Vanilla Gelato and a triumphant beginning

Whoever said you need an ice cream maker to make a gelato? hogwash! Who said u need egg to make creamy ice cream?  Baloney! and you cant make delish ice cream yourself? Nonsense! If that does not motivate you enough, i do not know what will. My mom used to make ice creams when we were growing up and we used to love it, crystallized in parts as it was. We used to badger her to make more. And somehow that taste lay in a corner of my mind amidst so many other childhood memories that i associate to smells and tastes till i chanced upon this. and i knew i had to try it. Thanks Aparna for rekindling these old fires! :)

I decided to go simple and do the ultra basic stuff as it was my first time. Now that i know this is a winner, i have already concocted various sinful combinations in my head.

What you will need to make a box of Vanilla Gelato that will feed 3 very passionate gelato lovers or 6 regular mortals (you may just hop over to the other side after this, mind it!):

3 cups milk (i used toned to justify the name 'gelato' but you could use regular full cream milk and still call it one)
100 ml cream
3 scant tablespoons corn flour
3/4 cup vanilla sugar
1 average length vanilla bean

How you go about it:

-Keep aside a quarter cup of the milk and keep aside till further use.
-Pour the remaining milk into a saucepan, add the sugar and and bring it to the boil. Add the split and chopped vanilla bean along with the scraped out vanilla goodness from the bean. Lower the flame and let the milk simmer for about 7 minutes or so. Cover with lid and keep aside for an hour while the vanilla is infused into the milk.
-Strain the milk to remove the bits of the vanilla bean and pour the milk back into the saucepan. Bring it to the boil and let it simmer.

-Add the corn flour to the quarter of milk that was kept aside and whisk to ensure there are no lumps.
-Add this mix to the saucepan of milk and stir continuously to ensure no lumps form. Whisk over the flame till it reaches a custard like consistency and when the spoon is lifted, it coats the back of your spoon.
- Take it off the flame and allow it too cool and make sure you stir it to prevent a skin from forming.
-Add the cream to this mix and whisk by hand to ensure it becomes a homogeneous mix.
-Pour into a sufficiently large and flat bottomed box that can be kept in the freezer and freeze till set.
-Once set, beat the ice cream till its mushy. This is so that we break down the crystals. Return back to the freezer to set. Once set, blend/beat it again till mushy. Repeat this process thrice and you get the creamiest, best home made ice cream made without an ice cream churner!

-Once set, you may drizzle chocolate sauce and dulce de leche or any other sauce of your fancy. That's the beauty of a vanilla gelato, it complements almost anything.
and there my bellissime people is your Gelato  :) This is only the beginning of many more to come!