I don’t know about you, but my experiences of making ice-cream have hitherto been really hit or miss. Some recipes online are beautiful about an hour after being churned, but then harden to frozen bricks overnight that need to be nuked in the microwave if you’re even to make a dent. Some are just too rich, tasting of cream rather than the promised flavour. Some come out too icy, crystalline or grainy. Just a precious few are spot on (and I’ve shared some of these before).
Yes, of course there are books of tried-and-tested recipes but they are limited to the author’s chosen flavours, the author’s preferred amount of fat and the author’s texture. And, although you can experiment with variations and substitutions, unless you know how the changes you make will affect the ice-cream, you’re back to hit and miss.
Surely ice-cream should be about exalting a particular flavour, or expressly to complement another dessert, or even to make the most of a glut of fruit. I don’t want to have to follow someone’s recipe so slavishly that any deviation might lead to a big, fat FAIL. I want to be able to experiment, to tinker and to set my little gelato-obsessed heart freeeeeeeee….
So I did a bit of study on gelato, and I propose to share it with you. Getting the best results does involve a bit of spreadsheety tinkering, but I’m guessing I’m not the only one out there who likes to sprinkle a little geek on their food. It’ll also require shopping for a couple of ingredients (like dextrose and non-fat dried milk powder) that probably aren’t in the local shop (Amazon.com stocks all of them though).
Why bother? Well, the idea is this: once we know why ice-cream behaves the way it does and have an idea of the balance of ingredients that should produce a decent result, we then have the freedom to produce any ice-cream flavour we want. And more importantly, we can factor in our specific climate, our freezer and our personal tastes to get the result spot on, first try.
A couple of examples to whet your appetite: when Mum and I made an orange and poppyseed cake, we also made a yoghurt ice-cream that didn’t overpower the cake’s delicate flavour. Then when I made chocolate fondants, I made a light coconut ice-cream that balanced the richness of the chocolate puddings perfectly. Now I’ve got my head around the theory, I didn’t need to look for a specific recipe, but just to apply a set of principles to balance the ice-cream for the ingredients I had to hand, the temperature of my freezer and my hot Bahamian climate. The balance of your ice-cream – if you’re eating it in London in November with a clapped out freezer – might need to be quite different.
Where to get this understanding of theory and principles? Well, luckily, someone has already done the legwork – my gelato guru, Angelo Corvitto.
I first heard of him in the Locatelli book (a super read, much better as a cookbook than its coffee-table size would warrant). Apparently, one of their pastry chefs studied with Corvitto and brought back the knowledge to Locanda Locatelli, and some of the recipes are adapted in the book (mmm Amaretto ice-cream anyone? Dad?…).
But – and this is the really cool, geeky bit – on Angelo’s website is an amazing free book. He’s put together a series of 27 pdfs, in Italian and English, explaining the science behind ice-cream and his practical experience of making great gelato over the years. It’s as applicable to small, home productions as it is to ice-cream parlours and really gives you everything you need to know. It is a fantastic resource and one of those things that makes you love the internet just a little bit more. Grazie mille Angelo!
I’m planning to write a series of posts on gelato, explaining what I’ve learned so far. I’ll introduce the variables that influence the final product and try and show how to put together gelato formulae that work for you: there’ll be recipes as examples for each post, but more importantly the knowhow to balance each recipe to your tastes, climate and ingredients. I’m going to point towards relevant bits of Angelo Corvitto’s book as I go along, but hopefully my thinking through various concepts will be helpful as a secondary “oh I see how you get there” source. There will also be hot, downloadable spreadsheet action.
First post? The most basic of Italian gelati, fior di latte, roughly translated as elixir of milk. In Italian ice-cream, it’s not vanilla but milk that is the base flavour and the one devoured by kids all over. It is light, simple and pure and a great way to get your gelato geek on.
