A Weston-super-Mare restaurant is reinventing ice cream on its menu with radical new flavour combinations. Mark Taylor meets the team who are breaking the mould

Celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal may have made the headlines with his bacon and egg ice cream but now a Weston-super-Mare chef is thinking outside the tub with an innovative collection of recipes incorporating ice creams produced on a Somerset farm.

Amy Hunt, of the Oak and Glass restaurant in Weston-super-Mare, has teamed up with Jayne Lunnon, owner of Mendip Moments, for a number of starters, main courses and desserts that use the ice creams made on Jayne's family farm near Wells.

The first recipe in the collection is a starter of melon, Parma ham and pear chutney with Mendip Moments mascarpone, fig and honey ice cream and for Jayne, it was this innovative combination that first triggered the idea of working with Amy.

She says: "I'm a great believer that ice cream has a lot more to offer than simply three scoops in a bowl for dessert.

"When I met Amy at a local food festival, she suggested ways of how you can use ice cream other than for dessert and that got me thinking.

"When I saw Amy doing the melon dish with our mascarpone, fig and honey ice cream, I was blown away. We had a meeting and a whole list of ideas evolved from there.

"Amy and her sous chef Leon came to the farm and cooked all the dishes for our staff for a special lunchtime tasting – they thought they had won the lottery, there was so much food.

"Customers have told us that they serve Mendip Moments at dinner parties, but with the fantastic flavour combinations that we have in our range, we were keen for our ice cream to be used in more original and creative ways so this was a great way of doing it."

Amy has worked with some of the country's finest chefs, including Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons and John Campbell at The Vineyard at Stockcross.

Passionate and inventive, she has created a modern British dining experience at the Oak and Glass restaurant in Weston-super-Mare, championing the West Country's freshest local ingredients.

Although Amy and her team make everything on site, they buy Mendip Moments ice cream, rather than making their own, for logistical reasons.

Amy says: "I have wanted to make my own ice cream but the cost of the machine and the time involved was too much as a starting business.

"I have made ice cream at other places I've worked so I know the time it takes to freshly churn every day and the time it takes to clean in between.

"Because we couldn't make our own ice cream, we have always made reductions of flavours and swirled them into a not very sweet vanilla-based ice cream, such as the Mendip Moments vanilla ice cream.

"I got my inspiration from John Campbell while working at the Vineyard, near Newbury. We would make savoury-based ice creams and use them in the starters so I took the idea and tried it out on my customers here."

So where did Amy find her inspiration for the unusual combinations on the menu at Oak and Glass?

"I looked at the range that Mendip Moments have and thought what would go with what. Melon and Parma ham is a classic combination, and goes well with a fig and apple chutney which we have made in the past, so I tried it one day with the ice cream and it worked," she says.

"The following Sunday I put it on the menu for lunch and our guests loved the idea.

"I think it pushes people's perception of ice cream and our foodie customers love trying new things. That particular dish is like summer on a plate so when the sun is out we put it on and it always sells well."

Other ice cream combinations on the menu at the Oak and Glass include Cornish crab cakes with Mendip Moments stem ginger ice cream.

Amy says: "It is worded slightly different on the menu but is our best seller, again very summery.

"We have also done a recipe card of a Somerset lamb, green bean and hazelnut dressing salad, again a very classic combination served with Mendip Moments praline and pecan ice cream. The lamb is served hot so it starts to melt the ice cream, which in turn adds a creamy flavour to the salad leaves.

"We are also looking at doing an autumn/winter collection with the ice cream, something like fillet steak and wild mushroom sabayon served with Mendip Moments bitter chocolate ice cream."

So what is the reaction from customers? Are the good people of Weston-super-Mare ready for such radical ice creams?

"This is all about changing perceptions so we have to be a little creative with the way we write the menu," Amy adds.

"If we had a reputation like Heston Blumenthal, where his customers are going to him for an adventurous dining experience, they will already have a very open idea about the menu. However, we are in Weston-super-Mare and not Bray.

"We can still use similar techniques, just tamed down, and without even knowing it they are eating things they didn't realise – for example, ice cream.

"Most people when they choose from a menu go for something they know they are going to enjoy. However, we mainly list the ingredients on the plate and not how we cooked them or how they would be served. The crab cake dish is described as 'St Ives crab and sweetcorn cake, stem ginger cream, sweet chilli gel'."

Although the collaboration between Amy and Jayne is restricted to dishes on the restaurant menu using existing Mendip Moments flavours, Jayne doesn't rule out other developments in the future.

"At the moment, we are using our existing ice creams in the recipes but we have discussed working together on some more unusual examples in the future, although I don't think we would go along the Heston Blumenthal route and do anything as ambitious as bacon and egg ice cream as I don't think we would sell enough. It would have to be ice creams people can use at home and I don't think there's a huge market for bacon and egg ice cream in North Somerset, but you never know."

For more information about Oak and Glass, visit www.oakandglass.co.uk. For more information about Mendip Moments and for full recipe details, visit www.mendipmoments.co.uk.