ely esta triste...

President's Choice full-fat vanilla ice cream.
It's good but it's no Persicco.

Hola Maxi!!

Maxi: acá voy a poner la foto de vos comiendo helado...
jajaaaJAJAJAaa

Chocolates and Creams

Here we begin the ice cream queen's research on her home turf, in the city of Toronto. There are more ice cream parlours in this city than I remember there being two years ago, but that said, I think there's still room for a few more. (Plus, they don't do delivery.)

Chocolates and Creams at Harbourfront, on the lake, has been around for ages -- I remember it from when I was little. It advertises itself as the city's best ice cream, and it's probably not far off from saying it. The ice cream is rich, delicious, inexpensive, and there are a ton of flavours. Plus, they also have chocolates and jelly beans.

The mint chocolate chip that I tried was bright green and creamy, and the chocolate chunks were substantial. The serving was generous -- they had to fill that massive waffle cone. Overall, an excellent scoop. A lot of other people must have thought so too because there was a long lineup of people waiting to order.

Jacob ate something chocolate. I think it had nuts in it. I wasn't in a chocolate mood so I didn't try it, but he said it was really good.

Despedida, birthday, goodbye party

It's fitting that the ice cream queen would celebrate her birthday with several (ahem, nearly 3) kilos of ice cream instead of a cake, right?

This was at my birthday and goodbye party with friends from Santillana. The ice cream was from El Lado Bueno. I kept the bag as a souvenir of one of my favourite ice cream places.

Ice cream tour

Top pic: Ana and Chungo's special lunch/meal menu. Standard ham-and-cheese and quiche fare. Note the decor in the background.

Second pic: Outside Faricci's. Note the winter coat. It was a pretty gross day.

Third pic: Faricci's pineapple and peach sherbert. We have to find a way to get around the environmentally unfriendly styrofoam cups.

Bottom pic: Cabaña Tuyu's failure -- mango-orange and alfajor. We weren't pleased.


After a brief hiatus involving an international move, an unfortunate family emergency, finishing up unfinished business and a harried job search (the latter of which still being in progress), the ice cream queen has returned to cyberland.

The ice cream queen’s Argentine send-off involved a day-long ice-cream binge and tour with fellow ice cream queen Ana. The task was to check out and sample several of Belgrano’s more well-known ice cream shops, where we were both pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised.

To standardize our testing (and fend off claims that this was nothing more than an ice cream orgy), we looked at the following variables: free samples and the server’s willingness to provide as many as we asked for, how the ice cream tasted, how the locale was decorated, and the price of a small cup with two scoops.

First stop

The first stop on a wintry July day was at Chungo’s at Virrey del Pino and Amenabar, which is one of Buenos Aires’s more well-known ice cream chains. Taking total advantage of the free sample thing, we tried chocolate with hazelnuts (tastes like Nutella), berry chocolate (which was a chocolaty twist on wildberry or frutos del bosque), bitter chocolate, wildberry and blueberry. The guy behind the counter was very patient, even offering flavour suggestions.

Our flavour selections, however, included passionfruit mousse and caramel-cream cheese-chocolate chunk (mousse de maracuyá y una mezcla original de dulce de leche, queso crema y pedazotes de chocolate). The mousse was excellent and creamy. I loved it but Ana thought it was a little too sweet. However, she was wild about the caramel mixture. I thought it tasted like chocotorta, a sickeningly sweet disgusting-yet-irresistible mix of cream cheese, chocolate cookies and caramel that is the Argentine version of birthday cake (not to mention the love of dentists and fluoride-makers everywhere). We had little visions of kids with sticky hands begging their parents for these flavours.

The decoration at Chungo’s was also cute. Biographies of Giuseppe Mascarpone and Nicolás Sambayón, which not so coincidentally happen to be two super-popular flavours among adults who get the joke.

Willingness to indulge our free sample obsession: excellent
Price rating: at 7.50 pesos for a small cup, this was the most expensive creamery
Flavour rating: the best of the day
Décor: excellent

Second stop

Our second stop was Faricci’s at the corner of Lacroze and Conesa, an impulse stop near Ana’s house. I used to pass Faricci’s on the 42 bus on my way home from work but never stopped inside.

