken) Rice Salad

I discovered this recipe a couple of weeks ago on the RecipeZaar site whilst looking for a salad to use up some cooked basmati rice I had in the refrigerator, and this is now the third time I've made it ... a real winner as far as we are concerned. And happily this time, borrowing Mr P's camera, I am able to share it with you all although I've gone for a vegetarian version this time leaving out the chicken.

The first time around I made this using leftover white basmati rice and it was very good. But brown rice, besides being healthier, really does lend a deliciously fragrant and nutty taste to the salad and I would recommend you use it too. In fact I used brown basmati as I find it just that bit classier and somewhat lighter in texture than regular brown rice, although I know some people may have trouble sourcing it. Also I've found that one and a half cups of rice cooks up to an awful lot of rice and I prefer to cut back to just one cup here and keep the rest of the ingredient list as is. I make the whole recipe for just the two of us and keep half back in the refrigerator for the next day, sans dressing. Also I like to plate it up on mixed salad leaves as I find just plain romaine/cos lettuce can be a bit boring. I can imagine this would also be very tasty using brown bulghur and may well give it try before the summer ends.

The recipe says the celery is optional ... I find it is one of the highlights in this salad, so unless you really don't like it I would say do make sure to include it.

This is a fabulous salad, very satifying and full of taste. I think it would also make a good addition to a buffet. If you like to prepare ahead like me this is so quick to put together and I don't see why you couldn't use leftover roast chicken if you have some to hand.

Chicken Rice Salad – Serves 4

1 1/2 cups brown rice
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 skinless chicken breasts, sliced open
1 red onion, thinly sliced
2 stalks celery, thinly sliced (optional)
1/2 cup dried apricot, sliced
1/2 cup currant
1/3 cup pistachio nut, toasted
1/4 cup fresh mint, chopped
2 oranges, peeled and cut into 8 segments each
1/2 cup French dressing (see below)
1 baby romaine lettuce, washed

Cook the rice and let it cool completely. I cook it some hours beforehand or even the day before. My method is to tip one cup of unwashed brown basmati into a pan of two cups of water that has just come to the boil, add salt to taste, cover, turn flame to low and let simmer for exactly 40 minutes. Remove from heat, fluff the rice with a fork, lay over a clean tea towel, replace lid. If you are cooking the rice to serve with a hot meal it can sit like this for 20 - 30 minutes without any problem.

Heat the oil in a large non-stick pan. Gently cook the garlic (I use two thick cloves crushed with the skin on) and chicken breasts until the chicken is cooked through, do not brown or over-cook it as this can result in the meat becoming dry. Remove the chicken from pan, let cool, then cut up into small pieces. You can do this ahead of time too.

Combine the rice, chicken pieces, onion, celery, apricots, currants, nuts, mint and oranges in a large bowl. Just before serving, stir through dressing. Arrange lettuce leaves in the base and sides of 4 bowls and spoon salad over the top. Garnish with a sprig of mint.

French Dressing – makes ¾ cup

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1-2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
Salt and pepper to taste
6-8 tablespoons olive oil

Mix together first 3 ingredients. Add salt and pepper. Gradually add olive oil, whisking until thickened. Can be refrigerated for up to a week. Whisk or shake to recombine.

This dressing by Nigella is also good, and the little bit of sweetness provided by the honey works very well with this salad.

Golden Honey Mustard Dressing - makes 330ml

4 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoon honey
80ml lemon juice
250ml rapeseed or light olive oil
1 teaspoon Maldon salt or 1/2 teaspoon table salt

Put all the ingredients into a jam jar, make sure the lid's on firmly and shake like mad.

Update!

Dear friends, as some of you will know, we got burgled at the end of July. Besides Mr P's laptop, my 19" screen and cordless keyboard and mouse (not the processor for some reason, thank goodness), our cameras, and lots of other personal items got taken as well. Being right in the middle of our summer season and super busy I wouldn't have had a lot of time for blogging anyway but it was the lack of a camera that unfortunately put paid to my posting about a couple of interesting dishes I really would have liked to have shared with you all.

Thankfully I've now got us fully functional again computer-wise, as everything shuts here in August it's been frustratingly slow to order stuff and get it delivered. Also Mr P bought a new camera this week, so although I haven't had time to even think about replacing mine, at least I can "borrow" his when I need to.

