Further to my Report of  "Italian Ice Memories", I came across the following article from the Gannett Newspaper chain. Yes, I realize that Gannett services mostly small towns, and that although they are "solid" folk, tend to be rather "provincial".

So that, or their pro American fervor, in anticipation of July 4th may account for their hilarious comparison of an American "Good Humor man" with an Italian "Gelateria".

Following the Gannett "homey" article are excerpts from Epicirious.com re Gelato, Granita, and Sorbetto.

By Robin Kline
The Marion (OH) Star
Gannett News Service
Wednesday, June 23, 2004

An all-American July Fourth feast means watermelon, hot dogs, deviled eggs, burgers and lemonade.

But perhaps nothing, other than barbecue, is as all-American as ice cream. Americans know ice cream and do ice cream better than any other culture.
(Italian gelato? Fuhggedaboutit.)

We eat more ice cream per capita than any other country.

At last count, we each gobbled down a modest 6 gallons of ice cream every year.

Ice cream always has been more than dessert. It represents a trail of sweet memories for most Americans.

In the nation's pastoral yesteryear, generations got their ice cream on a stick from the Good Humor man.

They listened for his ringing bells, invariably heard during dinnertime. Bolting from the table, with permission and a quarter from Dad, they could occasionally indulge in a frozen treat.

Ice cream was also a family production -- Mom prepared vanilla custard for the ice cream freezer.

Dad toted home a 50-pound block of ice wrapped in canvas in the trunk of the car, and meticulously shaved it on the garage floor.

Kids impatiently waited for their turn to work the crank.

When Dad, the ice cream master, declared the ice cream "done," everyone helped clean the dasher, with spoons scraping up the sweet treat.

Ice cream was the bait that drew them into the corner drugstore, which usually was home to a soda fountain, for an ice cream cone, soda or sundae.

Now we eat ice cream all year, but it remains a symbol of summer. Although consumers might not crank their own, or venture out on a hot summer evening to the drive-in, there's plenty of good eating at home when you offer ice cream sundaes for dessert.

Pick your favorite "scream" from the freezer case. Choose a local brand made near your hometown or one of the national brands -- Edy's, Ben & Jerry's, Haagen-Dazs.
Launch festival of sundaes on July Fourth weekend - marionstar.com
http://www.marionstar.com/news/stories/20040623/localnews/705473.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From Epicurious: GELATO

Less fluffy than ice cream, gelato has a softer, sexier consistency, and its flavors are bolder.

Many fancy restaurants in Italy serve gelato after meals, but it is traditionally made in a gelateria and sold as a between-meal snack. Decent gelato can be had easily in Italy, but it's difficult to find the really great stuff. What are the tip-offs that you're headed for a treat?

There will be a sign saying "Produzione propria," which means that the gelato is made on the premises, but that alone doesn't guarantee quality ingredients. Most sellers mix their gelati from prepared bases. Gelato masters make each flavor separately, calculating differences in sweetness or fat and avoiding artificial stabilizers. This artisanally made gelato is always stored in stainless-steel tubs — never in plastic.

Brightly colored gelato is a poor sign, usually denoting prepared mixes. I always check the color of the pistachio gelato: a bright green color is attained from artificial food coloring; real pistachio gelato is a pale, greyish green. Fruit flavors should, ideally, reflect the season.

Then taste carefully. Gelato mavens consider crema (custard) the benchmark flavor by which to judge the quality of a gelateria. But with an ice-cream machine you can make this luxurious treat at home and set your own standard.

Remember: Gelato always tastes best when freshly made. The freezer is not an archive.

EPICURIOUS: THE WORLD'S GREATEST RECIPE COLLECTION
http://eat.epicurious.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GELATO:

It's impossible to imagine the Italian summer without gelato, oral air-conditioning, the only food that Italians will eat on the street. You can spot a great, artisanal, gelateria  by the crowd of contented locals digging little, spatulate, plastic spoons into paper cups full of this lightly frozen treat.

The term gelato is now often used in Italy for any ice cream or water ice, although technically only those that are dairy based qualify. Actually, in Italy today we find three distinct types of true gelato: Sicilian (made with milk, but no egg yolks); Tuscan (from a milk-based custard) and Northern (from a cream-based custard). Italians hotly dispute which variety qualifies as the original.

