The third week of June marked our seventh trip to the Hollywood Farmers Market, following our new $30 farmers market plan.

Last week we purchased some of the world’s tastiest ricotta from the talented folks at Jacobs Creamery, located in Canby, Oregon. The $5, eight-ounce tub of delicious, buttery, cheesy goodness found its way onto one of our home-grown pizza’s –a ricotta, onion, basil and Shitake concoction. The Jacobs ricotta helped redefine what a pizza can be.

With this wonderful experience under our belts, this week we elected to purchase a full one-pound tub of the Jacobs ricotta ($10). While this absorbed more than a third of our budget, the result was a piping hot pan of lasagna worth every penny. The ricotta’s creamy, light texture was palpable in each dense layer of the lasagna –a simple cheese recipe featuring a homemade tomato sauce crafted using tomatoes from last year’s garden harvest. I’m not sure I would make a habit of producing this lasagna on a weekly basis because it seduces you into healthy second and third helpings. What’s more, the cost of the Jacobs ricotta certainly raises the price of your typical homemade lasagna, though it’s certainly worth it.

The folks at Jacob’s Creamery utilize milk from Lady Lane Farms, a small, 25-cow organic dairy located in Mulino, Oregon. Lady-Lane dairyman, Garry Hansen, raises nothing but pure Jersey cows. Like Noris Dairy (which raises Holsteins cows), Garry grazes his Jersey cows on grass, ensuring the highest quality milk and much higher quality of life for the cows (read this article for additional detail on grass-fed cows).

The vast majority of milk in the Northwest comes from Holstein cows, while Jersey milk typically ends up in cheese and other processed dairy products because of its richer flavor, creamier texture and color, and higher protein content. While Holsteins cows are more apt to handle the rigors of commercial dairy production (while producing high quantities of milk), Jersey milk has a higher butterfat content. Jersey cows are also well-loved by smaller dairies because of their smaller size and general good nature.

Fortunately, the Jacobs booth at the market also stocks the Lady-Lane milk for purchase. We elected to buy a quart of the Lady-Lane milk for the sole purpose of making sweet cream ice cream. According to the fine folks at The Splendid Table, Jersey milk is the best milk for ice cream due to its texture, flavor and higher butterfat. Utilizing the America’s Test Kitchen recipe for vanilla ice cream, I set out to put the Lady-Lane milk to its ultimate test.

As written, the vanilla ice cream recipe calls for 1.5 cups of whole milk and 1.5 cups of cream. In an effort to really get a sense for the inherent qualities of the Jersey milk, I elected to simply use three cups of the Lady-Lane milk –leaving out the cream entirely.

In preparing the four-yolk custard that makes up the delicious foundation of this ice cream, I found the Lady-Lane milk to behave beautifully as the custard temperature rises up to 180 degrees. Once the yolks were tempered, I poured the milk and sugar mixture through a strainer to remove any solids. Using this recipe in the past (with cream), I’ve captured a fair number of solids in the strainer. Using the whole milk only, the custard was slightly more viscous (as expected), yet free of solids. After stirring the custard in an ice bath, it was transferred to the refrigerator for three hours, then churned in our Cuisinart 1.5 quart ice cream freezer. The final step was to transfer the resulting soft-serve-like ice cream to a container for freezing.

$30 market haul

I was somewhat skeptical that the final ice cream would be very solid (like frozen gelato) or the crystals would just be too large to offer a nice creamy texture. I was very pleasantly surprised that this simply was not the case. The ice cream spooned out of the dish without any fight, and the flavor was smooth and rich –and moreover, simply delicious. I was incredibly impressed at the quality of the texture. Low-fat ice cream can suffer from large crystals, giving the ice cream more of an icy texture than a creamy texture; what you really want is a fine balance between the two. The crystals in the Lady-Lane ice cream were extremely small, resulting in a very smooth sensation with the flavor pop of gelato. According to my friend, Chris, cooling the custard overnight before freezing would likely make the texture even smoother –just as refrigerating cookie dough for at least 24 hours makes the finished product worlds better than fresh dough.

Whatever the case, the ice cream was a big success. The biggest benefit is that with less fat than a cream-based custard, the ice cream didn’t feel as heavy or rich as a typical blend. If you’ve got homemade ice cream in your summer plans, by all means head down to your local farmers market and find a bottle of Jersey whole milk from Garry Hansen’s Lady-Lane Farm. You won’t be disappointed!

In the photo to the right, you’ll see our $30 farmers market haul for June 20, which includes the following:

• one pound fava beans
• two bunches of organic carrots
• one pint of organic strawberries
• 2 pounds Yukon gold potatoes
• Ranier cherries from Maryhill Orchards in Goldendale, Washington
• one large (16 oz.) tub whole-milk ricotta from Jacobs Creamery
• one quart whole milk from Lady-Lane Farm ($3 plus $1.50 bottle deposit)