Kitty Travers - La Grotta Ices

Contents

Note Features pages are listed in italics.

About the Book

In a small converted greengrocers in south London (her ice cream shed), Kitty Travers creates an array of iced delights fresh ice creams that taste of the real, whole fruits; hand-made choc ices that crack open to reveal layers of playful pastel-coloured flavours; juice-drenched granitas to be stuffed into brioche buns with fresh cream; and eye-popping, palate-tickling sorbets.

La Grotta Ices is the culmination of Kittys obsessive exploration and research into 75 ice cream, sorbet and granita recipes. Sunlit flavours and far flung traditions pervade Kittys ice creams as well as her ultimate inspiration: nature. La Grotta celebrates ripe seasonal fruits and the true artistry of real ice cream through inventive flavours and pure, natural ingredients.

Named as one of the worlds most promising chefs in Coco (Phaidon, 2009), Kitty Travers runs La Grotta Ices, a small, inventive ice cream company specialising in ice creams and sorbets made from fresh, ripe fruit and seasonal ingredients, all created in a former greengrocers shop in Lambeth called her ice cream shed.

During ice cream eating season (April to October) Kittys Piaggio Ape is based at the heart of London food production: Spa Terminus in Bermondsey. Tubs of La Grotta ice cream can also be found year-round at three famous London shops: Leilas Shop in Shoreditch, General Store in Peckham and E5 bakehouse in Hackney. The Piaggio Ape regularly returns to its pitch at Frieze Art Fair and Kitty teaches a long-established class in ice cream making at the multi-award-winning School of Artisan Foods in Nottinghamshire.

Having first tasted how spectacular ice cream can be while working as a waitress in the south of France when she was in her early twenties, she set about discovering the secrets to making great ice cream, learning from the top to the toe of Italy and using diverse influences from ice cream making around the world.

Kitty trained at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City and returned to London to become pastry chef at St. John Bread & Wine before leaving to set up La Grotta. In the meantime she has worked as an ice cream advisor to larger national and international companies.

Outside ice cream season, Kitty works abroad as much as possible always with some aim of learning more about ice cream. Stints have included cooking at The Rome Sustainable Food Project, a kitchen set up by Alice Waters at the American Academy in Rome; living and working in restaurants and pastry shops in Naples and in Sicily; volunteering on a pig farm in Le Marche; and at a lemon festival in Nice. Further afield, Kitty has worked on ice cream making projects in Iceland, Istanbul, Brazil and the United States, using ingredients that grow nearby and experimenting with the always-interesting local idiosyncrasies of ice cream making.

She never leaves home without an essential ice cream making kit.

Ice cream was not so hot when I was growing up. It was usually limited to the summertime treat of a 9p orange Sparkle in the park after school, or the occasional slice of a Sainsburys economy sticky yellow vanilla brick for pudding. This would melt and refreeze over the course of being served from its damp cardboard box, and turn into a curious foamy gum. But I still loved it.

As a teenager living at home in suburban Twickenham my favourite cookbook was Cuisine of the Sun by Roger Verg, an inheritance from my godmother (and one half of the Two Fat Ladies), Jennifer Patterson. The recipes in it demonstrate the use of simple harmonies to enhance the flavour of each ingredient, while still allowing the beautiful, natural produce of Provence to shine. Verge called it cuisine heureuse. It left me pining for something brighter than the supermarket foods Id grown up with something transportive and sun-kissed.

It was a relief to leave school, which I hated and had only a string of failed A levels to show for. I went to art school and, to pay the bills, got a job aged 18 working as a greengrocer on the forecourt of the Bluebird Garage on the Kings Road. I spent a lot of time spraying rocket with an atomiser, while the real work was done by Alf. He arrived early from the market in Milan with a van full of beautiful fruits and vegetables, from moonlight-yellow pears wrapped in inky, indigo sugar paper to bunches of dusky black grapes tied with shiny lilac florist ribbon.