The patient server indulged us and let us sample quite a few flavours, including something with caramel and pieces of Havanna alfajor, tropical lemon with strawberry and melon. None of the flavours made us want to eat them.

We ended up ordering pineapple and peach, which was a bad idea because when fruit-flavoured ice creams are made with canned fruit, you can tell. The fake fruit gives it an acidic, overly sweet flavour that screams “I’m not real!!!” This is the type of ice cream I would eat only if I were totally desperate and didn’t have enough pocket cash for Chungo’s or one of the other premium ice creams. (Yes, I’m a snob.)

Willingness to indulge our free sample obsession: excellent
Price rating: 4.50 for a small cup, the cheapest of the day
Flavour rating: wouldn’t go out of my way to eat this
Décor: green, brown and white -- kind of pleasant

Third stop

The third and last stop of the day was Cabaña Tuyu, at the corner of Cabildo and Maure. Cabaña Tuyu used to be a neighbourhood institution but we’re not sure why it’s still open. One of the first things Ana noticed was that it had lots of candy flavours: kinder, ferrero rocher, bananita dolca and alfajor. There are a few schools around the corner, so we figured they must be trying to attract the under-12 set.

We ordered mango with orange and alfajor – a big mistake. The first crime was that the mango was neon orange, which is a sure sign of heavy doses of artificial flavourings. The second problem was the thick layer of syrup – the slurpee stuff – that had settled to the bottom of the cup. “I can’t eat this,” said Ana. “It leaves a terrible taste in my mouth.”

The atmosphere also left something to be desired (a bottle of Cif, maybe?). The cement floor was dirty and the tables had fake flowers on them, and the fluorescent lighting encouraged us to leave with our half-finished ice cream, which we later tossed in a garbage can outside the store.

I’ve had Cabaña Tuyu before – at 3 a.m. one sticky Friday night after a bowling and beer party at the alley across the street. There were five or six of us, it was hot outside and the traffic was beginning to slow down. Pablo had said that we had to try Cabaña Tuyu and I insisted that we all march over there and have a cone (or a kilo). I don’t remember what any of us ordered, so it mustn’t have been that good or that bad, only unmemorable.

“Cómo cayó Cabaña Tuyu!!” said Ana as we left. How the mighty have fallen. Maybe Cabaña Tuyu only tastes better after a night of drinking.

Price rating: 6 pesos, which totally didn’t justify the quality
Flavour rating: nasty
Décor: awful

Investigación de campo: a field trip to Canada

The ice cream queen is in Canada this week doing research for her ice cream projects, and she has come to the following conclusion: ice cream in Toronto is awful.

First, it comes in litre-size vats that can't possibly be finished quickly, so they languish in the freezer and crystalize until they become inedible. (Photo 1, ice cream in the freezer. Photo 2, my dad serving himself some freezer frost)

Secondly, they have a ton of unnecessary preservatives and chemicals. My folks have a tub of President's Choice s'mores ice cream. (For the uninitiated, a s'more is a traditional campfire food: burnt marshmallows and melted chocolate, served between two graham crackers.) In addition to the requisite cream, milk and stabilizer, President's Choice s'mores ice cream also has modified corn starch, sunflower and coconut oil, baking soda, artificial flavour, carob bean gum, cellulose gum and guar gum. A half-cup portion also has 0.4 grams of trans fat. Sacreligious! Ice cream should be natural. There's no reason it should have more than cream, milk, eggs, vanilla flavouring, chocolate pieces, cinnamon, stabilizer. Unless, of course, you want to mass-produce it, sell it cheaply, and forget about it for months in a freezer. Ugh. If this is the competition then we're going to be rich. Me voy a llenar de plata!!!! (Photo 3)

The best ice cream I've tasted here so far was the little scoops of mandarin, mango and raspberry ice cream that I had at Frances and Andrew's wedding last weekend. The flavours and colours were strong and the presentation was lovely -- served with mint leaves in a martini glass. (Photo 4, Jen eating dessert)

Last night we ate at a Chinese restaurant. I'm not a big fan of Chinese food but the ice cream for dessert was quite tasty. Most Chinese restaurants offer three flavours: green tea, mango and vanilla. I sampled the mango and vanilla. I wonder if they make their own or order it from a Chinese-restaurant ice cream wholesaler. Mango and vanilla are pretty normal flavours, but I'd imagine that green tea would be a specialty flavour. (Photo 5, Jaeli eating ice cream)

In other news, my wrist hurts. I think I have carpal tunnel syndrome. We joke that it's from scooping too much ice cream. Into my mouth. I'm amazed my pants still fit.