Now all I need to do is recapture my mojo and I'm back in business, lol.

pi xxx

Spicy Chicken Kebabs

Summer is upon us with a vengeance now ... and so healthy grills and salads are the way to go until temperatures drop. Thinking about what to buy for dinner I realised that I haven't made kebabs for quite some time so when I popped into the small village supermarket and saw the butcher (oh how lucky we are to have a real butcher!) had some organic chicken breasts I decided I really needed to make some this weekend. Mr P was over the moon when I told him as he loves this kind of thing.

What you actually thread onto the skewers is down to personal taste really. They can be with meat, or not, and cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers ... any colour you like, onion slices, cubes of aubergine and wedges of courgette are most probably the more usual choices. So that wasn't a problem, where I was looking for some inspiration was the marinade. So I went looking on the internet and found this recipe by Antony Worrall Thompson that looked pretty good. I didn't have any spring onions, in fact I haven't been able to find any all week, so I substituted with red onion. Also 20 kebabs sounded an awful lot to me, even if they are mini-sized, and so for just the two of us I halved the recipe.

The marinade was a doddle to make in the food processor. Taste testing before pouring it over the cubed chicken confirmed it was a winner of a recipe ... the orange zest and juice giving a really lovely tangy edge. I mixed the cubes of chicken and marinade in a small freezer box and placed it in the refrigerator overnight giving it an occasional shake. An hour or so would have been fine too. I found the marinade got quite thick after so long in the refrigerator and so I took the box out about an hour before wanting to make up the kebabs, mixed in the mushrooms, and left it to come to room temperature on the counter.

I opted for long wooden skewers, because that's what I had, pre-soaked for half an hour to avoid burning, and got four generous kebabs from my reduced recipe. Shorter skewers would have given eight I should think. There was quite a lot of marinade and so when I was ready to make up the kebabs I drained the cubes of chicken and mushrooms in a sieve reserving the marinade for basting. I grilled the kebabs on my iron plancha, but a griddle pan or barbecue would work well too, and served them on a bed of basmati rice with a salad garnish on the side.

Mmmmm what a fabulous meal, very Mediterranean in style, easy to prepare and light to eat. It made a bit of a mess on the plancha but this came off easily enough after a good soaking in very hot water. This marinade would work very well with pork, or even chicken joints, so I am not going to confine myself to using it for kebabs. However I may well work it up to be a bit spicier as it has a lovely deep taste but not a lot of heat.

Spicy Chicken Kebabs - Serves 2

2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
knob of fresh ginger, roughly chopped
1 small orange, grated zest and juice
small red onion, roughly chopped
1 Tbsp clear honey
½ Tbsp light soy sauce
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 small skinless boneless chicken breast fillets, cut into cubes
8 button mushrooms
8 cherry tomatoes
1 red pepper, seeded and cut into 8 pieces

Blitz the garlic, ginger, orange zest and red onion to a paste in a food processor. Add the honey, orange juice, soy sauce and oil, then blend again. Pour the mixture over the cubed chicken and leave to marinate for at least 1 hour, but preferably overnight. Toss in the mushrooms for the last half an hour so they take on some of the flavour too.

Thread the chicken and vegetables onto the wooden skewers - interspering the cubes of chicken with two mushrooms, two cherry tomatoes, and two pieces of red pepper on each skewer - sprinkle over a little salt, and cook on a grill for 7-8 mins each side or until the chicken is thoroughly cooked and golden brown. Baste with the marinade from time to time until evenly cooked.

Quick 'n' Easy Pasta with Sicilian Pesto

With apologies to all my friends for my long absence. We've been eating well but nothing to blog about really. It's a busy time for us and, now that it's so very hot, we're eating lots of salads and simple grilled meals. However, this very tasty and quick pesto recipe given to me by my good friend Carlotta has inspired me to start posting again. Apparently it's the Sicilian way of making pesto and traditional to the area around the town of Trapani.

As Mr. P is off out tonight for a music session with his friends I was looking for something really quick yet satisfying for supper ... and this fit the bill tremendously well. It doesn't look very colourful on the plate but the very delicious result more than made up for that.

