Art and The Ice Cream

The mind can be a trickster. For example:
"Hello, James".
"Darling!" (who are you?).
"What are you doing in Verona?"
"Oh, I’m working at the Opera" (It’s that woman from London).
"We haven’t seen each other since Berlin".
"That’s right" (Berlin?).

I got there in the end but the fact was; instead of remembering this friend from two years previously when we had worked and partied together for a full 3 months, I had consigned her to a place 20 years before when we stood at other ends of a dance studio.

Call me demented but our German Fun (that’s not a synonym/antonym) had coincided with my rotten relationship (one time only) and back- ache (one life only). I’d blocked out the entire period.

I don’t mind living above misery but it’s not coming in for tea.

So. Talking of memory dodging, something, somewhere, reminds that I’m meant to be an Arts correspondent. Last week’s piece ventured into Pop Up Shops and Beauty Rooms and today, well, it really is very hot outside so the bottom line is that I’ll be talking about buying an Ice Cream and am wondering if this falls within the perimeters of my job description.

I’m on the bus to get one from Kitty Travers of La Grotta Ices. She’s hit international news for being spotlighted as a global Chef to watch from a gaggle of celebrity cooks. In the whacky world of Kitchens and Spin-Offs this looks like a sensible choice. Specializing seems to play unwanted baby in our multiple-income lives and I am all for meeting someone who can do something that no body else can do. 

The secret's in reduction

Into separating my foods, I’d welcome a simple list of cooks: Best Beef Chef and Best Carrot Restaurant. Partial to a good show I could enjoy a night out where Florence Jones is “The Best Dressed Crab” (you’ll never take the side-walk again). I’d queue up to see Sidney Smith in hot water for throwing us another pot-boiler with “The New Potato” and applaud J.R. Whiting for grabbing us with “The Ladies Fingers”.

If Travers has been included in a world book of Superstar Chefs then I’m assuming she’s nailed the Ice Cream slot. 
I open up my mac (funny how that would have been a dirty thing to do on London Transport only ten years ago). A quickie on Wiki: Ice- Cream…. hurrah!

Warhol painted a pretty triple cone and I’d like it even more if it was splodged on the nose of his Mao portrait especially as ice cream, like most of the stuff that’s holding us together, seems to have been made in China. Talking of horrors, a scary movie,  “The Ice Cream Man” was released within our times.

Things are looking arty. Write, James, write!

Happy to linger on links, we speed through town. Rapid eye movement channels the screen for appropriate info on The Ice Cream. My memory’s just gone from blocked to photographic and I can save you an Internet search. Sifting and chiseling extracts from James Wales’ heroic site provides us with a de Mille-worthy Odyssey on Ice:

Coming soon.

"The Chinese invented sorbets and ice cream. They filled containers with syrup and covered them with a mix of snow and saltpeter for, in the same way as salt raises the boiling-point of water, it lowers the freezing-point to below zero."

From the Song Dynasty (960-1279) exists the poem “Ode to the ice cheese” which boosts my Arts angle but also gets me picturing a little man serenading a shy, monster cheddar hiding out in the hills.

It could be a poignant opening but- who’ll play the cheese?

There’s a saying that Kublai Khan enjoyed ice cream so much that it was kept a royal secret. When Marco Polo came to China, he brought the technique of making ice cream back to Mama who, in a flurry of confusion, gave us the spaghetti ice. 

Persia: 400 BC.  A chilled pudding has just been invented. The ice is mixed with saffron and fruits whilst, along the horizon, they're mastering the construction of yakhchals (giant refrigerators). Wind-catchers will keep this storage space at a frozen temperature well into the summer.

Wind-catchers? Definitely a job for the extras.

Staying East, ice cream was the favorite desert for the Caliphs of Baghdad and by the 10th century it was widespread in the Arab world where milk was now the major ingredient, sweetened with sugar rather than fruits.

I guess us northern Europeans were nibbling an ice-less stick around this time whilst deftly managing to invent death by tooth decay on a sugar-free diet, but I’m inclined to suspect that Da Vinci-like codes existed which could have provided our Middle Ages with a splendid chase to ancient scrolls on strawberry sundaes.

(n.b) Must get Tom Hanks to forfeit his role, engage Dawn French as a ravenous sleuth and put history to rights.

Jump to the Renaissance and suddenly Catherine of Medici isn’t all bad; she’s said to have brought Italian chefs to her marriage and recipes for sorbets made their way to France. Actually, there’s a rumour in the Louvre that the Medici portrait was painted over original parchment of a Scratch ‘n Sniff Banana Split

It’s going to be a long film.

A drum roll heralds the next century as we finally get to England where Charles 1 mirrors Kublai Khan tyranny by also keeping the formula a secret and royal prerogative (though his method was offering the producer a life pension rather than garroting rubber-tongued domestics).

Skipping through the next bit (which reminds me of boring films about settlers who don’t speak), we come to standard progress like Old Mistress Johnson patenting a hand-cranked urn to replace the potted freezer method or Farmer Fussell from Maryland turning surplus cream into mass production, ensuring a cheaper price and increased demand which leads to how we live today.

Caving in for cream.

Arriving at the market, I look for evidence of La Grotta Ices in the crowds.

Taking a leading role in my own life, I’m blinded by the sunny day. Running against a traffic of threatening cornets, I arrive at La Grotta thinking it’s a splendid name. Caves were used for storing ice one thousand words ago.

“What would you like?” asks the vignette form. Adjusting, so as the sun’s behind me, sight is restored and there she is, Kitty Travers, very pretty, presiding over a budding empire that shouldn’t be judged by its cover; a converted Piaggio van.