Passionfruit and caramel go well together

I definitely wouldn't have guessed it. Last night we had dulce de leche granizado and mousse de maracuyá (passionfruit mousse) for dessert. The two flavours went really well together, which surprised me. I find dulce de leche nearly impossible to mix with anything but chocolate, and that combo packs waaaaay too much sugar to eat late at night when I have to work the next morning, but the passionfruit-caramel mix was pretty good. Syrupy. Anyways, we polished off a kilo between eight people. I wish I'd taken pictures of Michelle scraping the bottom of the tub.

I was surprised that our friends ate the meal, given that it was totally vegetarian (this being meat country...). The conversation went something like this:
"These burgers are good. Beef, right?"
"Nop."
"What's this then?"
"Beans."
"Qué?! No me jodas."

How long does it take to eat 26 kilos of ice cream?

The answer is about seven weeks. We foisted our ice cream on a fair number of people. We ate five tubs at the party and three as leftovers, gave one to Ana (partner in ice cream-related crime), one to Marcelo and two to Andy. In fact, there were few friends and colleagues who got away with not trying it.

I wish I had something more witty to say but I don't. Instead, pictures.

Top: mint chocolate chip and bitter chocolate. That particular container held 3.6 kilos of ice cream. We weighed it.
Middle: Sandra, Naty, Martín, Nadia, Fer, me. Busy at work finishing off all that ice cream.
Bottom: Ana working on the last container. It's hers now. I can't bear the thought of more menta granizada!!

Pics from the party

Top picture: Leandro and Pablo, former colleagues and self-appointed ice-cream blog fans, have been promising to try each flavour, so when I sent out the invitation, they were among the first to respond.

Second picture: Vinka and Andy mugging it for the camera. Note the spoon.

Third picture: Mariluz and Javier were pleased with the ice cream. Their two sons were fans of the muffins (banana and chocolate) and the dog.

Bottom picture: Marcelo digging into a vat of chocolate ice cream. For several months, Marcelo has patiently listened to my ice cream exploits. Gracias Marce!

I wish I had better pictures, but my photography skills could use some improvement and you can only do so much with Photoshop.

La fiesta!!!!

On Sunday, we picked up the ice cream and discovered that instead of the 50 kilos we had expected, we were only taking home a mere 26 kilos. The folks at the ice cream parlour had transferred it to eight environmentally unfriendly styrofoam containers, and each container held about three kilos of the sweet stuff. The flavours were a big hit among the Argentines, which was a relief because we were worried about how they would be received. The dulce de leche was gone by the end of the evening. Andy took home the lemon and apple and cinnamon flavours. We were left with half a container of chocolate and three-quarters of a tub of mint chocolate chip.

Unfortunately, the day was chilly and a number of people were scared off by the temperatures, and even the promise of all-you-can-eat free ice cream couldn't lure them from their poorly heated homes and apartments. Others claimed to have had myriad work and family commitments. It was a Sunday, and it was pretty chilly, so we understand (kind of). Thanks to those who braved the fall weather to eat our creations. We still have about 16 kilos left over, so there will be more parties in the future.

Flavour round-up:
Lemon and cardamom was a interesting mix that turned out much better than we had expected. Fernando the maestro heladero had been very worried that it would taste more like cardamom ice cream with a hint of lemon than the reverse, but it turned out to be a good combo and the cardamom wasn't as overpowering as it had been the day before.

Apple and cinnamon: a great hit. Because it's a water-based flavour, it wasn't as creamy. It has to do with the sugar point and the freezing point of sugar. Regardless, very tasty and obviously fat-free.

