The Story of Enfleurage 4
Gelato
I really enjoyed making ice cream and finally did the short course at Penn State and, later, the complete Gelato training at Carpigiani, Bologna, Italy. Seems it had been gelato the entire time.
To me, it always seemed like ice cream, or gelato, sorbetto, was a heavenly match for smelling essential oils. It’s not just the closeness of smell and taste, even though they are first cousins. it’s the particular kind of taste you get with gelato…gold, cream, sweet, and voila! The aroma blooms after a few minutes, riding a wave of sweet dairy.
I have to admit I feel a bit vindicated, if miffed, right now, as I’ve just seen Robertet do an instagram post on sampling oils through ice cream, and a pictrure of a gelato machine. They had this set up at SIMPPAR last year, but no doubt in my mind, the idea came from me. God knows I was vocal and wrote and talked endlessly about it. But I didn’t manage to buy the equipment—I’m too small a company. But I do have respect for Robertet—at least it wasn’t Procter and Gamble or Estee Lauder. So I will focus and the fact, undeniable still, that the idea was brilliant and it was mine.
To this day I get requests for frankincense ice cream (even though it’s actually gelato) and occasionally I do make it. But for anyone who has tried it, I never gave my recipe to anyone, so what you tried was not mine! I have seen quite a few companies make something they call “frankincense” but it never seems to work out for them. I think they don’t trust the frankincense, or they don’t truly love it. Frankincense knows the heart. Oh yes, Frankincense knows.
In 2012 I moved to my first actual distillery, in South Saada, and set up 5 alembics, and started making frankincense essential oil I could ship back to America and we could actually offer permamently, instead of just when I could come to Salalah and make a couple of kilos. I stayed in that distillery and moved to another, nearby, and more hidden, until 2016, when I left Salalah, and, I thought, possibly Oman.
I really loved making Gelato, and found gelato to be the match to my heart and interest. I loved the fact that it actually has to be all natural ingredients to be real gelato, and you make it all 100% from scratch—no huge deliveries of milk piped in-—I love the emphasis where I think it should be: on the taste, the experience, the feelings. I like that the typical gelato portion is small enough so you can enjoy a treat daily, and not a huge gluttonous sugar bomb that goes to an extreme, making it a guilty treat. I like the slightly higher temperature of gelato, the better to let those flavors explode, I like the creativity, meaning one can change flavors as one likes, experimenting and creating new flavors according to the whim or whats in the market that day. I like that the batches are small, and it has to be eaten, and if it’s not gone in a day or a few, it goes into gelato cakes. I like that it doesn’t store and it’s not expected to.
So many reasons to love gelato—I wish I could split into an amoeba—there are so many things I want to do. 4 splits would be perfect, Mashallah. I still haven’t put this dream away.