My low-level stalking finds that Travers has earned her stripes. Some people are less affected than others and there’s probably no time for snobs in kitchens but, in her shoes, I could imagine a “you should see my other car” sticker on the van’s bumper. This other car has baker at Belgravia’s famed ‘Poilane’ as a hand-break, booting it through Italy’s Gelaterias as a navigation system, studying at ‘The Institute of Culinary Education- New York’ as a bonnet and working her way up over four years to be head of puddings at the Michelin starred ‘St John Bread And Wine’ as a gear- shift. A solid vehicle to back up the frivolity one attaches to ice creams.

Looking down at gorgeousness is a mixed affair as it coincides with hearing that Federer’s out of Wimbledon. Nothing for it but to keep going:

“I’ll have a ‘Fig Leaf & Raspberry Granita’ with a ‘Strawberry & Amalfi Lemon Sorbet’ and some ‘Lime on Elderflower Sorbet’ together with the ‘Coriander’ and a separate tub of the ‘Strawberry Blancmange’, please”.

Of course they were already officially divine well before I got here but what I like is that the names of the flavours manage to be both surprising and self-explanatory before the first lick.

Travers rejects the ‘Innovator’ label by stressing that many of her flavours have simply gone out of fashion with modern food trends. By remaining small she can limbo under the commercial bar with her hand-picked blackcurrant leaves and rabbit droppings (just kidding, Kitty, no one would use blackcurrant).

She calls Maltby Street Market “a jewel” where people are up for anything. This makes me wonder about those who don’t munch through new ground.

Generally, people are adventurous (Bergamot went down well in Hampshire) though Travers’ observes that kids will scream if there’s not a pink one on sale. She tells me, in earnest, that this makes her think she’s failed though I’m thinking Bernard Shaw’s assessment “Youth is a wonderful thing. A crime to waste it on the children” could be put to good use.

Returning to facts. Some weirdo’s balk at free samples and a couple of skinflints complain that she’s 50 pence dearer than a Mr. Whippy.

The job’s a game!

I suggest that she must be working in an environment where people are in a good mood simply by having decided to go out for an ice cream. This is my point when I ask if it’s a happy job but her response shows someone in tune with herself. Doing what grabs her rather than awards.

“The produce I use to make the ices is so beautiful, and such a wonder, that dealing with it every day fills me with happiness.  If I were an artist I'd paint pictures of it but as an ice cream maker I turn it into something that, hopefully, illuminates its perfection.”

Authentic.

“You find the fun and snap! The jobs a game” plays recitative to “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down” from Mary Poppins, written by P.L Travers who happens to have been Kitty’s grandma.

Of course she is making ice cream, with a song like that for family grace. Her childhood Sundays were spent diving through pavements and dancing with penguins…okay, I’ll shut up but I guess she’s inherited the gene to delight.

So. What’s the plan? Mary Poppins could slide up banisters. Will Travers be getting a restaurant up and running backwards from the Desserts? She laughs but states that a bar with daily specials, lollys, sundaes and ice cream brioches would suit her fine. She’s opened the windows to her new kitchens and will be in there once the wind changes. The new premises will also enable her to start supplying to restaurants.

Travers is involved in the art world gatherings of Villa Warsaw and Reykjavik where the aim is to be stimulating and interactive with the public without following art market rules (sounds like a good gang). Van hopping to these interesting set- ups, she takes the opportunity to create new ices from the local produce. Poland saw her working with bison grass, poppy seeds, dill, beer and cucumber whilst Iceland will get the launch of a rye bread ice.

I’m licking my lips when she mentions her (virtuoso) number at London’s Tate gallery: “ Rosemary & Pine- Nut Praline” – yum.

I’m sure a few years back she would have been approached with a six figure sum from an undisclosed "art" buyer who would have invited a select crowd to hear half a ton of raspberry ripple melt. It would have been an allegory about denying future pleasure through Global Warming and certainly more preferable to the exhibit of indestructible dirty knickers from that epoch. Such a transaction could have bought her a swanky ice cream parlour so, I’m a bit sad she missed the fool’s- gold fleece.

Nevertheless, ice cream’s a 1.3 billion pound market in the U.K alone and Kitty Travers is the toast of it. There’s no doubt she’ll get her bar.

That she’s happy to remain small and great is admirable but will she be allowed to?

Following through with my imagination disorder, I see the boardroom rats of gastronomy chanting the Voltaire quote “Ice cream is exquisite. A pity it’s not illegal” and forcing her to open an outlet on every street corner.

Hands over face, her head will shake in protest: “But I don’t want to, I can’t, it makes no sense, there aren’t enough peach leaves in the vicinity”.

Those rats will chuckle on their Montecristos: “Peach smeach. We’re expanding and that means you. Keep stirring, sweet, or you’ll never work the stalls again”.

I’m not such a stickler for rules but the few I hold go along the lines of “must not trust garlic haters” or “don’t date people who go cross- eyed when they’re tired”. Now I’m going to add: “always warm to ice makers”. Their ability to brighten lives and merit Art-icles is nothing short of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Kitty Travers and Ice Cream, both firmly lodged in my mind and before I forget, a final note to the editor but I’ll have to make it quick for I’m running out of ink:

Found the world’s only Ice Cream Museum. It’s housed within The London Canal Museum at King’s Cross. Lots of fascinating stuff on the Norwegian Ice Trade, Mrs. A.B. Marshall (a celebrity cook and inventor of the edible cornet) and Signor Carlo Gatti, the first ice cream baron.

Details of the day:

Kitty Travers - La Grotta Ices
www.lagrottaices.com
kitty@lagrottaices.com

The Ice Cream Museum
New Wharf Road. King’s Cross.
London. N1 9RT.
www.canalmuseum.org.uk