The Greasy Spoon | Food & Culture

Ice Creams, Sorbets & Gelati: The Definitive Guide

 

 

 

A few weeks ago my friends at Grub Street publishing sent me a review copy of Robin and Caroline Weir’s Ice Creams, Sorbets & Gelati: The Definitive Guide. I knew I was going to like this book from the moment I read the author blurb on the back cover: “Caroline and Robin have one of the largest collections of ice cream books, prints, machines, equipment, ephemera and memorabilia in the world. They divide their time between London and Cornwall.” In other words, they’re a pair of driven, compulsive, obsessive, maniacal ice cream geeks. 

Abandoned on that metaphorical desert island, my ‘one luxury item’ would have to be a selection of Italian ice cream- the proper stuff, as you get in the marbled salons of Rome, Milan, Venice and Florence, not British ice cream, as made by Walls Sausages and Lyons Old Maid. And a ‘fridge to go with it, although I expect that would be considered cheating and wouldn’t be allowed.

Ice Creams, Sorbets & Gelati is a terrific book, all 327 pages of it: packed full of recipes, historical anecdotes, and vintage illustrations from the golden age of ice cream.

 

I’ve got a thing about old-fashioned American soda fountains. The Italo-American styling, the gangster graphics and evocative typography- later to be hijacked in the 1970’s by the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory and Soda-Stream. During the dark days of Prohibition (1920-1933) bars were turned into ‘soda fountains’, often annexed to pharmacies where a ‘soda jerk’ would serve fizzy drinks, ice creams, healthy mineral waters and the like. I’ve covered ice-cream chairs in a previous post on my sister antiques blog. It’s all very Bugsy Malone. 

Anyway. Back to the book. There are so many tantalising (and varied) recipes; it’s hard to know where to start. I like the look of: angelica sorbet, banana yoghurt ice, bay leaf, lemon & white wine granita; brown bread ice cream, rich chocolate ice cream, Terry’s chocolate orange ice cream, mars bar ice cream, chocolate gelato with tobacco, white chocolate ice cream, coffee iced froth, gin & tonic sorbet, mint julep ice cream...

I toyed with the idea of making the Terry’s Chocolate Orange Ice Cream (so deliciously tacky) but ended up making the Mars Bar Ice Cream instead. Couldn’t resist it. And the result was surprisingly sophisticated. A light brown, with rather subtle hints of caramel. Not especially sweet. Here’s the recipe, as taken from Robin & Caroline Weir’s Ice Cream, Sorbets & Gelati (Grub Street):

 

Robin & Caroline Weir’s Mars Bar® Ice Cream

This is our answer to the phenomenon of the Mars Bar® Ice Cream. The success of this product launched in the 1990s rocked the British Ice-Cream industry by taking 10% of the market in the first 22 months- an unprecedented achievement. Such was its success that it prompted manufacturers to develop a whole range of ices based on different candy bars. Although the Mars Bar® Ice Cream, is readily available we think our version is superior.

Mars Bar®/Snickers ™ (US) 4 x 65g (4 x 2 1/4 oz)

Whole Milk 250 ml (1 cup)

Whipping/heavy cream (36% fat), chilled 500 ml (2 cups)

Makes about 1 litre (4 cups)

Chop each Mars Bar®/Snickers™ bar in four and put in a saucepan with the milk. Heat gently, stirring frequently, until all but a few melted bits remain. Do not worry about these as they will disappear in the churning action of the ice-cream machine. Remove the pan from the heat and transfer to sit in a few inches of cold water to cool the mixture quickly.

When read, add the chilled cream and either still or stir freeze and store. Serve within 1 hour or so, if frozen solid, allow 30 minutes in the fridge to soften sufficiently for serving.

Mars Bar® is the registered trade mark of Mars Bar® Ltd., England.

 

Claire Windsor, starlet of the silver screen, samples the delights of the American soda fountain, 1920s

 

Earl Grey and Orange Sorbet

 

 

Enjoying yourself? said a voice behind me.
It was Mr Maudsley, also bent on meteorological investigation.
Wriggling (I could not help wriggling when he spoke to me) I told him that I was.
'Been pretty hot today,' he remarked.
'Is it a record?' I asked eagerly.
'I shouldn't be surprised,' he said. I shall have to look it up. Hot weather suit you?'

L. P. Hartley The Go-Between (1953)

 

Last night the man on the television set said that this August was quite possibly going to be the hottest on record, with temperatures touching 100 °F.  In our Brave New World of topsy-turvy weather this was reassuring news. For this is how August should be. There is something evocative about this time of the year, reminiscent of languid summer holidays in Italy and France (the under-rated Rumer Godden re-creates this brilliantly in her once-famous novel, The Greengage Summer), drousy wasps and ripening fruit; spider's webs and haystacks; or the vacuous laziness of the South of France in Françoise Sagan's rights-of-passage novella, Bonjour Tristesse; or the harvest moons, dusty cornfields and deer-parks of Norfolk, so beautifully depicted in Joseph Losey's film, The Go-Between.

