25. Listen to reason
Milk and sugar and oh so good. There’s ice cream…and then there’s gelato, lower in fat and air and with an incomparable creamy richness.
According to Ada, gelato is “an authentic Italian glory.” Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, a Sicilian, is believed to be the originator of this semi-frozen delight.
Paul and I are reading through the instructions for Bomba di Creama al Café. (Coffee cream bomba). It’s one of several recipes under the “gelato” heading. Paul is a devotee of both coffee and ice cream; we’ve no idea what this desert is, but its title wins us over.
Ingredients:
2 egg yolks
50 grams sugar
1 teaspoon (un cucchiaino) fecola di patate
Paul: “Fecola di patate…? Never heard of it.” Me: “Potato starch, I’d guess.” It’s the literal translation.
half a glass [cup?] of milk
small [espresso sized?] cup espresso (café forte)
1 tablespoon (un cucchiaio) Curaçao liquor
The next ingredient is chantilly. Paul: “Again, never heard of it. Sounds French.… Another liquor? ½ liter!”
1/2 liter chantilly
Paul, moving on to the next ingredient: “I think this is a typo: vainiglina. She probably means vaniglina. But I don’t even know what that is.” Me: “Vanilla extract.” Paul: “Is that it?” Me: “Probably. What else?”
Paul looks it up and has trouble finding it. Even with the typo corrected, the dictionary says it is archaic. The more modern version leaves out the g: vanillina.
vanilla extract
Instructions:
In una casseruolina place the 2 eggs yolks, the powdered sugar [she didn’t mention ‘powdered’ earlier], and the potato starch.
Paul: “Una casseruolina? A pan, a pot?” Me: “I don’t know… maybe it’s something like what the kids just gave us: an enamel coated cast iron pot.” We look it up. A casseruolina—small casseruola—is, remarkably, exactly that.
Dissolve everything with the milk and and the small cup of espresso with no sugar in it (non zuccherato)…. [Her clarity here is justified: most Italians add a spoon of sugar to their espresso.]
Between the cup of coffee and the milk there must be—all in (complessivamente)—a fifth of a liter of liquid (un quinto di litro liquido). .
In a glass that holds more or less (su per giù, literally ‘up for down', or more colloquially ‘give or take’: a fun alternative to più o meno) a fifth of a liter, first put in the cup of coffee and then the milk.
Me: “A little confusing.” Paul: “So first she’s all precise about it and then it’s more or less…? “ [Laughs.]
Blend well the eggs and the sugar, and place on ‘the fire,’ always mixing. Let the cream thicken, but do not let it boil.
Pour the cream mixture into a little container, and add to it a good spoonful of Curaçao or orange liquor. Mix and leave to cool.
Put on the ice una stampa di spumone …
Paul: “A spumone form?”
…with a capacity of approx. ¾ of a liter. When the form is cold, transfer into it, by the spoonful, approximately ½ the chantilly in which you’ve placed just a touch (una puntina) of the vanilla extract.
Very carefully, coat the entire inside of the form to the height of a good finger.
Me: “A whole finger or a fingertip? And what’s chantilly? It must be semi-solid to be able to coat the form. Maybe something like mascarpone…?” Paul looks up chantilly. “It’s whipped cream! Whipped cream is also called chantilly cream, in English, too. Who knew?”
Mix the remaining chantilly with the coffee cream…
Paul: “Did we make the coffee cream somewhere already?” Me: “We did. It was the first half of the recipe….”
…which will have to be well chilled.
Me: “Were there freezers back then….?”
And with this mixture, completely fill the empty space in the form to the brim. Put a disc of white paper to cover the opening of the form.
Paul: “A disc?” Me: “Well, assuming the form is round…”
And then put the cover on it.
Me: “Cover? What cover?”
Stuccate the closure with a thin rope of butter.
Paul: “The verb stuccare comes from stucco: meaning to apply like stucco.” We look at each other. Huh?
Submerge the form in a large bucket of crushed ice and salt, and let it freeze for thee hours, taking care that the form is completely covered with salted ice.
Me: “Who, tell me who, is going to suffer to make this…?” Paul: “It’ll be fun!”
After three hours, remove the form from the ice, and rinse carefully. Take away the butter rope…
Paul: “This butter rope: I’m assuming it’s to keep the cream in and the salted water out?”
…and wipe a hot wet rag around the form, leaving it there a short amount of time—just enough to let the form feel a bit of heat.
Me: “…Which allows the gelato to easily slip from the form. Makes sense.” Paul shakes his head.
Take off the cover and the paper. Remove the frozen cream from the form.
*
Paul and I agree: in this recipe Ada was unfortunately prolific in her assumptions. I mean, really, what even is a bomba? Since Il Talismano includes no recipe photos, we look online to find something similar, mostly to get an idea of how the finished, frozen dessert should look. The variety of confections with bomba in the title is astonishing. We find a couple lavish dome-shaped ice cream delights and drool. But can we acquire the proper stampa? Is it a form… or a mold? Can it be bought on Amazon.it? Stampa, Paul tells me, also means the press. And sure enough, a search of both stampa and bomba yields news articles about bombs. After ten minutes we give up, somewhat exhausted. I decide to ask an old friend in Milan what shape/form/mold she might use to prepare this ice cream bomb. It’s the only reasonable way forward. If we’re lucky, she might even send us one.
*
IN 1982, THE SUMMER BEFORE MY COLLEGE GRADUATION, I entered the world of computer programming. It was a good (lucky) year: the PC had just been born and the field was wide open.
Twenty years later I took my love of logic and coding to kids.
When a student of mine encountered a logic bug, our discussion usually went something like this:
Me: So, okay, what’s going on here?
He (nearly all my programmer wannabes then were boys): Nothing. It just gets stuck.
Me: Is it getting stuck, or is it spinning in confusion? Is it doing nothing at all, or is it paralyzed by doing too much?
He: [a pause] Ummm. Too much.
Me: Okay. So you’ve stepped through your instructions. That’s good. Which is the last one that works?
[He points]
Me: So it’s the next communication that’s making him ballistic. What are you asking him to do?
He: I want him to make all the yellow birds red.
Me: I see you’ve got him looking for the color yellow. What if he can’t find it?
He: Then he’s got do the next thing. I mean if there’s no yellow bird, there’s nothing to turn red. Duh-uh.
Me: You know, you’re really smart. Maybe he’s not following you. Will you repeat what you just now said?
[Silence.]
He: What…. that if he can’t find yellow birds … he’s got to move on?
Me: Hmmm. Sounds like you might have something there.
He: [ding ding ding. A brilliant smile. Then this addition:]
IF number-of-yellow-birds > 0
THEN make-yellow-red
OTHERWISE;
Maybe you have to have written a couple programs to realize this…but fixing a logic bug can bring unheard of joy. It’s a wondrous moment that arrives with that aha yes of course!, the insurmountable hurdle suddenly overcome, the forward motion freed to continue.
Programming is inspiration paired with reason, the best puzzle game there is. It’s also the ultimate lesson in communication—in learning to be precise with our words (or instructions), realizing that often our deeper knowledge and assumptions are unknown to the other. Sometimes it’s vital to step back, rethink, and consider What more might it/she/he need to know?