For just the two of us I made half the recipe and decided to serve it with spaghetti. I used some small but very tasty tomatoes, which I peeled and seeded as both the skin and seeds are indigestible, so worth the effort I think, and some fresh basil from the garden. And I used best quality extra virgin olive oil too, of course. I feel with such a simple recipe it is really important that all the ingredients are of the best quality so they really shine through.

A very simple and extremely quick meal, full of flavour. I think very often the simplest of dishes are the best. Thank you Carlotta!

Sicilian Pesto - Serves 4

500g ripe tomatoes, peeled and seeded (but this is optional...)
2 garlic cloves
1 bunch of basil
100g blanched almonds
extra virgin olive oil
salt & pepper
grated parmesan cheese

grated pecorino cheese

Put all the ingredients except the cheese into the food processor and blitz until creamy. You will need to scrape it down a few times.

Cook the chosen pasta, toss it with the pesto, add a handful of grated parmesan and pecorino cheese, mix and eat at once.

Middle Eastern Orange Cake

This wonderful cake, a recipe from Diana Henry's Crazy Water Pickled Lemons, was another part of the challenge set up by my friend exoticfresh on the taste forum. I've been meaning to make this for a long time, in fact ever since I got the book, so I was very pleased to be given this little push to stop procrastinating and finally give it a go.

I decided from the start that I wouldn't make the Marmalade and Orange Flower Cream to serve on the side. We're not big cake eaters so that means I usually end up cutting a cake like this into portions and freezing it ... therefore most of the cream would spoil before we got round to eating it. I've reproduced the complete recipe here though in case you should want to make it.

Instead of boiling the orange for an hour as stipulated in the recipe you can cook it in the microwave, a clever tip from my old pal Cakes, and thereby speed up the whole process. Apparently you prick the skin of the orange and microwave it, just as you would a potato, checking for doneness and turning it over, etc. and takes just a few minutes. I don't have a microwave and so I boiled the orange in readiness as per the recipe the day before.

Well this cake is a doddle to make, the most taxing part is lining the tin, lol. If you don't have caster sugar in the house, or it's not to be found in your neck of the woods as is my case, then just tip ordinary granulated sugar into the food processor and blitz for a moment or two ... et voilà caster sugar, and cheaper too. I followed the recipe exactly, the only thing I did differently was reducing the sugar to 200g as a quarter of a kilo sounded like an awful lot to me.

Wow what a cake! Moist and light, and so orangey ... absolutely fabulous. I'm not sure there will be any slices being put in the freezer, we may just devour it all tonight, lol.

Middle Eastern Orange Cake with Marmalade and Orange Flower Cream


1 Orange
3 Eggs
250g (9oz) Caster Sugar
55g (2oz) Plain Flour, Sifted
5ml (1tsp) Baking Powder
200g (7oz) freshly ground Almonds
Icing sugar for dusting

for the cream:
55g (2oz) Fine-shred Orange Marmalade
125g (4 ½ oz) Mascarpone Cheese
30ml (2 Tbs) Greek Yoghurt
Icing Sugar to taste
5ml (1 tsp) Orange Flower Water

Put the orange in a saucepan, cover with water and simmer for an hour. Cut the orange in half, remove the pips, and purée the rest of the fruit in a food processor.

Grease a 20cm (8in) spring-form tin and line with greaseproof paper. Preheat oven to 180˚C (350˚F) Gas Mark 4. Beat the eggs and sugar together until they’re pale and thick. Fold in the flour, baking powder, almonds and orange purée. Pour into the tin and bake in oven for about an hour, or until skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Turn the cake out to cool

To make the cream, melt the marmalade in a small pan. Let it cool slightly, but don’t let it set, then mix it with the mascarpone and yoghurt. Add icing sugar to taste and the orange flower water.

Sift icing sugar over the cake and serve with the marmalade cream.

Spiced Chicken on Melting Onions with Preserved Lemon

Responding to a challenge put up by the lovely exoticfresh on the taste forum, I made this scrummy dish for our dinner tonight. It's a recipe by Diana Henry from Crazy Water Pickled Lemons that I've never made before, which just goes to show there are more treasures to find in this fabulous book than I thought.

Although the recipe calls for chicken breasts, skin on and partially boned, I think this is because Diana Henry’s book has been produced with a predominantly Western audience in mind. In Arabic and Middle Eastern cuisines chicken thighs would be used more likely than not here as the darker meat is considered a much tastier choice than breast … which indeed it is. For that reason, and also because I just happened to have thighs defrosting when I saw this challenge, I used 8 chicken thighs, skin on and bone in, weighing about 1.400gm in total. Using bone in also results in a deeper and richer sauce I find.

