This Week's Ice Cream: It's a Weird One

We were cleaning Dungeness crabs in prep for a small gathering of friends and at some point as my wife was eating a bit of the tomalley (aka mustard, guts, or if you want to get technical, the hepatopancreas) someone, probably her, had the idea of making a savory ice cream with it.

My response, "Uhh ok, why not." Thus began the strangest ice cream I've ever made.

Surprise, surprise, there aren't many any recipes for tomalley ice cream on the interwebs so this one was going to have to come down to pure creativity. On the ride home with the tomalley comfortably in the back seat we considered a variety of things to mix with it, none of which I can remember now.  After a night's sleep I awoke and had a flash that corn could work well.

The final crabby corny concoction consisted of:
1 cup or so of crab tomalley

Kernels from 2 ears of fresh corn

2 cups heavy cream
1 cup of milk
4 egg yolks
1 clove of diced garlic
2-3 tablespoons of dry sherry
Pinch of salt
Pepper to taste

All of this was cooked (in the typical ice cream batter manner), blended, and then strained. When finished and hot it was a rich and tasty crab-corn bisque.

Once cooled and churned into ice cream frozen crab-corn bisque, topped with smashed wasabi peas for texture and a bit more flavor (a brilliant addition that I can't take credit for), and then served as an appetizer, it became something quite different.

Strangely odd but still quite tasty. It needs to be tweaked to be truly delicious -- the tomalley could be cooked to reduce the water content and make for a creamier ice cream and a bit of brown sugar on top would add another layer of complexity. Nonetheless, for a first try at making crab tomalley ice cream it was pretty good and everyone enjoyed it, or so they said.

Unlike the Prosciutto-cantaloupe ice cream, I'll definitely give this one another shot.