I always get excited at the start of every season because of the different ingredients that become available. It’s not that you get sick of the ones you’ve been using but it’s sometimes easy to
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forget about some ingredients until the seasons change and they’re suddenly back again. It’s exciting. But I get extra excited when summer arrives, not just because warm weather, summer nights and gelato go so well together but also because of the amazing variety of ingredients you get to work with.
Summer to me has always been about fruit. Both my mother and father are great cooks and love to entertain and so summer reminds me of the dinners we would have in our backyard that would include lots of fresh fruit: mangoes, strawberries, rockmelon,
DECEMBER 2017
pineapple, watermelon, plums, peaches, passionfruit and cherries. These are some of the flavours I return to when I think about making gelato and sorbet in summer. It was summer when I learned about how important it is to use really good-quality fresh fruit when you’re making gelato. I was enrolled at the Carpigiani Gelato University and it was July, summer in Bologna, and really, really hot. It was also the time of year when some of the best-quality fruit is available. In Italy, the quality of fruit is like a different standard altogether. When you eat a peach in Bologna in summer it’s like you’ve never really eaten a peach before. The intensity of the flavour, the juiciness.