What is the difference between crushed and minced garlic? I really don’t get on with garlic crushers and it’s a real pain to clean the little holes after use. What I often use instead is an old glass mincer I picked up in a car boot sale, very similar to the china/porcelain ones you sometimes see in Asiatic foodstores, and which is fabulous for mincing root ginger too … even directly from the freezer, which is the best way to store it if you want to avoid finding it’s gone moldy in the fridge and needing to be chucked.

In this case, however, I decided to stamp the cloves of garlic in a pestle and mortar with half a teaspoon of fine sea salt which results in a soft creamy mush. To this I added the chopped flesh of the preserved lemon and gave that a bit of a bash too before stirring in the other marinade ingredients. This lovely mixture I then poured over the chicken thighs, which I’d put in a freezer bag, and a good squidge and massage was all that was needed to distribute the marinade evenly. I sometimes do this with freshly bought meat and then freeze it, marinade and all, for busy mid-week meals. This would work very well with this recipe and make it a very easy meal to get on the table.

I always have a bit of a problem when a recipe says three onions as Spanish onions are enormous compared to run of the mill ones. In the end I decided to use two Spanish onions with a total weight of 600gm as to my mind too much “melting onions” could only be better than too little. I must admit it did seem like a lot of onion in the pan but by the time they had softened they had greatly reduced. Oh! how I love the smell of frying onions, lol.

I think the only other thing I would mention here is the best way to work with saffron threads, which isn’t explained in the recipe. To get the very most out of your precious saffron the best method is to crumble the strands into a bowl, add just a tablespoon of boiling water or stock, and really grind it well with a small pestle to release all its wonderful properties, before adding the rest of the liquid. Twirling it around in a large amount of liquid just doesn’t have the same result.

The chicken pieces I browned in two batches not to overcrowd the pan and because I was using bone in thighs I cooked them in the oven for an extra ten minutes. During this time I prepared couscous and garbanzos as an accompaniment, and Mr. P made a small salad to serve on the side. Delicious, although I will up the spice a little next time. Oh! I used black olives because that was what I had.

Spiced Chicken on Melting Onions with Preserved Lemon - Serves 4

4 Chicken Breast joints, skin on and partly boned
30ml (2 Tbs) Olive Oil
3 Onions, halved and sliced into half-moons
2.5ml (½ tsp) ground Turmeric
225ml (8fl.oz) Chicken Stock or water
2.5ml (½ tsp) Saffron Threads
85g (3oz) Green Olives

for the marinade:
½ Preserved Lemon
6 Garlic Cloves, crushed
5ml (1 tsp) ground Ginger
2.5ml (½ tsp) each of ground Cumin, Paprika and Cayenne
60ml (4Tbl) Olive Oil
30ml (2Tbl) Lemon Oil (from the preserved lemons)
Salt and Pepper

to serve:
A good handful of flat-leaf parsley or coriander, roughly chopped

For the marinade, remove the flesh from the inside of the lemon and chop it up, retaining the outer rind to use in the sauce. Mix the flesh with all the other marinade ingredients

Rub the marinade all over the chicken, spooning some marinade just under the skin if you can. Cover and leave in fridge for at least 3 hours, or overnight. Turn the joints every so often.

Heat the olive oil in the bottom of a shallow, ovenproof pan. Add the chicken and quickly cook the outside until nice and golden. Put the chicken aside.

In the same pan, start to cook the onions. When they are softening and beginning to turn translucent, add the turmeric and continue to cook stirring, for another minute. Bring the stock or water up to the boil and dissolve the saffron in it. Add this to the pan, along with the chicken pieces and any juices that have come out of them. It will look as if you don’t have much liquid, but this is all it needs – the chicken will continue to get nice and golden on top while the sauce makes itself underneath.

Cook in an oven, preheated to 180˚C (350˚F) Gas mark 4, for 30 minutes. Cut the lemon rind into fine strips and add it to the dish with the olives 15 minutes before the end of the cooking time. (You’ll need to rinse the olives if they are in brine, but if they’re in olive oil just drain them.) Scatter with parsley or coriander, and serve with rice, couscous or flatbread.

