Black Pepper Ice Cream with Lime Syrup and Cantaloupe

Whenever I eat a particularly good melon in the summertime (really, there's no point eating melon out of season), I think of my mother-in-law. She'll look up from a delicious melon and say, "You know, there's always one melon that's the best of the summer, and I declare, I think this is it."

The week before last there was a cantaloupe in my farm box, and after I took a taste, it knew that this was it. The best cantaloupe. Not just the best of 2009, it was the best of the decade, possibly the best I've ever eaten. A cantaloupe for the ages.

What to do with it? First I gave half of it away, because I didn't think I could finish it by myself. Neither my husband nor my daughter J.D.E. care much for cantaloupe.

I wanted to do this melon justice, so I consulted David Lebovitz's book The Perfect Scoop for guidance. David suggests pairing fresh cantaloupe with Lime Syrup and his Black Pepper Ice Cream. That was a very unlikely sounding combination to me, but I'd been wanting to try the black pepper ice cream, and I had a new bag of limes in the fridge so I decided to give it a shot.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- You can find the recipe for the ice cream here.

- I made the ice cream as written. Surprisingly (at least to me), the ice cream turned out a creamy tan color, but it makes sense, since the cream is infused with cracked black pepper and then the peppercorns are strained out.

- The lime syrup was easy to throw together.

- I took the picture on the complete wrong light setting, and before I checked the photos I ate the evidence (it was melting!) So please excuse the oddness of the photo.

the verdict:

The ice cream was smooth and rich, with a perfect "mouthfeel." It had a distinct flavor of black pepper and a sneaky spiciness that waits for a minute and then attacks in the back of the throat. I love spicy food, and was expecting some heat, so I liked that. The lime syrup was surprisingly good with the ice cream - it was sweet and bright and complemented the complex spiciness.

BUT, I did not love the ice cream with the cantaloupe, or the cantaloupe with the lime syrup. So I ate the ice cream with the syrup, then the melon on its own, and enjoyed both.

And with the rest of the melon? It turns out that both my husband and J.D.E. loved the Best-Cantaloupe-Of-All-Time, and we ate it twice at dinnertime, draped with prosciutto. YUM!