Archiv der Kategorie: Alex & Taru

So we went back to town to search for that ice cream shop we've heard good rumors about and indeed it proved to be the best one of all we've tried in this city so far. A Venezuelan owner, schooled in the art of ice cream in Italy, has established this gelateria in the heart of the historic center of Cartagena. The ice cream is made with cream and only natural ingredients (the pistachio and the dark chocolate were absolutely delicious and very rich in taste) and the sorbets are done with fresh fruit and no artificial flavors added. Very nice... go there if you ever find yourself in Cartagena. The coffee was great too says Alex. 

Best days around here are the cloudy ones. It's currently full summertime in South America, which extends from December to March more or less, and it really is incredibly hot. I hear the temperature doesn't change much be it summer or winter, but in the winter it does rain a bit more at least. We've been in Colombia now for almost two months, and it's rained once for like five minutes. 

As it's tremendously important to keep yourself hydrated in this heat (35C/95F) and very high humidity (60-90%), we try to squeeze in as many juice and ice-cream pauses as we can. There's a plethora of fresh and healthy juice bars in town, will show you a few of them later, but so far we've found no ice-cream shop that has stolen our hearts. We had the problem of finding them in the West-Indies too, remember? There are a lot more Ice-cream shops here in Cartagena/Colombia, but still, they all seem to be so and so. 

It's not always a blessing coming from the Mediterranean, you inevitably have to compare with the best there is on the planet on so many different areas. There's still one place to visit though which we've heard some good things about. Would it be possible that we'll finally find the first real ice-cream bar that produces from real cream and milk (or egg!) and natural ingredients rather than yoghurt, water, vegetable oils, skim milk powder or artificial flavors? Will keep you posted on this very important subject...

Sweets and desserts is a weakness of ours. Ice-cream, pastries, cookies, sorbets, buns - whatever that is well made and contains sugar really. Except for perhaps guava cheese or tamarind balls.. Here in Colombia as well as in the rest of South America, dulce de leche (also called Arequipe) is a popular thing to add inside or on top of desserts. You'll find it as an accompaniment to pancakes, inside of buns, cookies or cakes, you can spoon it up from a box in hard version and eat it as it is - or have your waffles floating around in it. In many parts of South America, in Argentina especially, the basic dulce de leche is sold in any supermarket, served as a part of desserts in any restaurant you can find and is loved by almost everyone. It's a part of their culture as much as coffee is.

Dulce de leche which literally means the sweet of milk, is similar to what we would call caramel elsewhere though it's even closer to the French confiture de lait. The basic traditional dulce de leche recipe calls for nothing more than milk sweetened with sugar, but the quality and way of preparing it differs naturally from place to place, kitchen to kitchen. It's the sort of thing that is absolutely divine if done right, but can be a mere dull sugar bomb if made in the simplest way. The real good ones I've tasted in my life consist also of vanilla, a bit of salt, and even cinnamon at times. 

Restaurant Crepes and Waffles gets 2 out of 5 dulce de leche stars from us today. Waffles were good but the caramel offered merely a basic sweetened-condensed-milk-in-the-micro-oven-kind-of-taste. Best in town so far must have been that cake we had the other week at Mila which could reach a 3,5 to be fair. 

If you'll ever try your hands on making your own dulce de leche, I would recommend making it with real whole milk and add your own sugar rather than using canned sweetened condensed milk which so many websites suggests. And don't forget to add a good amount of fresh vanilla seeds, at least that's what I would do. Am going to experiment with my own version and will let you know how that goes.