Ice Cream Class

Grant Crilly is the Executive Director and cofounder of ChefSteps. Grant is a classically trained chef and, prior to ChefSteps, he worked on the award-winning cookbook series Modernist Cuisine and cooked at various restaurants, including L’Astrance in Paris, Busaba in Mumbai, and Mistral Kitchen in Seattle.

Grant Crilly

The remarkable thing about this pistachio gelato is not that it’s dairy-free but rather that eating it makes you realize how little traditional pistachio gelato tastes like pistachio. The problem is that pistachio nuts (well, technically they’re drupes) have a delicate aroma easily overwhelmed by the dairy flavor of cream. While producing the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0982761007/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0982761007&linkCode=as2&tag=delvkitc-20">Modernist Cuisine</a> series, we decided to make a “constructed cream” using pistachio oil instead of milkfat and cane sugar instead of lactose. The idea is deceptively simple, but it took several months for our development chef Sam Fahey-Burke to dial in the ideal blend of hydrocolloid gums, plus a modern emulsifier, that made it possible to create a pistachio gelato almost entirely of water, pistachio, and sugar. This same technique can be applied to almost any other nut, including almonds, hazelnuts, pecans, walnuts, or peanuts. Simply replace the pistachio paste with another smooth, unsweetened nut butter, and replace the pistachio oil with the flavorful nut oil of your choice.

Dairy-Free Pistachio Gelato