Food Friday: Summer Research

I have taken it upon myself to thoroughly explore the many and varied forms of ice cream this summer. It can be a grueling process, but luckily, I am not alone. Mr. Sanders is a willing test subject, as are visiting grandchildren and our own offspring. It ishould be a remarkable summer.

This project started in Edinburgh, Scotland, on our vacation at the end of May. We had packed for a week in the highlands, where we were planning on hikes, long walks, fishing expeditions and staring moodily at the swirling mists over Loch whatsis while listening to bagpipes. I packed accordingly – hiking boots, rain coat, scarves, thin wool sweaters for layering, study socks. I was not prepared for warm summery days walking up hills and staircases and steep, irregular cobblestone streets packed with slow-moving tourists in urban Edinburgh. Each day I easily reached my 10,000 step goal before lunch. I was a sweaty melted puddle of goo by the time I ordered dessert at the National Galleries of Scotland one day – a nice warm sticky toffee pudding topped with a cool knob of creamy vanilla ice cream. Warm comforting sweetness, mingled with cool creaminess. Divine. I will never be able to recreate that experience at home. The next miracle that day was a shortly after lunch I got to stand in the same room as John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Lady Agnew; her face was the only possible way to improve upon the restorative sticky toffee pudding and ice cream.
Gertrude Vernon, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw National Galleries of Scotland

You should see Edinburgh by walking along its many twisty and ankle-threatening cobblestone streets. This I now know. We would walk around the Old Town part of the city where our small Georgian hotel was located. We walked past a popular fishmonger most mornings, with an early queue spilling out onto the pavement. We passed bakeries and newsagents, charity shops, pubs, restaurants, churches, pizzerias, bookshops, stationery shops, decorators, fishing gear, Marks and Spencer, and many kilt and cashmere shops. We walked along a rushing River Leith, under green trees, along Georgian crescents, pausing to peer down into former trade entrances which now are pricey basement flats, with window ledges lined with bright blooms of red geraniums. Flowers pots were crammed into every corner where sunlight could shine. People with bright white limbs lingered in the sun, enjoying the swiftly passing days of early summer. We walked around Deans Village, then to Deans Bridge, under a viaduct, near a statue of Hygieia at St Bernard’s Well (1791), to pause to have an ice cream cone. And not just any ice cream cone, it was Highland Cream, densely made with whole milk and buttermilk, decorated with sweet honey comb, edible marigold and rose petals, and little bits of airy crunch, in a crisp, fresh-baked feather-light golden cone, served by a young woman wearing a straw boater. She and a co-worker scooped out cones and containers of manna from a bike-propelled ice cream truck. Obviously well-calculated, it was Instagram-worthy scene. It is too bad that the ineffable flavor and the feeling of bliss at the moment could not be relayed through IG. It was another perfect ice cream moment.
Thistle & Churn
Hygeia

Travel always sounds grand and exotic. We travel to far away places, through the air, on trains, in cars, and by foot to arrive and immediately we need to eat. It seems like all we do is eat, and plan to eat, and cook, and clean up from the cooking, only to eat again. We had been in the highlands, at our comfortable loch-side cottage for less than a day, loaded up with bags of fresh groceries from a Marks & Spencer, when we heard the siren call for some missing item needed for dinner – I cannot remember exactly what it was. But the rest of the Marx brothers and I, and the baby, piled back into our car for a 30-minute drive which included a ferry boat ride, to a tiny food co-op, which was really just a small, convenience store. Four adults were thrilled to visit this tiny shop, with over-priced wine, eggs, and milk. We finally scored some Twiglets (which I adore, and so did the baby) and the best of all – Cornettos. They were packaged, factory-made vanilla ice cream cones, wrapped in stiff paper, and had probably had been in the freezer for months. We didn’t care – we were tourists, after all. These were the Cornettos we had read about – the stuff of legend. We climbed back into the car and tore through the packaging and sat happily crunching the cones, chewing the hard chocolate topping; waxy, plastic chocolate has never tasted so good. The baby looked askance. And back we drove to the ferry, and the ride to the loch-side cottage and dinner prep.
Three Flavours Cornetto
Loch a’Choire, Kingairloch Estate,

Yesterday Mr. Sanders and I, on our way to the grocery store, naturally, stopped at a frozen custard stand in Raleigh. Frozen custard is different from ice cream – it contains egg yolks, which ice cream does not. (Dairy Queen, the cold summer treat of my mis-spent youth, is classified as “soft serve” a whole new category, because it has less than 10% butterfat. Shocking!) I ordered a small chocolate cone, which made a fine summer lunch – a cool, sweet, rich chocolate-y swirl that I managed to eat without dripping it all over my white pants. Triumph! Mr. Sanders, wearing a bright white shirt, had a small cup of chocolate frozen custard, clean and tidy. This experience has opened a whole new world to us – frozen custard is the stuff of legends and boardwalks and summers by the sea. The long hot summer ahead looks promising now.

Andy’s Frozen Custard

Walk away from your kitchen and seek new forms of ice cream. Adventure is just around the corner.

“It was the color of someone buying you an ice cream cone for no reason at all.”
—Lemony Snicket