Dark chocolate: I had expected it to be much darker and more bitter, but it was closer to regular chocolate than to dark chocolate. The recipe needs to be tweaked to make it darker and less sweet. However, it was a popular flavour.

Dulce de leche: a three-kilo tub, gone by the end of the party. Personally, I think it needed more caramel, more chocolate chips and less sugar, but I suppose I shouldn't tamper with perfection given that everyone ate it.

Mint chocolate chip: when we tried it right out of the machine, it had a dark-green alien colour and an overpowering mint-powder taste. The day after, it was quite good. That said, I think the recipe needs some changes. First, it needs to be lighter in colour. Second, it needs mint liqueur. Third, it needs waaaay more chocolate chips. It wasn't bad, but I think Freddo's mint chocolate chip is better.

Agradecemiento: a public thanks to Sara for letting us store 10 kilos of ice cream in her freezer. Gracias!!! Ana, ayudanos comerlo!!


Cultural notes:
This is a broad generalization, but Argentine taste preferences tend to skew towards the extreme end of bland, so we were worried about how our flavours would be received, especially the lemon and cardamom and apple and cinnamon since they are both combinations that you wouldn't find at a regular ice cream parlour. The cardamom was especially concerning because it has a strong scent and Argentines tend to prefer foods that aren't as strongly scented. I am very pleased that they have proven me wrong (or at least had the decency to lie and tell me it was good).

Tener frio vs. estar resfriado. There is a popular misconception that one day of cold weather will give you a cold. It's not true. Germs give you colds; cold weather in and of itself does not. Chances are good that you don't HAVE a cold, you ARE cold. Put on a sweater and socks. Dressing for cold weather keeps you warm; trust me, it's the trick to surviving -20 Canadian winters.

Sunday: the sacred day of the week for late family lunches, birthday asados, and other assorted clan activity. Most of the city shuts down on Sunday and most locals are busy with family commitments.

Elaboración de helados: show time

This weekend was show time. Jacob, Andy and I showed up at the appointed heladería in Villa Urquiza and made our five flavours of ice cream: dark chocolate, mint chocolate chip, dulce de leche with chocolate chips, apple and cinnamon, and lemon and cardamom. The star of the day was Maqfrio, the ice cream machine that Fernando, the maestro heladero and owner of the store, imported from Brazil more than seven years ago.

I wish I could say that the ice-cream making process was more complex and required an in-depth knowledge of food chemistry, expert skill and engineering, but the fact is, it was very similar to following a standard baking recipe, only on a much larger scale. We measured the designated amount of sugar, dextrose, powdered milk, stabilizer, flavour enhancer, water, eggs and cocoa in large buckets, then add it to the machine, which pasteurizes the mixture in a heated compartment that looks like my Cuisinart food processor. Then the machine transferred the mixture to a lower compartment to cool it and add air. At that point, we added the fruit flavourings (pulp, juice, applesauce, etc) and a spoonful of something called Soft Gel as it cooled. When the ice cream reaches -8 degrees Celsius, the machine beeped and we poured the ice cream to larger buckets, added the chocolate chips and cinnamon (when needed) and transferred it to a chest freezer, where it rested overnight.

What we discovered is that making ice cream is not as complex as we thought. To open our own ice cream shop, what we'll need in terms of equipment is a machine like Fernando has, a large number of buckets in various sizes, a scale to weigh ingredients, the fridge, access to cold water, and a deep freezer, and as the Argentines like to say, chau, ya estás. You're set to go, baby.

In the end, we ended up with 26 kilos of ice cream instead of the original 50 we expected. I'm not that upset by the 50% reduction in ice cream because I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around what 50 kilos would look like, and of course, there was the concern of what we would do with it all once it was in our hands....

Top picture: these are the buckets that they put the ice cream in when it comes out of the machine. The machine adds an incredible amount of air (crude recipe: add sugar, milk, water, stabilizer, air, then freeze); we put about 10 cups of liquids into the machine, and twenty minutes later, Maqfrio churned out about 10 litres of ice cream. (Note: this was on low setting.)