 

 

If I was ever banished to a desert island and was only- God Forbid!- allowed to take just one book, it would have to be a toss up between The Great Gatsby and The Go-Between; an agonising decision, as both books, I think, are contenders for 'the most beautiful novel ever written in the English language' competition.

What's the most appropriate food for this month? The French, of course, are very good at this, and I'm thinking long painted tin tables set up on gravel outside Breton and Norman Manor Houses, stuffed with friends, family and photogenic well-behaved children all drinking the chilled local hooch and having a jolly good time. Cue the music of Fauré and Debussy.

Oh, so much more desirable than the hell of the pseudo-Antipodean English barbeque: the flimsy orange Sputnik rocking on it's rickety tripod, the under-cooked salmonella drumsticks wrapped in tin-foil, the cold lumpy barbeque sauce, the hearty Neanderthals in their Ralph Lauren polo shirts with their ridiculous over-sized logos knocking back cans of lager. One of them always has to be in charge, have you noticed that?  A spooky, control freak, he-man, fire-making thing going on there. And then you have to stare at the hideous contraption all the year round, rusting on your terrace, when the truth is that you've probably only used it once or twice due to the vagaries of our beloved English climate. No. I don't like barbeques. Family lunches in the French manner are so much more appealing. And a home-made sorbet would be perfect for this, would it not?

 

Françoise Sagan's House, photograph from The Peak of Chic.

 

Back in 2008 (loyal Greasy Spooners may remember) I came up with my own recipe for an Earl Grey Sorbet flavoured with Orange. I didn't have an ice-cream maker then, so I experimented using a plastic carton. And by golly, it worked.

I mixed a cup of sugar with two cups of water, and brought it to the boil; then simmered it for about five minutes, and left it to cool down. Next, I mixed in several spoons of prepared Earl Grey tea, with a squeeze of fresh orange juice, and infused the mix with some fresh mint leaves (which I previously rolled around between my fingers to release the oils). I tipped this liquid into the sugar and water (first removing the mint leaves), mixed it around, and left it to cool.

I poured the tea flavoured sugar water into a plastic container, and shoved it into the deep freeze. It was then taken out of the deep freeze when half-frozen, mashed up with a fork, and shoved back into the deep freeze again. Once frozen, it was taken out, mixed up again in the Magimix and put back into the deep freeze before use.

It would be a good idea to experiment further, perhaps reducing the sugar and adding more of the tea. The sorbet comes out a lovely, very subtle light biscuity colour and looks utterly appealing. Your friends and guests- seated at that Long French Tin Table Under The Vines- will be impressed.

The number one aim of sorbets is to achieve that silky smooth texture. I know I talk about 'freezing' but actually you don't really want the mixture to freeze. It's not an ice-lolly. It's not a flavoured ice-cube. There are a few tricks to help you achieve this.

There's an excellent recipe for Armagnac Sorbet in Michel Roux Jr's The Gavroche Cookbook. The Rouxs add glucose to their syrup as it helps stop the sugar crystallise. This is a useful technique to know about, and it might be worth adding a small dollop of glucose to my Earl Grey recipe. The other trick is to add a bit of alcohol- as it stops the whole thing from freezing. But in this case I think alcohol would be best left to the armagnac and vodka sorbets. Alcohol and tea is not necessarily a good match. It's an elegant plan to serve the sorbet as a palate cleanser- between courses, rather than as a pudding or at the end of lunch. I'll leave it to you.

  

Avocado and Tomato Ice with Horseradish

 

 

Cordon Bleu Cookery Course, 1970

I've always had a thing about late summer. It's fun to try and pin-point the exact time summer changes into autumn. Often, it's around September 10th or so; marked by a whiff of bonfire smoke, a sudden chill in the air, or the blustery gales of the September equinox. Mind you, here in London, it feels like autumn started in June, and I'm writing this looking out onto a grey, damp and slightly foggy street.  

It's also the last chance saloon for summer food, or at least, food with summery pretensions. Here's my recipe for a delicious Tomato Ice. If you think that it reeks of 1970's dinner party food, you would be utterly correct, as I've based it on a recipe from No. 69 of the Cordon Blue Cookery Course, published by Purnell as a part-work in 1970; but with the addition of grated horseradish which I think would work well with it, and the hot flavour of horseradish can be an excellent combination with the intense, sweet taste of the tomato. It's a pretty dish, and I like the colour of the tomato ice. Canadian, apparently.

