The Icelandic Dairy Meme Deploys...
Here are my ten top flavours, in no particular order. I am going to be descriptive rather than prescriptive; that is, I will describe the flavours rather than name them (in case I open myself to intellectual property lawsuits and such).
1. True Chocolate: Dark chocolate ice cream with broken bits of 85% cacao dark chocolate bars, swirled with chocolate fudge. You know who you are, my darling. And after a serving, I forget who I am.
2. Burnt Vanilla: Madagascar vanilla pods have been sacrificed to give this amber-glazed ice-cream the true fragrance of excellence. Through it all runs the slightly burnt and fleeting aftertaste of caramel – or is that butterscotch?
3. Pineapple Tart: I remember my grandmother making pineapple jam around the Lunar New Year season. I would help her stir the brown paste, redolent with sweet odour and heavily textured. And then we would put a spoonful of it on little tart bases. Now you can have it all, broken up and mixed with a plain vanilla base. Where? When? The secret is known to a few.
4. Plutonium Doom: Blue curaçao twirls brittle flame through something which would have been yellow-brown pistachio gelato in another universe. Silver streaks of glazed lightning, sweet and slightly lemony, strike through what looks like a Time Vortex. You can almost hear the Doctor Who theme song.
5. Dark Cherry: If this cold equivalent of a Black Forest mousse cake were a lady, she'd be tall and dark with magenta eyes. In the bitterness, the taste of kirsch and the memories of distant sweetness hidden in an epic romance.
6. Rum & Raisin: You can taste Jamaica here; the proper R&R is the alluring colour of a summer beach, studded with soft raisins, fruit pickled in rum. And the rum has begun to escape into the velvet softness of vanilla...
7. Chendol: There's only one place here where it's done right. Frozen coconut milk writhes in grinning ecstasy with soft green tendrils of something chewy. The light touch of deep and seductive brown sugar (gula melaka) syrup sets a slow fire going. The pale brown stuff melts unevenly in your mouth, different each time.
8. Something Caffeinated: Many places serve a coffee gelato. The one I have in mind was so dark I thought it was chocolate at first; it turned out to be dark-roasted Costa Rican beans, their essence fused and folded through four-dimensional space in a matrix of slightly milky memories.
9. Gianduja: This too is chocolate, but it couldn't be more different from the rest. The difference is in what has been blended into it. Half of that is hazelnut paste, warm to the tongue and with the possibility of crunch; the other half is almond, sinister in its proclivities but willing to chat.
10. Zabaglione: Yes, this is the classical sabayon; cream, the yellowness of egg-yolks, simmered Marsala wine and a thin honey glaze. Every tongueful tingles, and who would be so crass as to take it in mouthfuls?
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There! And I shall tag the following people: the Dancer (well, any other dancers are welcome too), Aristoitle (and you might as well share it with your two good co-bloggers), and Melancholy (who has much free time on her hands – err, legs).
1. True Chocolate: Dark chocolate ice cream with broken bits of 85% cacao dark chocolate bars, swirled with chocolate fudge. You know who you are, my darling. And after a serving, I forget who I am.
2. Burnt Vanilla: Madagascar vanilla pods have been sacrificed to give this amber-glazed ice-cream the true fragrance of excellence. Through it all runs the slightly burnt and fleeting aftertaste of caramel – or is that butterscotch?
3. Pineapple Tart: I remember my grandmother making pineapple jam around the Lunar New Year season. I would help her stir the brown paste, redolent with sweet odour and heavily textured. And then we would put a spoonful of it on little tart bases. Now you can have it all, broken up and mixed with a plain vanilla base. Where? When? The secret is known to a few.
4. Plutonium Doom: Blue curaçao twirls brittle flame through something which would have been yellow-brown pistachio gelato in another universe. Silver streaks of glazed lightning, sweet and slightly lemony, strike through what looks like a Time Vortex. You can almost hear the Doctor Who theme song.
5. Dark Cherry: If this cold equivalent of a Black Forest mousse cake were a lady, she'd be tall and dark with magenta eyes. In the bitterness, the taste of kirsch and the memories of distant sweetness hidden in an epic romance.
6. Rum & Raisin: You can taste Jamaica here; the proper R&R is the alluring colour of a summer beach, studded with soft raisins, fruit pickled in rum. And the rum has begun to escape into the velvet softness of vanilla...
7. Chendol: There's only one place here where it's done right. Frozen coconut milk writhes in grinning ecstasy with soft green tendrils of something chewy. The light touch of deep and seductive brown sugar (gula melaka) syrup sets a slow fire going. The pale brown stuff melts unevenly in your mouth, different each time.
8. Something Caffeinated: Many places serve a coffee gelato. The one I have in mind was so dark I thought it was chocolate at first; it turned out to be dark-roasted Costa Rican beans, their essence fused and folded through four-dimensional space in a matrix of slightly milky memories.
9. Gianduja: This too is chocolate, but it couldn't be more different from the rest. The difference is in what has been blended into it. Half of that is hazelnut paste, warm to the tongue and with the possibility of crunch; the other half is almond, sinister in its proclivities but willing to chat.
10. Zabaglione: Yes, this is the classical sabayon; cream, the yellowness of egg-yolks, simmered Marsala wine and a thin honey glaze. Every tongueful tingles, and who would be so crass as to take it in mouthfuls?
=====
There! And I shall tag the following people: the Dancer (well, any other dancers are welcome too), Aristoitle (and you might as well share it with your two good co-bloggers), and Melancholy (who has much free time on her hands – err, legs).
etched with acid at 10:09:00 am
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