My Journey to the Top 50 of MasterChef Canada + {Recipe} Fresh Raspberry Ice Cream

I’ve always loved the MasterChef series and I’ve been an avid home cook for 15 plus years.  When I heard that MasterChef Canada was casting for their inaugural season I jumped on the chance and filled out an application.  The very next day I received a phone call from one of the casting people.  (Wow!  That was fast!)  He interviewed me, and told me he would love to see me audition in early August of 2013.  That was only a few weeks away! 
I received a formal email invitation to attend the Toronto auditions and I immediately started to plan what I would be presenting to the tasters.  It was tricky because the auditions opened at 7am so there was no saying when you would actually be called for the taste test portion.  I wanted to choose something that would grab the tasters attention and also something that would be so intense and delicious in flavour that they couldn’t refuse me.
I decided to make ice cream since it’s my favourite thing in the world – but wait – I’ve never made ice cream before!  I did one test run of raspberry ice cream and it came out perfect so I immediately decided to go with that.  I wanted to add something that would compliment the ice cream so I decided to do a mascarpone tart with an espresso ganache.  I thought the raspberry flavour would do a good job at cutting through the coffee flavour of the tart – in a good way.  I love espresso and mascarpone so this dish was perfect in representing me.
Now, I just had to figure out how to make it to my audition, which was in Downtown Toronto, by 7am, and keep my ice cream frozen and my tart intact.  This was harder than I thought!
I practiced the tart a million times, tweaking as I went, adding lemon zest to the marscapone for that extra zing.  I hadn’t practiced the ice cream because I didn’t have an ice cream maker at the time. 
The ice cream I made for the audition was literally my second time making ice cream – ever – so I was very nervous about it.  I borrowed my sister in-law’s ice cream maker for the event.  It was risky but I felt good about it.

I also had to figure out plating so I went with a small cutting board and a small mason jar for the ice cream.  I wanted my dish to look rustic and appealing – it was exactly how I would serve it if I had a café of my own.  Here is a picture of what my dish looked like (excuse the quality – this was taken with my cellphone as no cameras were really allowed in the audition rooms).  I added the big wooden knife to add to the experience.  I would ask the taster to cut the tart any way they please, taste it, then clean their pallet with the raspberry ice cream (I am very particular about my food and how it is experienced, as you can see).

1 quart of fresh or frozen raspberries
1/4 of sugar
1 tbsp. of lemon juice

Method:

1.   Put the milk and 1 cup of the cream as well as the vanilla bean scrapings and the vanilla bean pod into a heavy-bottom sauce pot on medium to high heat, stirring frequently.  Make sure the liquid doesn’t boil – you want to turn off the heat right before it boils – so watch it closely.

2.   In the meantime, beat the eggs and sugar in a separate bowl to a creamy consistency. 
3.   Once the milk and cream are at that pre-boiling point, shut the burner off and scoop out a ladle full of hot milk and add it to the egg mixture while whisking simultaneously.  (This is a way of tempering the eggs so you don’t end up with scrambled eggs).

4.   Turn the burner back on to medium heat and pour the egg yolk mixture into the sauce pot while stirring constantly.  Continue to cook the mixture on medium heat until the custard coats the back of a wooden spoon (about 5 minutes).

5.   Set up a bowl, add the other cup of cream to the bowl and set a sieve on top and strain the custard from your saucepan through the sieve.  Put the bowl into an ice bath and let cool for about an hour.   Once the mixture is cooled, put it in the refrigerator for a few hours, or ideally overnight.
    6. Prepare the raspberry mixture.  Add the raspberries, 1/4 cup sugar and the lemon juice into a blender and pulse a few times.  You want the mixture to be roughly chopped.  Put the raspberry mixture in the fridge.

    7.   Once the ice cream base is really cold, stir in the raspberry mixture.  Scrape the ice cream base into your ice cream makers drum and follow your ice cream maker’s instructions.  Enjoy!

With Love, 

Julie