Furlough Days and Gelato

The California budget crisis has caused the State Universities to shut down for several days during the semester. In addition professors are forced to take even more furlough days to account for their pay cuts. The upside is that the furlough days extended what was already a long Labor Day weekend! So, I decided to use some of my extra time to make chocolate gelato. I found a recipe for Gelato Siciliano, or Sicilian Gelato in a supplement to Saveur magazine which I received with my subscription.

I ate gelato on a daily basis over a summer spent in Siena when I was in college (undergrad), years ago. I was really homesick at first and so when I wasn’t eating Nutella on cookies as comfort food, I was eating gelato. From there the gelato eating just became a very delicious habit.

Sicilian style gelato according to this recipe is made with whole milk thickened with corn or rice starch. It is basically the consistency of pudding before being processed in an ice cream maker. Gelato doesn’t have eggs or cream so it is less rich than American ice cream.

Also, in Italy I believe the milk is not homogenized whereas in the United States it is. The process of homogenization breaks the milk fat into small particles preventing the fat from separating from the liquid. This is done by forcing milk at high pressure through a mechanism with tiny holes. So what this means for our gelato is that the consistency will be more like ice cream when made in the United States or wherever you are that the milk is homogenized. By “more like ice cream” I mean it will have a harder consistency at the outset and will not melt as fast as real gelato you eat in Italy. This is unfortunate for people like me who have a craving for the real thing. I do love ice cream too though, so things really aren’t that bad now that I’m in my kitchen in San Francisco getting ready to make American Gelato Siciliano.

Since one of my favorite ice cream flavors (besides peanut butter and chocolate) is Swiss Orange Chip from Swenson’s, I decided to alter the chocolate gelato recipe slightly to see if I could replicate the flavor. Swiss Orange Chip is orange flavored chocolate ice cream with chocolate chunks. Replicating Swiss Orange Chip flavor at home seems like it would be an impossible thing to do. If you’ve ever had this flavor at Swenson’s you know what I mean. It’s quite euphoric and is delicious to the last drop of the pint, even when the pint is consumed in one sitting. It’s refreshing yet decadent and chocolaty.

I have been going to Swensen’s since I was a little kid. There used to be a parlor in Napa where I spent the early part of my childhood, it has long since closed down. I had a birthday party there when I was very little and I still remember sitting in the enormous booth eating ice cream out of the glass dish. I remember birthday balloons and the light coming in the windows, my mom there next to me and all my little friends in their doll-like party dresses. Ah, sweet memories.

Apparently Swensen’s has expanded a little. They now have shops not only throughout the U.S. but also in Asia, the Middle East and South America. They are big in Singapore, where you can find food items such as, “Claypot Spicy Laska” on their “Asian Delight” menu. It sounds delicious, but it is definitely not the Americana ice cream parlor I remember from my childhood.
We have a Swensen’s in San Francisco over on Russian Hill. It does serve the delicious Swiss Orange Chip, but it’s just a to-go shop, no fancy booths to sit in. Wow, when I started this blog post about gelato I didn’t realize it would lend itself to talking about so many places around the world. That would make a cool geography research paper, “the geography of ice cream”. I’ll file this one away for sure.

This gelato recipe is very easy to make. The one drawback is that you need an ice cream maker. I use an ice cream attachment to my KitchenAid stand mixer which consists of a mixing bowl that is placed in the freezer for 24 hours. The special bowl has liquid within its thick wall which causes the ice cream to freeze while it’s churning. The churning component hooks up to the part of the mixer where the beater, whisk, or dough hook would normally go. After 20 minutes or so you have a very soft ice cream, which can then be frozen overnight to achieve a more frozen consistency. If you choose to eat it straight away, it is still not going to be like real gelato, sorry. It’s more of a runny, not frozen ice cream.

I altered the following gelato recipe by steeping finely grated orange zest in the milk and adding a tablespoon of orange extract. Also, once the ice cream was at the very end of the churning stage I added coarsely chopped chocolate chips. Adding solid ingredients is always best left to the end when the mixture has thickened so that the solids are distributed throughout, instead of sinking to the bottom. The flavor was surprisingly similar to the real Swiss Orange Chip, although maybe slightly more chocolaty, not a problem for me. While I don’t think it is nearly the same as the gelato I have had in Italy it was very good and I would highly recommend the recipe. Here it is (modified by me)…

Recipe
Gelato Siciliano (Swiss Orange Chip flavor)
4 cups of whole milk
Zest of 1 large orange, finely grated
Orange extract
1 cup sugar
2 ¼ tbsp. corn or rice starch
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
Chocolate chips, roughly chopped

-Bring 3 cups of milk, orange zest and orange extract to a simmer in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Remove the pan from heat and let steep.
-Combine remaining 1 cup of milk with the sugar, starch and cocoa, then stir into the hot milk mixture until the cocoa powder is dissolved.
-Return the pan to heat and cook, stirring until the mixture thickens slightly. This should take about 8 minutes. Remove from heat.
-Allow the mixture to cool and then cover and refrigerate over night.
-Process in ice cream maker according to manufacturers directions.
-Enjoy with a flakey wafer if you want the true Swensen’s experience!