Villa Elisa

This was Ice Cream #2 of our road trip. It was a great little village to spend a relaxing day in. The hot springs were wonderful, the people were friendly, and the prices were lower than in Buenos Aires. Not surprisingly, I'm also a big fan of the name. Villa Elisa. Elisa is my name in Spanish. Not bad.

Back to the ice cream. Either the ice cream is from Victoria Cream, or this little place has some copyright issues. Either way, the ice cream was excellent. Since the ice cream was eaten almost two weeks ago, I can forgive myself for not remembering what the flavours were.

I really like these pictures, except for the fact that Jacob is making a weird face. I'm a big fan of that new polka-dot headband. In fact, I'm wearing it right now. If you look at Jacob's picture, you can see me eating my ice cream cone, reflected in the store window.

Oh. I do remember. I ate mint chocolate chip and bitter chocolate.
Photography credit: Jacob, the official purchaser of ice creams and project sponsor

Villaguay

I ate this ice cream on a road trip last weekend with our friend Yenny. Here we are in Villaguay, Entre Rios. I don't remember the flavours, and I don't remember the name of the place we bought them from, but they were very good.

Paletas

I have realized that I am horrible at updating this thing on a regular basis, but now that hot weather is coming, it should be easier to post because I’ll be having more ice cream on a regular basis. I’ve already made plans to go with Julian to Freddo next Monday so we can eat quarter kilos and take advantage of their two-for-one special. Meanwhile, for details of the Persicco ice cream that Christine and I shared, see here.

This post is about Mexican popsicles, which are called paletas. I recently spent a week in Monterrey, Mexico, where I ate more paletas than I can count, but not enough that I couldn’t have more. One of the best places is La Michoacana, which means from the the state of Michoacan. Ironically enough, the owner is from Veracruz. Either way, the paletas were delicious -- fresh, brightly coloured, with sticky juice that drips down your hand. They came in almost every flavour imaginable, both water-based and cream-based – watermelon, melon, pineapple, mango, chocolate, hazelnut, pistachio, lime, strawberry, kiwi, guava, and I can’t remember the rest. Some of them still had seeds.

There are two paletas worth mentioning. The first is paleta de chamoy. Based on an informal survey of Mexicans that I know, chamoy is either a species of apricot or a tamarind-pulp sauce poured over apricots. Either way, it’s quite salty. I’ve never seen it fresh so I’m not even sure if it’s a fruit, vegetable, plant, or something else entirely. I had a chamoy-flavoured paleta from Helados Sultana and was not impressed. It was much saltier than I remembered, and I think it had been dipped in chile flakes or chile sauce (as are many things Mexican). The saltiness made me cringe; I couldn’t finish it. I ended up throwing it out (wasteful, wasteful, I know) and buying a new one (cajeta/caramel, milk base, much sweeter).

The other paleta is paleta de jamaica. Jamaica (pronounced ha-MAI-ca) is hibiscus flower. It’s a dark purple colour and is a little bitter and a little salty, but it makes for a delicious and refreshing paleta on a sticky day. Unfortunately, it must not have been jamaica season because I couldn’t find a paleta de jamaica anywhere. The disappointment continues.

Here is a picture of us eating paletas from La Michoacana. I’m eating a watermelon paleta, and he’s eating a mango paleta.

In other food news, our vegetarian dinner for Argentines was a success. Not surprisingly, they expected meat, and were disappointed when we told them that there would be none. (They asked several times with these confused expressions on their faces, almost like they thought we were playing a mean practical joke on them.) We served DIY tortillas. It was a hit, even if their idea of Mexican food was lettuce and sour cream in a flour tortilla.

ps: I know the font here is weird but I don't know how to change it. Sorry.

More Persicco

Persicco is my biggest weakness. It has the creamiest, tastiest flavours. I had a long and eye-straining week and last night, the ice cream king surprised me with a quarter kilo of Persicco ice cream. We had tiramisu, chocolate with almonds, and mango sherbert. yummm

Tiramisu. Awesome. It was creamy and had swirls of chocolate and coffee, and you could definitely taste the alcohol. Also bits of cookie crumbs. Our ice cream shop will need to have a tiramisu like this.

Chocolate with almonds. The chocolate was delicious, smooth and creamy. I think it may have been milk chocolate because it was a softer flavour than the usual dark chocolate or chocolate granizado that I order. Even better were the almonds. Okay, so they were mushy and there weren't very many of them, but almonds! Almonds (and every other type of nut) is just so expensive here that we don't buy them except for very special occasions or recipes. I don't know why they are so expensive. Some must be imported, but even still, that hardly justifies the price of 10 pesos for a little packet of almonds.

On another note, inflation is running rampant here. Reports like this and this are pegging it between 15% and 20%, if not higher. Even INDEC, the government statistics agency staffed with Kirschnerites, has admitted that inflation is higher than it has predicted. Vegetables are a small fortune. We're supposed to have six Argentines over for a veggie dinner tomorrow night, and I'm not sure how we're going to feed them. Vegetable prices aside, they have very picky tastes. The easiest thing to do would be to blacken a slab of meat and serve it with shredded carrot and lettuce salad, but I'm not prepared to stoop to that level.