Smoked Salmon and Prawn Linguine

Dear friends, I'm back at last after a rather long absence due to a family bereavement. It's been really hard dealing with everyday matters and getting back into the kitchen was one of my last priorities although it is, of course, very important to eat well during taxing times such as these. Mr. P has been a great support, putting meals on the table and generally doing all he can to lift my mood and be there for me. His buying some of my favourite foods has been part of this and having a large packet of smoked salmon in the fridge needing to be used was the reason for this delicious recipe that I cobbled together for our dinner this evening. It's very easy but super delicious ... maybe you'll be tempted to give it a try!

Smoked Salmon and Prawn Linguine – Serves 2

250g linguine, farfalle would also work well
15g butter
1 Tbsp olive oil
4 spring onions, finely sliced
75g prawns
juice of ½ lemon
2 Tbsp chives or dill, finely chopped
125ml double cream or crème fraîche
125g smoked salmon, cut into strips
salt and freshly ground black pepper
lemon wedges to serve

Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the package.

Meanwhile, heat the butter and olive oil, and cook the onions over a medium heat for a couple of minutes until softened.

Add the prawns and cook until they start to curl and take colour. Stir through the lemon juice and herbs,

Now add the strips of smoked salmon and the double cream, or crème fraîche. Season to taste, taking care not to add too much salt. Cook for 2 minutes, until heated through.

Stir through the drained pasta and serve on warm plates with the lemon wedges.

Cook's note: I could also imagine incorporating some steamed broccoli florets in this and may well do so another time.

Lasagna alla Bolognese

Now that we can buy fresh lasagna sheets here, I love making lasagna. I find those sheets you need to pre-cook a fiddly and time-consuming bore, and turn making this comforting dish into a real chore. I usually make a lasagna using vegetables or lentils ... this time, for a change, it's one I've rustled up based very loosely on a ragù alla bolognese in response to a challenge on a forum I visit sometimes. I should really have had half a kilo of beef mince here but as I only had 400g in the freezer I added some Pardina lentils to bulk the dish out. I nice addition I think that wasn't out of place at all. Ahhh! and the anchovies, I can hear some loud eeeks out there lol, please do add them if you try the recipe they really do add a wonderful depth to the sauce and you won't taste them ... I promise :)

Lasagna alla Bolognese - Serves 6 generously, or 8 with a side

for the ragù:
1 large onion
2 cloves garlic
2 sticks celery
3 medium carrots
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 Tbsp butter
400g beef mince
35g Pardina lentils, washed and picked over
3 anchovy fillets
800g tomato frito or passata
1 Tbsp tomato purée
1 bay leaf
couple of tablespoons each fresh parsley and majoram, chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper

for the béchamel sauce:
60g butter
50g plain flour
700ml milk
1 bay leaf
½ tspn freshly grated nutmeg
Salt and pepper

fresh lasagna sheets
75g Mozzarella, grated
50/50 cheese of choice and parmesan, grated for topping

Put the onion, garlic, celery, and carrots in the food processor and blitz until finely chopped. Now heat the oil and butter in a large saucepan and cook the vegetables until softened. Add the mince and let brown breaking up the lumps.

Now stir through the lentils and anchovies. Mix in the tomato frito, 200ml water swirled around to get the last of the frito out of the jar, tomato purée, herbs, and season to taste. Simmer, partially covered, for about 30minutes until the lentils are soft. The sauce should be a little sloppy, it will thicken as it cools down. Set aside off the heat, in fact you can make this a day ahead if you wish.

To make the béchamel sauce. Place the butter, flour and milk in a small saucepan and stir continuously over a medium heat until the sauce starts to “plop” and thicken. Now turn the heat down to its lowest and let the sauce cook for 5 minutes giving an occasional stir. Add the bay leaf, and season to taste with nutmeg, salt and pepper. If everything goes wrong and you get lumpy sauce, don’t despair, let it cool a little and give it a blitz with a stick blender!

