The Raw Greek

Creamy Cherry Ice-cream

Ingredients
2 glasses of almond milk* app 375ml
1 cup Raw Cashews – 100g
1 vanilla bean – seeds scraped out
1 ripe banana - frozen
A pinch of salt
250g pitted cherries - app 2 cups
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
2 tbsp sweetener (raw honey, agave syrup, 4 pitted dates etc)

In a blender place the cashews and a half of the almond milk until the cashews have been pulverised and you are left with a creamy mixture. Add the rest of the almond milk, the frozen banana, vanilla and salt and blend until you have a smooth consistency. Set aside in a bowl.
Without washing the blender put half of the cherries in with 2 tbsp of sweetener of your choice and the nutmeg and process until you have a bright red syrup.
Cut the remaining cherries into quarters and set aside.
By hand mix the cherry syrup into the cashew mixture. Switch on the ice-cream maker and pour the mixture into the cooling bowl. Let it freeze in the ice-cream maker for approximately 30-40 minutes. After the ice cream stiffens (about 2 minutes before it is done), add the cherry quarters, then continue freezing until the ice cream is ready - if necessary stir them in after the ice cream has been removed from the machine. Put the ice cream in a covered container and let it harden in the freezer for at least an hour before serving.
Alternatively put the ice-cream in the freezer for longer and remove 30 minutes before serving.



If you do not have an ice-cream maker you can put the mixture directly from the blender into an airtight container and place in the freezer, mix it up every half an hour to prevent it crystallizing. Do this 4-5 times, again remove from the freezer half an hour before serving.
Another way around not having an ice-cream maker is to freeze the mixture without the quartered cherry pieces and then pass it through a juicer with the blank blade or whizz it in a blender briefly before adding the cherries by hand and serving.

*Almond milk
(recipe yields about 1.5 litres of milk)
Soak ¾ cup (75g) almonds overnight. Blend the almonds with 1 litre of water and 3 medjool dates or other sweetener of your choice. Strain the milk through a nut milk bag so you are left with a smooth white milk. (store in the fridge, it will keep for 3 days).

About the Cherry

Sweet, rare, and seasonally limited cherries are prized items in culinary terms; why? Because they are beautiful and delicious and only in season for a short period; May – August, which adds some truth to the phrase Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
The tree of the small and fleshy red or reddish black fruit is part of the Rosaceae family which includes almonds, peaches, apricots and plums. It is believed that the Romans discovered the sweet cherry fruit in Asia Minor in about 70 BC and then introduced them to Britain in the first century AD.
Like most fruit cherries are fat, sodium, and cholesterol-free, so where do they rise above the rest?
Lets start by stating that per 100g of cherries contain 30 times more vitamin C then oranges.
Secondly cherries are a great source of potassium, bioflavonoids and other antioxidants.
We all know that all fresh fruits are full of goodness, but the high levels of flavanoids, athocyanin and melatonin found in tart cherries has been said to help maintain healthy joints and muscles, reduce inflammation and induce healthy sleep patterns.
Darker cherries have higher antioxidant and vitamin levels than lighter ones, but sour cherries, which are generally bright red rather than a darker red-purple in color and harder to come by, have far higher levels of antioxidants than its sweet relative. Antioxidants can help to fight cancer and heart disease.
Beta carotene is another important nutrient that cherries are rich in (they contain 19 times as much beta carotene as blueberries or strawberries) as well as vitamin E, potassium, magnesium, iron, fiber and folate.

Did you know...
- The bark and stems of wild cherries have an almond-like aroma.
- The cherry tree is an omen of good fortune and eating ripe cherries off of the tree mean success and happiness.
- Apparently cherries are also a symbol of fertility. The owner of a cherry tree is supposed to have a rich crop if the first cherry is eaten by a woman who had recently given birth to her first child. This puts me in the perfect position to seek out all the cherry trees in the area and demand I be allowed to eat as many as I can ;-)
- Shakespeare used cherries as a symbol of love and romance in A Midsummer Night's Dream.