Recipe: Frozen Dessert with Long Pepper and Vanilla

1 Infuse a dessertspoon of green tea in 1/4.25 qt (4 litre) of water for three minutes.

2 Open and scrape the vanilla pods, crush the pepper berries and infuse everything together in the tea.

3 Strain, let cool completely and place in the refrigerator for two hours.

4 After this time, combine the sugar and crème fraîche in a bowl and whisk everything together.

5 Gradually pour the cream into the cooled tea, whisking continuously.

6 Adjust the pepper to taste so it's noticeable without being too hot. Judge it at the back of your mouth, giving it time to develop. Then adjust it bearing in mind that the ice cream maker will tone it down a bit.

7 Pour into the ice cream maker.

8 Distribute the sorbet into the glasses. Poke three chive stems into each one. Add a dessertspoon of Navan and a grinding of pepper.

9 Place the glasses (with a teaspoon) on dessert plates covered with a folded napkin.

10 The chives were originally purely decorative. If you crunch them, they bring a contrasting note to the vanilla sorbet flavour that's worth trying.

11 You might object that using crème fraîche in a sorbet isn't very orthodox. Let's just say the main idea is that of a sorbet, but since the tea/pepper/vanilla infusion doesn't have a very attractive colour, I felt the need to lighten it with cream. Is that a problem, Chef?