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.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Sunday, August 26, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
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.
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.
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