Photo by Dwight Eschliman for The New York Times
Right about now, smack in sweltering late-July, I don’t so much want to eat ice cream as wear it, bathe in it, BE it. But I also want to eat it, lots of it—hence the five pints currently jammed into my freezer. And just in time, along comes my friend Anna Sussman’s new blog, the ice-cream-lust-inducing, fearlessly titled Lick Me Everywhere.
The blog just launched this week, but I’ve already learned three new things:
1) Must try yakult, a bottled yogurty frozen thing that’s ubiquitous in Japan, China, Brazil, and elsewhere, but so far I haven’t come across it in NYC. Now, naturally, I’m going on a hunt.
2) Candy Kitchen in Bridgehampton: Meh.
3) There’s such a thing as tabbouleh sorbet. Not surprising, perhaps, since there’s now an everything flavor of everything. Tabbouleh sorbet, amazingly, isn’t served at San Francisco’s Humphry Slocombe, and it may actually be the only flavor they don’t have. Yet. Find it instead in the Ethnic Paris Cookbook — if you must.
The blog’s author, Anna Sussman, just moved back to NYC after living for a while in Beirut, where I’ll be headed myself at the end of August. One of the first things I’ll be eating as soon as I land in Beirut: Lebanese ice cream, unusual and fabulous and bewitching thanks to its stretchy texture, which comes from sahlab, i.e. ground orchid root. I always had a crush on that wild elastic ice cream when my family lived in Beirut; then when we moved to the States (I was in fourth grade), suddenly there was no more of it in my life. Until now…
In NYC, Ilili is doing a fantastic homemade version of Lebanese ice cream, in chocolate, pistachio, apricot, and milk (yes, milk) flavors. Suddenly I’m daydreaming about grabbing a seat at the bar, a couple of scoops, a shot of Turkish coffee… then a luscious summer siesta. See ya.