The story of this ice cream is rather convoluted. It starts years ago with my first bite of Vosges dark chocolate pandan flavored ice cream. I immediately was smitten – the pandan added an exotic flavor that made me keep wanting another bite. It was an intriguing combination of nut and vanilla with some grassy green notes, and it was the best chocolate ice cream I'd ever tried. Fast forward several years. My dad is visiting and we are going to make ice cream to go with grilled pizza for supper. I start paging through Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream at Home and stumble upon the Toasted Rice (with a Whiff of Coconut and Black Tea) ice cream. Hmmm... Sounds really good, and I think everyone will like it. As it turned out the flavor is fantastic, and I'm amazed by how reminiscent of pandan it is. (Actually not that amazing, since the the aromatic compound that gives pandan it's flavor is the same as the one found in jasmine rice.) I decide to do a mash up of the Toasted Rice ice cream with a chocolate ice cream. It's good, but missing the grassy notes of the pandan. I scan my cupboards and see a tin of genmaicha, a traditional Japanese tea consisting of green tea and toasted rice. Perfect – it will add the missing layer of flavor plus amplify the toasted rice a bit. And that is how Chocolate Genmaicha Ice Cream came to be. It's not exactly pandan, but it's got some of the same qualities – it's a rich chocolate ice cream with a roasted, almost malty undercurrent, and just a hint of green tea. I can't exactly describe it; I think I need another bite to pin the flavor down.

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