Basil ice cream with Apricot curd topping

Directions

1. Apricot Curd
2. Sterilize 4 to six half pint canning jars by washing well in hot water, and baking at 250* F for 45 minutes. Sterilize lids by boiling. Keep jars and lids HOT while making curd
3. wash, cut, and pit apricots. Cook them with a scant 1/4 cup water until they are very soft - Watch to make sure they don't scald. Grind them through a food mill or press through a course mesh sieve, leaving the skins behind. You will want a little over a cup of apricot puree.
4. Stir the sugar. lemon, and dash of salt into the warm apricot puree until fully incorporated. Add butter and stir to melt and incorporate butter fully into the sweetened apricot puree. The mixture can be heated over a double boiler to melt butter, if necessary.
5. Separate eggs and set aside whites for later use. Mix yolks up and carefully add a small amount of the hot apricot-butter-sugar mixture, stirring the whole time, to temper the eggs. Continue adding apricot mixture until about 1/2 of the mixture has been added
6. add tempered egg-apricot mixture to apricot puree, and cook and gently stir, over simmering double boiler until the apricot curd has a custard-sauce consistency and can coat the back of a wooden spoon. If you want a perfectly smooth texture, press the the curd through a fine meshed sieve. This is not neccessary.
7. Fill hot sterilized jars, wipe rims clean, and put on canning tops so the seal is centered and the ring is finger tight. Return to 250* oven for 15 minutes. Even though this has been sterilized, because it is an egg based custard it MUST be stored in the refrigerator, and my source: says to eat it up within six weeks, which should be no problem. Yes, its billed as an ice cream topping here, but really, try it on toast. or in between cake layers. Or from a spoon.

1. Basil Ice Cream
2. Wash and strip basil from stems, tear leaves. Add to cream in a heavy bottomed sauce pan, bring to a simmer and keep on heat for about ten minutes until the basil is well silted. Steep basil in cream for at least 30 minutes (but not more than 1 1/2 hours)
3. Separate 2 eggs and put whites aside for a later. Mix 2 yolks and one whole egg in a bowl with a dash of salt and the cup of sugar.
4. STRAIN THE BASIL CREAM, bring back up to simmer, and use hot cream to temper the egg sugar mixture. Add milk to the mixture, and set over double boiler and cook till slightly thickened.
5. Put basil cream mixture into a covered glass bowl in the refrigerator overnight to age the flavor.
6. Freeze in an Ice cream maker of your choice, following directions. This will make a little over 1 quart. We ate small bowls as soft "fresh" ice cream, but packed the rest into an old quart yogurt container.
7. Serve ice cream with a small dollop of apricot curd on the top. The ice cream is ever so faintly green, the apricot curd is a bright yolk yellow.