How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.

Elizabeth Barret Browning (1806-1861) must have known something about gelato. The utter multiplicity of flavours (gusti) in Italian is truly astonishing.

Among the most popular in that country, where gelato is simply part of life, along with pasta, are:

Zabaglione: it used to be a dessert staple of pretentious Italian restaurants in which the tuxedo’d waiter would bring out a large copper bowl and a whisk and prepare this showy dessert with milk, heavy cream, sugar, egg yolks, rum and of course the star, sweet, fortified wine first produced in 1796 from Marsala, Sicily. Now it’s a must in finer gelateria’s.

Cioccolato: milk chocolate or dark, in numerous variations, also with nuts.

Malaga: rum raisin

Amarena: with a small and bitter, dark-colored cherry grown only in Modena)

Torrone: nougat and nut

Stracciatella: heavenly mix of vanilla base and ribbons of chocolate

Menta: mint

Canella: cinnamon

Pistacchio: pistachio

Noce: walnut

Castagna: chestnut. It’s not a flavour much prized in North American cuisine but it’s just heavenly and smooth, especially in gelato.

Nocciola: hazelnut, a must in every gelateria

Fior di latte: Just the essence of Italy itself: dairy, no eggs just milk and cream

I began my gelato journey with limone or lemon. It was overly tart but the unmistakeable essence of lemon zest and fresh squeezed lemon juice was there. Since then, I’ve made so many flavours I can hardly remember but alphabetically they include:

Banana with fruit caramelized in the oven with brown sugar (one of my faves)

Blueberry gelato with frozen wild Quebec berries

Chocolate, always dark, mostly as a sorbet, no dairy at all, and occasionally with milk and cream

Espresso, a cup of espresso from my own PicoBarista

Fragola, strawberry with fresh fruit

Frozen vanilla yogurt

Frozen yogurt with honey and almonds

Hazelnut, as recounted in the blog

Mango

Maple walnut with of course pure 100% Canadian maple syrup

Marshmallow, or Campfire, another story coming up

Mint chocolate chip with fresh mint

Persimmon: couldn’t find this anywhere until I explored the Ricardo name and discovered that the Quebec chef also called Ricardo had posted a recipe.

Pistachio with Sicilian pistachio cream or more basic domestic varieties

Raspberry sorbet

Skorbar, this toffee and milk chocolate bar is my partner’s fave; her friend ships her a box of them every October on her birthday and we end up with a surplus. Challenged to make Skor gelato, I put in at least three whole bars thinking it might be overkill. I didn’t want it to be like Dairy Queen’s Blizzard, chock full of Skor bits? (We happen to be big DQ fans). Well apparently that’s the way she wanted it and my first venture, as much as I liked it, was declared a failure. ‘Try try again. ‘

Straciatella

Vanilla, must be done with fresh vanilla pods. A good source is Spiceland or amazon.

New flavours tried since last post:

Halvah (see Ricardo’s new blog); an enhanced tahini gelato with actual chunks of halvah and pistachios.

A new Skor version: with an espresso gelato base.

Raspberry: with fresh berries

Blueberry with frozen Quebec wild blueberries.

Banana with very ripe fruit and walnuts and chocolate chips.

More to come!