Preheat oven to 200ºC. Smooth a few spoonfuls of the béchamel sauce over the bottom of a large ovenproof dish measuring approximately 30 x 20 x 6cm and place a single layer of lasagna sheets on top of this. Now spoon over one third of the meat sauce, making sure the pasta is completely covered, drizzle over a little béchamel sauce, just a couple of spoonfuls, sprinkle a third of the Mozzarella on top, and follow this with a single layer of lasagna sheets. Repeat this process twice more. Spread a generous amount of béchamel sauce over this last layer of pasta followed by a really good topping of grated cheese. At this point you can let the lasagna sit for a few hours if you want to prepare it in advance. When you are ready to bake it, 30-35 minutes in the preheated oven should do it or until the top is crusty and golden. Let cool for about ten minutes before serving otherwise it will be mouth-burningly hot.

TIP: Fresh lasagna sheets keep for a long time in the freezer. When you need to use some just let them sit on the counter for about five minutes until you can gently prise them apart and take what you need. Put the rest of the packet back in the freezer in a ziplock bag.

Banana Muffins

I had some bananas in the fruit bowl that absolutely needed to be used up and so on a impulse decided to make some muffins. This recipe is a little gem I found on the Nigella site. The only thing I've done is reduce the amount of sugar by a quarter. Dead easy to make but really, really delicious.

Banana Muffins - Makes 12 muffins

75g melted butter
250g whole wheat flour
3 tspn baking powder
½ tspn bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
½ tspn ground cinnamon
½ tspn ground nutmeg
75g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp honey
2 large ripe bananas, mashed
2 medium eggs
125ml milk

Preheat oven to 190ºC. Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg into a bowl. Add the sugar and mix well.

In a second bowl beat together the eggs, vanilla extract, honey, butter and milk. Stir in the mashed bananas.

Make a well in the dry mixture and add the egg mixture. Stir together until just mixed and there is no flour visible. Do not overmix!

Put paper liners in the muffin tin and divide the mixture between them. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Once golden brown and firm remove from oven leave to cool for 5 minutes in the tin and then 5 minutes on a wire rack.

Cook's note: I dipped a small wodge of kitchen paper into the melted butter to grease the muffin tin, followed by a dusting of flour. I've given up on paper muffin liners!

No Churn Pomegranate Ice Cream

My freezer is absolutely chock-a-block and so I've been rummaging through the drawers to see what I can use up to make space for my ice cream machine as I have a new recipe I want to try out. Well what caught my eye almost immediately was two big bags of pomegranate seeds that I harvested last Autumn and never found a use for. So rather oddly, to make room for the ice cream machine, I ended up making ice cream! This is a really easy no churn recipe from Nigella Express ... no custard making, and no having to take it out of the freezer to beat the crystals. A delicious ice cream for minimum effort.

I left the pomegranate seeds out overnight to thaw, although this most probably wasn't necessary as they defrost pretty rapidly, and first thing this morning piled them in batches into my old manual juicer. This is a funny piece of equipment, I think it's Italian and it looks a little like a potato ricer but with a cup underneath to catch the juice ... a great find in the flea market some years ago, and ideal for juicing these small seeds. I got 200ml of juice which I then poured through a fine sieve, together with the lime juice, into the bowl of my KitchenAid mixer. Using the whisk attachment, I sprinkled in the icing sugar and whisked at low-medium speed until the sugar had been completely dissolved. Now it was just a matter of pouring in the double cream and whisking at medium-high speed until soft peaks formed. I then carefully spooned this luscious-looking pale pink confection into a rigid plastic box and stashed it in the freezer to serve this evening.

This was very easy to make and a very pretty pink colour that was rather nicely offset by serving, as suggested, with a few pomegranate seeds scattered over the top. A delicately flavoured ice cream very suited to serving after a rich and spicy meal. I've still got lots more seeds so will very possibly be making this again to free up some more freezer space!

No Churn Pomegranate Ice Cream - Serves 8

2 pomegranates, plus seeds from a third for decoration
1 lime
175g icing sugar
500ml double cream

Juice the pomegranates and the lime and strain the juices into a bowl.

Add the icing sugar and whisk to dissolve.

Whisk in the double cream and keep whisking until soft peaks form in the pale pink cream.

Spoon and smooth the ice cream into the airtight container of your choice and freeze for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Scatter with pomegranate seeds before you eat it.

Cook's note: By way of clarification, soft peaks means when the beaters are lifted the peaks have tips that curl over. Stiff peaks, which is not what we want here, are made whisking at high speed and have tips that stand straight when the beaters are lifted.