Monday, April 5, 2010

Nice spice!


If Indian food is defined by the heady flavours of spices, then why should the all-time favourite ice cream be left out? That's the idea behind these spice ice creams that Puneites can now treat themselves to. From nutmeg, black pepper to cardamom and cloves, there are many different ice cream flavours on offer at the recently launched Zaika Spice Cream on FC Road.

"Traditionally, ice creams are made using fruits, vanilla or chocolate. The Indian spices are usually not used to make ice creams," says owner Siddharth Shirole. The parlour has 16 different types of plain spice ice creams and spice and fruit combination ice creams such as, black pepper, chakriphool, cinnamon, nutmeg-coconut, strawberry-cinnamon, clove-cinnamon-honey and apple-cinnamon.

Such different flavours of ice creams do invoke a sense of curiosity in people. Vikram Karve, food blogger says that Pune being a city of foodies, people do love to try innovative flavours. Talking about such unconventional ice cream flavours, Karve says, "I like the green chilly ice cream at Bachelorr's near Girgaum Chowpatty in Mumbai." He adds that flavours such as paan-ice cream in Kolkata and ginger lemon ice cream in Mumbai have gained tremendous popularity.

"The colour of such unconventional ice creams needs to be appealing. Also, care should be taken that there isn't an overdose of the flavour or it may be too much for people to handle," says Karve. Such unconventional flavours do not last for long, but if they appeal to the people, they may last longer. "If such ice creams are priced at a low rate, people will not hesitate and try them out," says Karve.

One can make such innovative ice creams at home too by altering some ingredients. For example, to make honey ice cream with cloves and cinnamon, one needs to infuse a small amount of clove and cinnamon powder in the milk for an hour. This milk can then be used to prepare honey ice cream, which will ensure a hint of these spices in the final product.

The next time you are in a mood to experiment, try these flavours to add spice to your life, literally.

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