Middle picture: Andy and I are digging into a 10 kilo tub of dulce de leche. There is a dulce de leche flavouring in powder form, which we used, but the extra kick comes from using some of the real stuff as well. The same with fruits and cream flavours. For apple and cinnamon, we added artificial flavourings, but we also peeled and pureed a dozen green apples. For chocolate, we added cocoa and a quarter kilo of melted baking chocolate. For lemon, we added lemon flavouring and the juice and pulp of 15 freshly squeezed lemons. The eggs were real eggs, not egg powder. The only flavour that we didn't add fresh ingredients to was mint chocolate chip. What a difference fresh ingredients makes! Baskin Robbins, beware.

Bottom picture: This is what the ice cream looks like when it comes out of the machine. The consistency is very soft, which is why it needs to be left in a freezer at -20 degrees Celsius for approximately 18 to 24 hours. The flavour in the pic is dark chocolate.

Invitation

I post this for the public record.

Queridos amigos y guinea pigs:

Como saben (o deberían saber) todos, Jacob y yo estamos haciendo un curso de elaboración de helados artesanales. El curso es de teoría pero también tiene una parte de práctica en la cual vamos a hacer unos 50 kilos (sí, cincuenta kilos) de helado de varios sabores. Lamentablemente no tenemos tanto espacio en nuestro freezer, por lo cual vamos a tener que pedirles ayuda en comerlo.

Fecha de la orgia de helado: el domingo 13 de abril

Hora: 17 hrs

Lugar: nuestra casa. Si hay sol, comemos en la terraza. Si llueve, comemos en el depto (o en la terraza y con paraguas).

Que vengan con apetitos y cucharas.
BYOS (bring your own spoon)


Official ice cream queen translation:

Dear friends and guinea pigs,

As you know (or should know, if you don't already), Jacob and I are taking a course on how to make ice cream. The course is mostly theory, but there's a practical component where we will be making 50 kilos (yes, fifty kilos) of ice cream in various flavours. Unfortunately, we don't have much freezer space, so we are going to have to ask you to help us eat it.

Date of ice cream orgy: Sunday, April 13
Location: Our place. If it's sunny, we eat on the terrace. If it rains, we eat in the apartment (or on the terrace with umbrellas).

Come with appetites and spoons.
BYO spoon

Ice cream thoughts

A few random ice cream-related thoughts worth noting:

This weekend we were supposed to make our several kilos of ice cream. However, because of a country-wide farmers' strike, there is no milk to make ice cream with. (There isn't much beef, milk, fruits or veggies in the supermarkets either.) The strike has been going on for a while. For the past week at 8pm each night, the locals who are against the strike have been standing on their balconies and banging their pots and pans in protest. I'm not going to get into details about what exactly the strike is about (the major news outlets have already covered it extensively) but it has pointed out two things. Firstly, that neither side has the moral or political upper hand. The fighting has been getting dirty, with paid protesters digging up dirt and snarling traffic and transport on both ends. Secondly, that it shows the deep divide between the social and economic classes in Argentina. As a broad and ridiculously simplistic explanation, the well-off neighbourhoods tend to oppose the strike, while the poorer neighbourhoods tend to support it. What does this have to do with this blog? No milk = no ice cream class.

"Cuando terminemos con este proyecto infernal hacemos una orgía de helado e invitamos a todos los involucrados para brindar" (Translation: When we finish with this infernal project we're going to have an ice cream orgy and invite everyone involved in the project for a toast.) -- S., book editor on a nightmare project, while editing raw material at 2:58 am on a Saturday morning, three days before the book's slated deadline

Cultural notes:
Banging pots and pans with wooden spoons is a very Latin American form of protest. These are called caserolazos (from the Spanish word cacerola, which means cooking pot).

Eureka!!!

We have leftover ice cream in the freezer!! It doesn't get better than this.

Jaeli

This is Jaeli, Jacob's three-year-old niece who came to visit with her mom. In this picture, she's sampling the first of many ice creams that she ate in the week she was here. Chocolate ice cream from La Volta. It passed the picky eater test, although given how badly stained her shirt was afterwards, it's hard to tell how much actually made it past the spoon and into her mouth. I wasn't there when they took this picture so there's not much else I can say.

