BEIRUT
Where We’re Eating
Words Salma Abdelnour
SPECIAL KIND OF CHILL The world’s wildest ice cream flavors
TOURTE DE BLETTES The Nice specialty tourte de blettes – a tart made with Swiss chard, pine nuts, golden raisins and cheese and sweetened with apples and sugar – is incredibly tasty eaten by hand or with a fork. But as an ice cream? It sounds like a stretch, but the flavor wizards at the Nice ice cream shop Fenocchio decided to give it a try. The sweet and savory green scoops became so popular, they’re now a mainstay on the menu at all three Fenocchio branches. CRAWFISH When it’s crawfish season in Texas and the southern United States, locals get together for messy crawfish boil parties, where they peel and eat mounds of the tiny lobster-like crustaceans boiled in a Cajunspiced broth. Texas’s Red Circle Ice Cream shop wants to capture the thrill of the experience, in ice cream form of course. The Crawfish ice cream scoops at their Houston branch include juicy bits of the shellfish, along with plenty of butter, spices, garlic and a dash of hot cayenne pepper.
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Ice cream has gone totally nuts. Not nuts as in almonds and pistachios. Nuts as in insane. At least, that’s what anyone who loves having ice cream for dessert might think about the latest flavors, which sound more like breakfast, lunch or dinner than anything resembling a sweet treat. But it’s no surprise that just about every imaginable ingredient is finding its way into ice cream. The urge to eat frozen liquid mixed with a favorite flavor goes back millennia. In ancient Persia, royalty liked to eat frozen rosewater mixed with sh’ayrieh (vermicelli). In 500 BC, the Greeks flavored snow with honey. For modern day ice cream artisans, every ingredient is fair game. Read on for a few fascinating new scoops to taste on your summer holiday.
GHOST PEPPER The Ice Cream Store, a 50-year-old sweets shop in the popular beach town of Rehoboth, Delaware, has done the seemingly impossible: created an ice-cold scoop that will set your mouth on fire. Anyone who loves hot peppers and ice cream need look no further. Ghost Pepper ice cream is named after one the world’s hottest peppers, and it’s made with a base of vanilla ice cream mixed with fresh pepper mash and a hot sauce appropriately named You Can’t Handle This. The freezing temperature of the ice cream won’t even come close to taming the flames on your taste buds. So how hot is this stuff? The store makes you sign a waiver before you try a scoop.
SURFER’S BREAKFAST Breakfast in ice cream form? Yes, please. This scoop is the latest from Humphry Slocombe, the San Francisco shop that also invented the classic Secret Breakfast ice cream flavor, aka cornflakes and milk with a shot of bourbon. Surfer’s Breakfast ice cream melds buttermilk, granola, jam and black sesame, for a protein-and-fiber-packed scoop that will get you in shape to catch some waves, or just fluff out your beach towel and lounge. Humphry Slocombe is no stranger to serving ice cream scoops that double as meals. Its recent inventions include foie gras ice cream, salt and pepper ice cream and prosciutto ice cream.
OLIVE TAGGIASCHE Olives don’t belong anywhere near your dessert – or so you might think before you taste Olive Taggiasche gelato. This flavor comes courtesy of Rome’s iconic Fatamorgana, which specializes in dense, ultra-creamy gelato made with all-natural ingredients. The Taggiasche scoop riffs off the concept that olives and dairy pair perfectly well together (see: Lebanese labneh breakfast). The taste of the fruity black Italian olives is tempered with sugar, for a salty-sweet gelato you’ll find yourself oddly craving morning, noon and night.
VEGAN CHOCOLATE HUMMUS The fact that hummus ice cream now exists means one of two things: the global fascination with chickpea puree has reached its logical conclusion, or the universe is imploding. Like it or not, hummus ice cream is here. But this isn’t just a regular scoop flavored with hummus. Instead, the frozen dessert is made with a vegan base of chickpeas and tahini mixed with chocolate or vanilla. The ice cream has gotten tons of buzz at New York City’s Hummus and Pita Company, where it riffs off the chain’s mega-popular hummus shakes.
CIGARETTE Smoking a cigarette after dinner is a vanishing tradition, but now there’s cigarette ice cream. The dessert shop IceDEA at Bankgok’s Art and Culture Center is known for its wacky inventions – mushroom ice cream, tofu ice cream, chocolate scoops shaped like steaks – and one of its latest is a cigarette flavor. This scoop is made with a coffee base, so if you like to end your meals with a cigarette and a cup of coffee, now you can have it all.
