Made for Each Other. Chocolate Olive Oil Ice Cream.

   When it comes to hooking friends up, I confess I suck. I am the world's worst matchmaker. Had I been in the Garden of Eden introducing people, we'd be a planet of snakes. It doesn't matter, young or old, gay or straight, if I tell you I have your perfect Special Someone, you have my permission to ignore me. In fact just freaking run because I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I'm just talking about romance here. As far as introducing people who I think might really get along in business or personally, I got that. As long as there's no candlelit dinners involved, I'm good. I also love it when people introduce me to people they know who are doing fun and interesting stuff.

   A couple of months ago my friend Chip told me he had someone he thought I ought to meet. Her name is Anne McKibben and she's the founder of  CocoaPlanet. How could I be living in this small, small, town with someone who makes such killer chocolate and not know it???? Beats me. That's fixed now. Anne's great and her chocolate is amazing, and from the moment I tasted it I just wanted to do something special with it. A couple of weeks ago I got my chance.

   While doing my dinner in honor of St. Martins' Press publication of the Essential James Beard Cookbook, I was introduced to California Olive Ranch Olive Oil. The minute I tried the Arbequina oil, I had a matchmaking idea. What would happen if I put this olive oil together with Anne's Chocolate Olive chocolate? After stepping into a cold shower and slapping myself around for a few minutes: "No Kathy, bad Kathy, leave that nice olive oil and chocolate  alone. What did they ever do to you?" However, I just couldn't get the idea out of my head. So, yeah I did it. I introduced them.

They're such a cute couple and together they'd have such a beautiful baby.

Chocolate Olive Oil Ice Cream

Here's What You Need:

6 egg yolks
1 and 1/3 cups of milk
A pinch of salt
1/2 cup of sugar
1 cup of whipping cream
1/2 cup of Arbequina olive oil
4 oz of CocoaPlanet Chocolate Olive Chocolate
Large crystal sea salt

Here's What To Do: 

Chop 4 ozs of chocolate into chunks and set them aside.

Mix the milk, sugar and salt together in a pot.

In a separate bowl whisk the egg yolks and set them aside.

Pour the cream into a large bowl and set a strainer on top of the bowl. Set it aside.
Heat the milk, sugar, and salt mixture until it's warm.

When the milk sugar and salt mixture is warm, pour it into the bowl of egg yolks. Pour it in slowly and keep whisking. You don't want a bowl of scrambled eggs.
Pour the egg yolk, milk, sugar, and salt mixture back into the pot.

Keep the heat on medium and keep stirring the mixture until you have a thickened sort of custard.
Remember to scrape around the bottom of the pot too so nothing burns.        
When it coats the spoon or spatula, it's ready.
Pour the custard mixture through the strainer and into the cream.
Add in the chunked chocolate and stir it  into the mixture.

Blend the olive oil into the custard thoroughly. Whisk it hard, so that it's combined thoroughly.

Then set the bowl in an ice bath and whisk everything well until it's cooled.

Set the bowl in the fridge for a few hours or even over night to chill thoroughly, then pour it into an ice cream machine. 25 minutes later you've got ice cream.

  The smooth chocolate blended well with the fruity olive oil and it was instant love. I sprinkled a bit of chunky sea salt on top of each serving, because olive oil was always served with a bit of that at my house growing up, and who doesn't love a bit of salt on ones' chocolate?

It had to work.

It did. I was relieved to have put two things together that were most defintely still speaking to me at the end of it all.

   I'd like to thanks the good people at California Olive Ranch and CocoaPlanet for helping me make this love connection happen. I'm most definitely making this recipe again, this time I'm working on a three way between the chocolate, the  olive oil, and an ingredient yet to be named. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori