Ellen Brown - Scoop: 125 Specialty Ice Creams from the Nations Best Creameries

SC OO P

125 SPECIALTY ICE CREAMS

from the Nations Best Creameries

By ELLEN BROWN

Copyright 2011 by Ellen Brown

Photographs 2011 by Steve Legato

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010925950

ISBN 978-0-7624-3798-6

Cover and interior design by Amanda Richmond

Edited by Kristen Green Wiewora

Typography: Archer, Brownstone, and Matrix

The publisher would like to offer warmest thanks to Bassetts of Philadelphia for generously providing their flavors for the books photography. Additionally, the publisher would like to thank: Crate & Barrel, King of Prussia, PA; Scarlett Alley, Philadelphia, PA; Manor Home, Philadelphia, PA; Fante's, Philadelphia, PA; and Open House, Philadelphia, PA for loaning merchandise to be used in the photography.

Running Press Book Publishers

2300 Chestnut Street

Philadelphia, PA 19103-4371

Visit us on the web!

www.runningpresscooks.com

This book is dedicated to my wonderful
family, especially my sister, Nancy
Dubler, whose love and support sustain
me like a luscious bowl of ice cream.

T HE IDEA FOR THIS BOOK HAS been churning for more than forty yearssince 1970, to be exact, when I moved to Cincinnati as a young reporter seeking scoops of the journalist genre. It was there, in a small ice cream shop in a tree-lined shopping district called Hyde Park Square, that the inner ice cream fanatic in me was awakened when I took my first bite of Graeters chocolate chip ice cream. Studded with huge, irregular chunks of chocolateyou could pull them off your cone with your fingers if you cared to do sothis was not the chocolate chip that I had loved as a child in New York, when a stop at Howard Johnsons on the New York Thruway or the New Jersey Turnpike was a highlight of family vacations. While magical to me at the time, the chips in those childhood cones were tiny, akin to ground chocolate.

Graeters put them to shame, and totally reset my personal standard for ice cream. Finding its equivalent in towns and cities around the nation became more than a hobbyit was a full-blown quest.

Fortunately, I got a job that facilitated this search. As the founding food editor of USA Today in the early 1980s I lived every foodies dreamto go around the country and eat. While that job took me to some of the most exciting restaurants in the country, which were forging a style we now call New American Cuisine, it also took me to more down-to-earth events, such as pumpkin festivals and crawfish boils.

Along the way, I got the scoop on scoops. I discovered that artisanal ice cream wasnt unique to Graeters; it was all across the country in big cities and small towns alike. And in the decades since, the number of small shops and dairies providing the highest-quality product has grown exponentially.

American ice cream production is both a big business and a small business. A few national companies control more than 40 percent of the market; these are the major brands, such as Hagen-Dazs, Ben & Jerrys, and Dreyers, found in most supermarket freezer cases. These companies are to ice cream what Heineken is to beer; they represent an excellent product for the mass market.

A business like Moomers, a dairy in Traverse City, Michigan, which still bottles milk that must be shaken because its not homogenized, is at the other end of the spectrum. It, along with individual shops like Sweet Republic in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Mitchells in the Noe Valley section of San Francisco, is the microbrewery of ice creams, and it is the flavors and recipes from these kinds of ice cream shops and creameries that are featured in Scoop.

The twenty shops and dairies included generously shared samples of their signature ice creams and ingredient lists with me. From there, I adapted the recipes using ingredients and tools that are readily available to the home cook. (Most of us dont have easy access to pure fruit pastes or a commercial small-batch freezer.) In some cases, Ive taken a few liberties with both foods and methods to achieve the closest copycat to the original.

Interspersed with the newly replicated recipes are a few ice creams that were inspired by ones I ate in restaurants and then replicated as additions to my own repertoire over the years. I take notes when Im eating a dish so that I can try it at homeboth savory dishes and desserts. I wanted you to enjoy these treats as well, and theyre all from American restaurants.

Scoop is first and foremost a cookbook. The recipes are for sophisticated concepts and flavor combinations using only the best-quality ingredients. While most of the recipes qualify as super-premium ice creams (made with at least 16 percent milk fat), others are for leaner preparations, including fruit-only dairy-free sorbets, lowfat sherbets, and tangy frozen yogurts.