Research has proven what my taste buds have always known …
gelato is good for you!!! ... even better for you than that the most “summerist” (is that a word Ted?) of all summer treats - ice cream.
You’re not fooling us Ted … gelato is just the Italian name
for ice cream and they are the same thing. Well yes it is, and no they’re not really. Yes, gelato does mean frozen, and yes, it was
invented by the Italians in Florence as far back as the 16th century
even, and they went on to introduce it as a rich man’s desert in the wealthy
courts of Europe of the time. And yes,
the ingredients in ice cream and gelato are very similar, but with an
important difference ... ice cream is made with cream whereas gelato is made
with milk, so immediately you have a different fat content. The large scale industrially
produced ice creams are different again in that they contain mostly plastic emulsifiers
and paint thinners with melted crayons for colour and flavouring all churned in a concrete mixer in a wind tunnel (ok ok ... so research
may not entirely back up this Ted assertion, but after tasting real gelato I guarantee that your taste buds will).
The Italian’s also have another form of gelato which we call
“sorbet”. This gelato is water based
with no milk in the mix, and thus the fruit colours are often quite vibrant.
This version was also created in Italy around the same time as the milk based
one, but this time in the far south in Sicily … this makes perfect sense when you think about it of course - it's madly madly hot in Sicily in summer ... way way too hot for cows even!! Interestingly dairy cows seem distinctly English in their temperature preferences, but I digress ...London has picked up the Italian evening habit of promenading with gelato in hand, especially in Soho and Covent Garden, where a number of good gelateria can be found open late into the night.