The usual suspects, the usual sites

Seems to be a standard formula.
Sticky summer night in Buenos Aires + friends + food and drink + ice cream = good times. These pictures are from Cintia's goodbye party; she's off to Miami and nobody knows if she'll be back (including her). As usual, the ice cream was from Lado Bueno and the party was held in Villa del Parque.

Top picture: "Get your sticky paws off my ice cream!" - Ariadna
Bottom picture: what's left over when the good times wind down. Kudos to Pao, who diligently washed the plastic cups for future use. Environmentally friendly! You don't see that very often here.

A couple of notes:

+ Lemon sherbert and champagne mix: The guys really seem to like this. Theoretically, the acidity of the lemon and the bubbliness of the champagne would go well together, but this combo gives me a pounding headache every time. Plus, I think it's a waste of perfectly good lemon ice cream, but hey, it's their servings, their stomachs and their hangovers.

+Lado Bueno charges less in Villa del Parque than it does in Colegiales and Belgrano. I discovered this when that same weekend, Jacob and I took our dog for a long walk and, not surprisingly, we ended up in front of Lado Bueno. (Given that we live about 15 short blocks away from their Belgrano sucursal, it wasn't such a big deal.) A quarter kilo costs 9 pesos in Belgrano; in Villa del Parque, it costs 8. This is typical here. Despite the fact that the products are often standardized, the neighbourhood where you buy them influences the price. Unfortunately for me, Belgrano happens to be one of the more expensive zones. I ordered strawberry ice cream and regretted it; it was sickly sweet and tasted artificial. Apparently pomelo is better. The guy manning the counter said it was the best flavour they had; it's made from fresh pomelos and extract. Too bad they don't tell you that BEFORE you order your ice cream (when it's too late to trade your sickly sweet strawberry for light, citrusy pomelo).

What's with the music??

Creo que hay una ley inescrita aquí en Argentina que dice que cada heladería y/o food-related establishment está obligado a tener por lo menos un CD de Maná. No quiero que me malentiendan, a mí me gusta mucho a Maná, pienso que son muy buenos, fui a ver su recital en Velez hace un año, Jacobo es un fan por que son de su tierra natal, blah blah blahhh. Pero creo que esta es la octava vez que he escuchado a Maná hoy. Desde el norte de la Argentina hasta el sur (estoy en El Calafate ahora), todo lo que se escucha es Maná.

Me pregunto si eso significa que vamos a tener que tener unos CDs de Maná en nuestra heladería para que nos consideren auténtico.

Ice Cream 101

Last week, Jacob, Andy and I began taking an ice cream course so we can learn how to make and sell our own ice cream. The guy who gives the course is 78 years old and has been in the business for more than 50 years. According to him, ice cream is the healthiest food on the planet. "El helado es lo más nutritivo que hay. Yo no sé si hay un alimento más nutritivo del helado," he says. Estoy totalmente de acuerdo. Some of the awesome stuff we're learning is food chemistry, pasteurization techniques and necessary equipment. Here's an overview of what we've covered so far:

+ Fat is an essential element in cream-based ice cream, and the best-tasting fat usually comes from milk and cream. The higher the fat content, the heavier the ice cream. Parlours in Buenos Aires make ice cream that range from 6.5 percent to 10 percent fat content. Ice cream in Mendoza is around 6 percent. Ben and Jerry's is approximately 16 percent.

+ Industrial ice cream all tastes the same because the factories produce one flavour base -- called neutral base -- and then add colours, flavours, powders, syrups and other stuff to it. This is how ice cream is made at home. The high-quality Italian (and Argentine) ice creams are made individually and from scratch. No common base.

+ Crystal formation in ice cream is the hallmark of a lousy batch, a lousy recipe, lousy ingredients or a lousy chef. Water-based ice creams like sherberts and sorbets, which have lower fat contents and are more likely to be wrecked by freezer frost, have more sugar for flavour and to prevent it from freezing into a solid cube, and more stabilizers to minimize the formation of crystals.