Summer heat is fierce in the south of Italy, and it makes sense (both digestive and hygienic) that the Sicilians developed a formula that is lean, thickening the milk with corn or wheat starch, not yolks. Proponents of the Sicilian school of gelato-making argue that freezing sweetened, flavored milk was a natural progression from freezing fruit juice or almond milk (water turned milky by minced almonds) to make sorbetto , which probably first appeared in the south. So they claim gelato's invention for Sicily.

In Tuscany, gelato-lovers revere Bernardo Buontalenti as the dessert's creator. By 1660 this Florentine architect had invented a way to freeze a mixture of churned, sweetened milk and egg yolks, and Tuscan gelataii  (gelato makers) claim they still stick to his basic formula. Their native son is even honored with a namesake flavor: Buontalenti — rich, eggy and suffused with a secret ingredient (which is probably a delicate, fragrant Malvasia wine).

The northern school of gelato-making claims no historical precedence. But if not its originators, I think northerners may be gelato's perfecters. Cows that graze alpine meadows provide delicious cream for the richest, most elegant of Italian gelati...They use first-rate raw materials and flavor their limited, but exquisite, selection with such ingredients as superior Piedmont hazelnuts, real pistachio nuts (giving a grayish color — no Day-Glo green here), strictly seasonal fruit, fine liquors, and wild honey from Sardinia (this last for the signature San Crispino flavor). No cones are allowed, because they contain artificial flavors and colors.

Anywhere that you find a gelateria , you might try what my favorite Florentine vendor calls the "gelato cure." Recently, when my husband had a wisdom tooth extracted, I called to order a treat, and the purveyor responded with this prescription: Begin with a lemon granita to "disinfect the mouth" and follow with whichever flavor of gelato the patient desires. There's a restorative I'd recommend to anyone.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GRANITA:

Ancient Greeks and Romans in Sicily chilled their wine and mixed their fruit with snow from Mt. Etna. And Arabs, ruling for 200 years of torrid Sicilian summers, refreshed themselves with sharbat , a snow-cooled blend of sweetened fruit juice and water. Stories abound about who brought the art of making frozen desserts to Italy. Although the agent may have been Nero or Marco Polo, I prefer the legend that it was some distracted Sicilian cook who overiced the sharbat and, making the best of his mistake, became Italy's first granita-maker.

Granita is a mixture of ice, flavoring and sugar. For centuries, nobles in Naples and Sicily marketed snow that was collected from the mountains, compacted into large blocks, wrapped in straw and stored in special caves (called neviere , from the word neve  — snow) on drained, stone shelves. Blocks of the snow were transported to the city, sold by nevari  — snow vendors — and used to chill drinks and prepare frozen desserts. With the advent of refrigeration, the nevaro  profession disappeared.

The granita is served neat in stubby, stemmed glasses. Only the coffee flavor comes topped with whipped cream, but it's better without, because the only cream on Salina is "long-life," not fresh. Varieties are strictly seasonal and contain the finest fruit Alfredo can buy. Almond, peach, watermelon, strawberry, kiwi, lemon, fig and mulberry are among the more memorable flavors, made entirely with fruit, water and sugar.

An ideal Italian summertime indulgence is sorbetto — a water-based, no cholesterol, fruit-flavored dessert ice, which has in fact been around longer than gelato, Italy's rich ice cream.

Although Sicilians probably made the first sorbetto (a descendent of their slushy granita, but with a smoother, firmer texture), northern Italians have been savouring it since at least the sixteenth century. Florentine Catherine de Medici reportedly introduced fruit-flavored ices (along with vegetables such as broccoli, artichokes and haricot beans) to the French court around 1533. Later, about 1660, the Sicilian Procopio de Cotelli went to France, opened a café (it still exists — the Café Procope), and offered less courtly Parisians the treat that most people now call "sorbet."

It's a familiar story: whether génoise, soupe à l'oignon or sorbet, Italians first created it, and the French took credit!

Sixteenth-century Italian medical texts wondered about the gastric implications of consuming very cold foods, and many Italians remain particularly skeptical about ice, believing it disturbs the natural heat of the stomach. Judging by the abundance of sorbetti and gelati in Italy today, however, such concerns can be overlooked, given the right temptation...