You tip two tins of plum tomatoes into a pan, and then add two teaspoons of salt, a generous pinch of white pepper, four tablespoons of golden caster sugar, the zest and juice of two lemons, and a generous helping of freshly grated horseradish, and stir until the mixture comes to the boiling point, pushing the tomato pulp against the side of the pan with a wooden spoon to help it break down. Add three sprigs of fresh mint, cover the pan and allow to simmer for five to ten minutes. Rub the contents of the pan through a sieve, making sure that you extract all the juices. Add a few drops of Tabasco to taste. You should now be looking at a bowl full of a lovely red-coloured, very thin juice.

Chill this mixture in a deep freeze, and mash it up with a fork just before it starts to set. Return to the deep freeze, and repeat the process, and again, until you have formed a smooth ice in the sorbet manner. You could, of course, acheive the same effect in an ice-cream machine.

To serve, cut an avocado in half (I like the hass variety with the knobbly green skin; slightly nutty in taste), rub the exposed flesh with lemon juice (to stop it turning brown) and fill the cavity with a generous scoop of the Tomato Ice. To make the avocado stand upright on the plate, turn over the half, and slice off a thin wedge, so that it makes a base.

The important thing to remember is to flavour the tomato ice reasonably well, as the freezing process can often kill off the stronger tastes. Some out there might garnish it with mint, but I'm currently bored of garnishes, and think simplicity is often the best way forward. I like the idea of updating these classic, unfashionable recipes to more modern tastes; simplifying them if necessary, and presenting them cleanly, discarding those outrageous garnishes of yesteryear. That, at least, is the goal.

By the way, a tip: when you're grating a fresh horseradish root, make sure you grate it across the grain (rather than downwards). We keep a horseradish root in the deep freeze, and find that it keeps for ages; providing us with "fresh" horseradish whenever the mood takes us.

 

Melon Sorbet with Iced Bison Vodka

 

 

 

I'm a big fan of sorbets, especially as they're so easy to make; even for those living with tiny kitchens, and without the luxury of expensive ice-cream makers. All you need is a deep freeze (however small), a terrine-shaped metal container, a blender, and lots of patience. Once you've mastered the technique, the sky's the limit, and great fun can be had by one and all inventing interesting new flavour combinations.

Here's an idea for a melon sorbet, seved with Polish bison vodka. The grassy taste of the vodka works well the summery flavours going on in the melon.

Take a cantaloupe melon and remove the skin. Cut it into chunks and take out the seeds and any pith. Put it to one side.  You could of course use any melon you liked the look of; experimentation is the key. In the meantime, dissolve three quarters of a cup of white sugar in three quarters of a cup of water, and heat gently to make a syrup. When it's properly dissolved, pour it into the metal terrine, and stick it into the 'fridge to cool down.

Whizz the melon up in your magimix or blender, until it's smooth. I happen to prefer my sorbets to be very smooth, and I don't like nasty bits floating around in it, so I would then push the blended melon through a sieve. Once that's done, pour the blended, sieved melon into the metal terrine and mix it around with the cooled syrup, adding a squeeze of lemon juice as you go. Stick it into the deep freeze.

Now it's a matter of patience. Wait until the sorbet is almost frozen, and then take it out of the deep freeze and mash it up with a fork. Put it back into the freezer. Wait again until it's almost frozen, take it out and mash it up. To finish it off, wait until it's almost frozen, take it out, but this time whizz it up in a blender, return it to its container and re-freeze.

To serve the sorbet, I pour iced Zubrowka bison vodka over it. Zubrowka vodka is curious stuff, which has a very distinctive grassy taste ( a bit like that evocative summer smell of freshly cut grass and petrol lawn mowers). To quote from the hilarious marketing blurb on the label: "In a remote corner of Poland in the North Podlaise Lowland lies a mysterious place called Bialowieza, the last primeval forest in Europe, home to Europe's last remaining herd of bison and to a distinctively, aromatic plant- Bison grass...since the 14th century, Bison-grass has been used to infuse a unique vodka, Zubrowka, a singular spirit of supreme smoothness..."

I'm not sure I like Zubrowka as a neat vodka, but I think it works brilliantly when used in conjunction with other foods. (Incidentally, there's no point adding vodka directly to the sorbet mix, as the alcohol won't freeze properly).

For the bibliophiles amongst you, it might be worth your while tracking down a copy of Elizabeth David's "Harvest of the Cold Months: The Social History of Ice and Ices", edited by Jill Norman, and published by Michael Joseph in 1994. I've got a feeling that this book was published in a small print run, and several years ago, scarce used copies were scarily expensive. But that was before the internet, and there's now a reasonable selection of copies available on Abebooks.

 

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