Pictures of my Persicco ice cream to come.

Random corner ice-cream place

It's been a while since I've last posted. I've been trying to cut down on my ice cream habit because my favourite pair of jeans are getting a little tight, and I'm betting ice cream (and chocolate, chocolate cupcakes, and butter croissants) is the culprit.

Anyways. I'm writing this as I finish off a quarter-kilo tub of the creamy stuff that I just pulled from the freezer. The ice-cream king -- my partner in crime -- bought it at the random corner ice cream store last week. It's good. Bitter chocolate, hazelnut (I think), and something tart. Pineapple sherbert? I can't really tell. It's pretty much gone, and unfortunately, it wasn't me who polished it off. This ice cream is creamy, but not as smooth as Persicco or any of the other more big-name parlours. It's also considerably cheaper. I pay five pesos for a quarter kilo, compared to nearly 10 pesos at Persicco for the same amount. At half the price, I can deal with ice crystals.

I suspect my Chilean friends are going to stand me up again because I've left them several messages and they haven't called back. I made plans to meet my Brazilian friend Dani at Freddo, the second-best ice cream chain in the city. I'm going to teach him English and he's going to listen patiently as I practice rolling my rr's.

Persicco!

Last night, our friends Maxi and Delfin came over for dinner, and they brought with them ONE KILO of delicious Persicco ice cream. (They didn't actually bring it with them, but they ordered it when they got here and the Persicco delivery boy dropped it off about an hour later and when they paid, he gave them 23 pesos change in coins -- that is pretty amazing in a city that is notoriously short of change.)

In my opinion, Persicco has the BEST ice cream in the city. Unfortunately, it also has the highest prices, so I only eat it on special occasions. (I have a broad definition of what constitutes a special occasion.) We ordered four flavours: bitter chocolate, chocoquina, dulce de leche and orange/peach. It also came with a side sample of flan.

The bitter chocolate flavour is one of the best. It really is a bitter chocolate, not sweet at all and very creamy. It has the same consistency as chocolate crinkle cookie dough.

Chocoquina is an Argentine invention. It's some sort of caramelly, flanny, eggy flavour with chunks of chocolate cookies. I believe it was inspired by the traditional Argentine birthday cake by the same name. The cake consists of several alternating layers of chocolate cookies, chocolate cake and caramel sauce, all slathered with choclate icing (every dentist and cardiologist's dream). I do my best to avoid chocoquina cake wherever possible. The ice cream, however, was better than I expected. Its creamy consistency and Kahlua colour were appealing, but the chocolate cookie chunks were soggy.

Dulce de leche is caramel. It is cloyingly sweet and can usually be found in medialunas (croissants), cookies, cakes, ice creams, pastries, chocuquina, coffee, cereal, yogurts, fruit, etc etc. It comes in huge tubs and is also eaten on its own. I once bought a little tub of dulce de leche and we ate the whole thing in a week, and I haven't bought any since. Jacob won't let me. Anyways, we ordered dulce de leche ice cream. It's better as ice cream than as caramel spread because it's less gooey, and it goes well with bitter chocolate. Persicco also has dulce de leche with nuts, chocolate chips, brownie bits, and pure caramel, but we had the plain one.

The fourth flavour was orange/peach. I really like this flavour. It's a sherbert, and I think it's on their low-fat list. It's not as creamy as the other ones because it's water-based, but the flavours are strong and the colour is bright orange. It's refreshing. Not as good as my favourite seasonal flavour, which is watermelon sherbert (sandia), but it's a good second choice.

The flan sampler was perfect only in that I now know to never order that flavour.

The ice cream came in two environmentally unfriendly, teardrop-shaped styrofoam containers. They keep it cold by putting dry ice inside (on a piece of wax paper). I usually drop the dry ice in the sink in the sink and watch the steam come off it as it melts. We're going to have to find a way of serving ice cream in better containers. I don't think the styrofoam would work at home.

Anyways, here are some pictures of us enjoying our ice cream.

ps I finished off half a kilo of leftovers as I wrote this blog entry.

Research proposal

INTRODUCTION
Hellooo. My name is Elysse, and I am the world's reigning ice-cream queen.

PURPOSE OF RESEARCH
I am going to use this blog to bore my dear readers with details of every single ice cream cone I eat over the next year of living in Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires has the best ice cream in the world. But besides boring you with the inane details of my less-than-interesting life, I am going to use this blog as RESEARCH because I am going to open my own ice cream shop when I go back home to Toronto.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
I was originally thinking that as part of my research, I would try to eat an ice cream cone from every single ice cream shop in Buenos Aires. However, my friend Christine quickly pointed out that if I ate that much ice cream, not only would it take me longer than a year to try every ice cream shop in this city of many million people, but I would be far too fat to fit on the plane to go home. I have since scratched that idea off the list because I don't want to stay here forever.

Instead, I will take pictures of my many ice cream treats and post them here with my insightful commentary and analysis of each cone that I gobble up. I promise to post as frequently as possible, starting today with the leftover quarter kilo of ice cream in my freezer (melon, lemon, bitter chocolate in an environmentally unfriendly styrofoam container).