Sweet Mid-Week Escape

And they’re off! Yes, once again, Wellington On A Plate season is upon us – delayed by a couple of months this year due to the covids. The format is as it was last year, with two weeks of WOAP menus in the first half of the month and two weeks of burgers in the second half. There are also special events running throughout, and it was to one of these that we went at lunchtime.

Carello Del Gelato have been providing gelato to Wellington’s Oriental Parade for a number of years, and we went along to a demonstration of gelato making. The ticket said “go to Coromandel St, Newtown” which was a bit odd, but I figured that’s where the manufactory process took place. Well, that used to be true, and there’s even still half of a sign there, but they abandoned that some time ago for better premises elsewhere. Then my phone rang. “Hi, this is Kat from Carello Del Gelato, it looks like the ticketing people have sent you to the wrong place!” Yes, they’d only just discovered this error so were busy phoning everyone to get them to come to the right place, i.e. their shop on Wellington’s waterfront. We hopped back in the car and through some deft manoeuvring through Newtown, made it to Oriental Parade a mere 15 minutes late. They hadn’t started the demo as they were still waiting for one other group to arrive.

Phew! What a palaver! Anyway, we were now ready to go through the gelato-making process with Nathan, the proprietor. First up, we made chocolate gelato, with milk, cream (mostly milk though), Dutch cocoa, chocolate chips, sugar and dextrose. The milk and cream were heated, and mixed with the other ingredients before being poured into the churner, which cools the mix to -8°C whilst aerating it so it doesn’t set into a solid block. We tasted the mixture beforehand, and found it to be quite sweet and chocolatey. Nathan assured us it would taste less so once frozen as you can’t taste so much when it’s cold. He invited us to name our individual pots so we could identify them later to take home, and stuck labels on our pots. I called mine Chocky McChockface, obviously.

Mixing the mixture

The complex process of pouring

Churning in action

Once it had churned to Nathan’s satisfaction (holding its shape and not having a shiny appearance) we tried the fresh gelato before consigning it to pots in the freezer.

Next up was strawberry sorbet. Made with frozen fresh strawberries which had been defrosted, and again, sugar and dextrose, a bit of fibre to give it some body, and a couple of other ingredients (maltodextrin was one) for technical reasons – stabiliser or some such. Again, this was poured into the churner – which works a lot faster than my freezer-cooled home ice cream maker, largely because it’s running an industrial refrigeration unit which needs to be water-cooled to stop it from overheating.

Once it had reached the correct consistency, we tried it, and again potted some (my batch was called Storbreez). We then had a bit of a chat about making and other flavours, giving the sorbet a little time to set in the freezer. The end product is much creamier than you might expect – people say it’s nothing like a sorbet that they’ve had before. Nathan contends that what they’ve had before is inferior, icy products that aren’t a true sorbet like he produces.

 

Strawberry  sorbet churning

Nathan pours a batch

At the end of the demo we had a quick look in the shop to see what other flavours they’re currently producing. As well as “normal” flavours (fruit, chocolate etc.) they have a charcoal sorbet (activated charcoal, coconut water), and a new flavour of cucumber, mint and lime, which I sampled. My previous attempts at cucumber sorbet have not been a resounding success so I’ll try again, and maybe add some dextrose instead of sugar, and lime juice to try to de-sweeten it. We finally grabbed our tubs (two each) and drove home to get them in the freezer. Looks like we’ll be having gelato and sorbet for pudding for the foreseeable future.