+ Most ice cream is air. Industrial ice creams have the most air; artesenal ice creams (like the ones you find here) have considerably less air. The second most important ingredient water. Most ice creams have between only 32 percent and 38 percent solid ingredients. The rest? Air and water.

+ It's important to use fresh ingredients, but there are shortcuts. For example, cream-based fruit flavours are made with a processed fruit pulp rather than fresh fruit (unless it's to give visual appeal, like chunks of strawberries in strawberry ice cream). Powdered whole milk tastes the same as fresh whole milk. There is even such thing as powdered egg yolks (!!!).

The highlight of the course is the 10 kilos we will each (!!!) make in the final class. Thanks to everyone who has already volunteered to eat it.

Ice cream updates:

Scanapieco (Av. Córdoba at Scalabrini Ortiz): an ice cream parlour that is something of a porteño establishment and a pit stop on memory lane. The place itself is a little run down, decorated in linoleum chic, fake wooden tables and fraying wicker chairs -- the idea is that it be reminiscient of the old Italian gelaterías from the time when Italian immigration to Argentina was changing the culinary landscape of the city and country. The ice cream is phenomenal, and I'm not the only one who thinks so. One wall is plastered with newspaper clippings and city guides that the heladería has been mentioned in. I had chocolate and mint chocolate chip (5 pesos! but I have to admit, the portions were small). The chocolate was average, but the mint chocolate chip was probably the best I have ever tasted. Mint is usually a heavy flavour but this one was light and smooth, with melt-in-your-mouth chocolate chunks. Jacob loved his dulce de leche and tiramisu. Thanks goes to my boss, Sara, for the recommendation.

Ely's Guide to Inflation

Receipt from Freddo. Note the price. The stamp means that they've given me my ice cream and I can't go back for seconds on the same receipt.

A quarter kilo of ice cream at Freddo, a major chain of premium "export-quality" ice cream now costs 12 pesos. When we first arrived here a year and a half ago, a quarter kilo was -- if I remember correctly -- 8 pesos. Therefore, 50% inflation in 18 months. Given that our salaries haven't increased with inflation, this represents a considerable reduction in my ice cream purchasing power.

According to INDEC, the national statistics agency that has been discredited in recent months due to allegations of political meddling, the official inflation is at 8.5% since December 2006. (However, when the cost of a good or service increases, INDEC tends to remove it from the basket of goods that it uses to calculate the official inflation rate. That explains why, according to Argentina, the 35% increase in our health insurance doesn't really count as inflation.) Unofficially, the inflation rate is probably closer to 15% a year.

I've been keeping an eye on the price of ice cream because I find it a pretty reliable way to calculate inflation on consumer goods. Of course, ice cream isn't the only item to increase in price over the last few months. Just about every item in the grocery store costs more now than it did when we arrived. Like I said, the only thing that hasn't increased is our salaries. Or tomatoes, due to the "spontaneous" tomato boycott carried out the week before the heated national elections that brought prices down from a ridiculous high of 18 pesos a kilo to about 3 pesos a kilo.

Cultural notes:

Calidad de exportación: when Argentines (specifically Argentine businesses) want to advertise a product as high quality, they say that it's "export quality." The best of the country's bounty -- principally beef, wine, leather + other grain products -- is slated for export to the United States, Brazil, Europe and the Far East. The second-rate products are sold at home. Argentina also has the highest number of psychologists per capita. You can draw your own conclusions about the national inferiority complex.

***UPDATE***
In today's La Nación: According to a report published today by former INDEC employees (fired last spring for political reasons), the real inflation rate for 2007 is 26%. Compare this to the "official" inflation rate of 8.5%. I'm the one who does the monthly accounting here, and 26% inflation feels about right.
Link: http://www.lanacion.com.ar/economia/nota.asp?nota_id=982841

Lado Bueno

Literally, the good side. And is it ever good....We ate this ice cream as the final course at an asado at Omar's house. The ice cream was fantabulous. We must have ordered at least a kilo and a half for eight people. I remember we had lemon sorbet, because we mixed it with champagne and slurped it up with spoons. We also had sambayón, which is a sweet, caramel-coloured ice cream laced with alcohol that kind of tastes like rompope, which itself kind of tastes like eggnog. I can't remember the rest of the flavours. Chalk it up to the several glasses of wine that I consumed that night.

