Mango ice cream with wild raspberries
Oslo, August 4
The last weeks I have been busy making ice cream. This is not so strange considering the hot Norwegian summer and how much my son loves ice cream. On my vacation up North I made home made smoothie ice cream. And when I found the loveliest wild raspberries some days ago, I knew I had to make something special, something I had not eaten since the 1990s, the ice cream I shared with the person I was going to marry. Mango ice cream with raspberries. An ice cream that reminds me of the best things in my life.
I had to photograph the ice cream so I climbed a chair to get the best viewpoint. In all my eagerness I took one wrong step and fell down from the chair. An old knee-injury made the fall hurt badly and I started to cry. My little son witnessed everything from where he sat in the sofa. When I started to cry, he started to weep.
I tried to console him, telling him that mommy just fell down from the chair. It was OUCH OUCH, but not dangerous. He pointed at one of my birthmarks and asked me If that was where it hurt? No, I said. It hurts inside my knee, but it is over now.
Gaza, August 4
I try not to care. But sometimes it is harder to cut the ties that bind you to the world. I have noticed how the ties are getting thicker now that I have become a parent. A French war reporter in an interview described how she was not afraid, until she had given birth to a son. Now she reflected upon what she really experienced out there in the war zone, what fears she exposed her child to.
Sometimes there is an extra tie, and this one had to do with ice cream. A picture of a child in an ice cream freezer. A little girl the same age as my two-year old son. The Palestinian hospital at Rafeh, Gaza, had to turn to old ice cream freezers because of lack of mortuaries as death toll rose. A child in an ice cream freezer in a cold-hearted conflict.
War deprives us of our humanity. Syria. Gaza. Iraq. Afghanistan. It is not here. But there are some stories that break trough. Another story I cannot forget is the picture of an abandoned fish bowl in Syria. The owner let the tap water drop into the bowl so the fish could live. The last deed of care before he had to flee.
Mango ice cream
Mango ice cream with wild raspberries
500 g mango flesh (about 2 medium mangoes)
50 g sugar
2 tbsp juice of lemon
225 g thick Greek yogurt (full-fat)
A handful of frozen wild raspberries (or ordinary raspberries)
1. Peel the mango and reserve a few slices for garnish which you cut into small cubes and leave in the freezer.
2. Cut the rest of the mango in chunks and put in a blender. Avoid the fibrous inner part.
3. Now you are left with the stone and the surrounding fibrous flesh. Squeeze it with your hands over a little pan. Add the sugar and bring to boil until the sugar has dissolved. Allow to cool. Add the lemon juice.
4. Blitz the mango with the yogurt and mango juice in the blender. Churn in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturer’s directions. Serve with frozen raspberries and mango cubes.
P.S. If you use frozen mango chunks, it will take shorter time to make.
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