Top picture: Lado Bueno ice cream
Middle picture: Pablo helping himself to a heaping serving
Bottom picture: Jacob polishing off a half-kilo of ice cream

Cultural notes:

Asado: a typical Argentine bbq of grilling meat over glowing carbon, usually in a brick oven. Carnivores in the know swear that it makes the meat taste better. (I prefer grilled veggies.) However, an asado is more than just bbq; it's an excuse for friends to get together, tell jokes and drink copious amounts of wine and beer into the wee hours of the morning, play foosball (where available) and eat more than they should. Traditional food usually consists of grilled and bbq'ed provoleta cheese, shredded lettuce, onion and tomato salad, and a side or two of cow. Dessert (if any) is ice cream ordered from the neighbourhood joint (free delivery!).

House: most porteños live in apartments, and it's hard to have an asado on the balcony of an apartment. The best way to experience an asado is to make friends with an Argentine who has a parilla, a terrace, a patio, and a house in the suburbs. See above and below.

Omar: standard-issue Argentine, skilled in the use of bbq-related tools. (Every asado comes with one of these, and with "these" I refer to both the man and the tools.) Asador par excellance who has promised me a bbq of grilled fish at some point this summer. He has recently become an associate in ice cream-related crime, owing to the fact that his job as a graphic designer at a local publishing house doesn't keep him busy enough. (Un asador excelente quien me prometió que me iba a hacer un asado de pescado en algún momento este verano. Su trabajo de día no lo mantiene muy ocupado, por lo cual está ayundandome lograr mi meta de conocer cada heladería en la ciudad de Buenos Aires.)

More Mar del Plata Madness

My second and third ice cream in Mardel came from a heladería across the street from the hotel we were staying in. I can't remember what the place was called, but it had a fab decor scheme, excellent ice cream, a convenient location, and atrocious English translations.

Here is a picture of one of the several ice creams I had there in my three-day stay.

Being the super-nerd that I am, I even took pictures of the menu translations. Would you like a cup-ice on the basis of vainilla covered in syrup cofee, tiramisu ice-cream whith whipped cream and chocolate in branch? Or how about a serving of cheese-cake ice cream, vainilla macerates (ed: uhm, excuse me, what's a macerate?) with syrup red fruits whith strawberries amarenas and wafer with sauce? Or would you prefer a Strawberry Queen cup (On the basis of wood, queen ice-cream, with whipped cream and little cigarettes of chocolate)?

How about a dictionary, a thesaurus, and an English translator?
(I really shouldn't complain though -- it's folks like these who keep me employed.)

The author would like to thank Cadbury Stani Adams PLC for sponsoring the weekend getaway in Mardel, and Jacob for sponsoring the ice cream runs.

Mar del Plata

The best ice cream in Mar del Plata is from a heladería called San Marino. When we went - a windy evening in December - the place was packed, despite the fact that it is located in an out-of-the-way edge of the city and it was 1 am. I don't remember the prices, but the ice cream was delish. The cones, however, were unimpressive. They were made of a soggy material that had the taste and texture of wet cardboard.

Ice Cream Madness

I realize it has been a long time since I've last posted to this blog. (Thank you to Pablo, Leandro, Jacob, Leo, Jen, Christine, Ryan, and others for the frequent reminders.) Sorry. Mil disculpas. I have been busy eating ice cream. Actually, the frequency that I've been eating ice cream lately is embarrassing. It's a mystery that my clothes still fit.

Since my last post in October, and I can dutifully report that the best ice cream in the city is from Persicco, La Volta or Lado Bueno, the best ice cream in Mar del Plata is San Marino, and the best flavour combos are milk chocolate and mint chocolate chip or chocolate, banana and watermelon.

In the following posts, I will try to give you a summary of what's been happening in the last few months of ice cream madness.