I scream, you scream...
We all scream for lactaid, seriously our tummies hurt
That’s right, we’re talking ice cream this week. Abigail spoke about how hard it is to choose one favorite thing in her newsletter & it reminded me of my own personal Sophie’s choice: choosing a favorite ice cream.
How can one choose a favorite ice cream? Are we talking hard ice cream? Soft serve? Fruity flavors or chocolatey? Ice cream with chunks mixed in or toppings? Am I eating the ice cream before dinner or after or as a meal on its own? There is not one perfect ice cream for all occasions, so I want to share some of my favorite ice creams around NYC that you can work into your dessert rotation. I’m switching up the newsletter format already!
Me: Why does my tummy always hurt?
Also me: Writes an entire newsletter about favorite ice cream places in NY
1. An incomplete list of the best ice cream in NYC 🍦
First, let’s pour one out for Ample Hills. They opened shortly after I moved to Brooklyn & immediately became a favorite. Every year I attended their “sellout day” in which the price of a scoop would drop every time they ran out of a flavor, a nod to when they sold out of ice cream the first day they opened. One year I got there late & only cotton candy was left - it was such a happy accident because that flavor ended up being really delicious & I don’t think I’d have tried it otherwise!
The previous owners of Ample Hills have since opened a new shop in Crown Heights - The Social. The shop has a lot of Ample’s old flavors, but renamed, & dare I say, improved! Their banana pudding flavor is phenomenal & they have a cotton candy with melted mini marshmallows inside! They also make their own donuts & they are so much more delicious than they have any business being. Do yourself a favor and get a donut sundae. The ice cream here is definitely sweet, which is optimal for desert vibes.
Soft Swerve has some of the creamiest thiccccest soft serve around & their shop features Asian flavors. Some excellent flavor combos I enjoy: matcha soft serve with freeze dried strawberry or oreo, black sesame with mochi, ube with fruity pebbles or marshmallows. I also feel obligated to tell you that they’re opening a new shop this Friday (5/12) in Chinatown & they’ll be offering BOGO cones all day. I’ll see you there.
Chinatown Ice Cream Factory is a classic & by now you can probably tell what kind of flavors I veer towards. They have two flavors that you absolutely need to try: pandan if you want something light & refreshing or zen butter if you want a salty punch of flavor to the mouth. Zen butter is unique to this shop & is a combination of black sesame & peanut butter. Pandan is a southeast asian plant that to me tastes like a combination of vanilla, coconut, & very light mint.
If you want a mothafuckin sundae, Brooklyn Farmacy is it. I would like to bathe in their house made peanut butter, but I’ll settle for enjoying their salty sweet Mr Potato Head sundae instead. Although their sundaes are big enough to share, Lorenzo often makes us each get our own & I’m not mad at him for it.
Finally, when I simply cannot decide what I want, Morgenstern’s is there for me. They regularly have 50+ flavors & I haven’t had a bad one yet. They had a vegan passionfruit sticky rice that was not a sorbet & was the most delicious vegan ice cream I’ve had to date. I am very excited to try their new vegan soft serve spot Bananas.
Honorable mentions go out to Eddie’s Sweet Shop (liked by Aliyah & Abigail - I need to try!), Emack & Bolio (liked by Kelly - I need a return trip!), Gentile Gelateria (my new favorite gelato that I will not stop telling you about), Sundaes & Cones (a favorite of mine & Jasmin), & Lady Moo Moo for the best earl grey lavender.
2. Learning 🧠
Did you know that ice cream’s lil sis, frozen custard, was invented right here in Brooklyn at Coney Island?
In 1919, brothers Archie & Elton Kohr sought to expand their home delivery business - they were currently bringing milk & ice cream door to door in Delaware. Their uncle gifted them a Meisenhelter Ice Cream Freezer, which created soft serve ice cream. However, the folks in their home state of Delaware were not fans of the soft serve, so the brothers went to the land of opportunity - Brooklyn!
Visitors to Coney Island loved their soft serve, but it was melting too quickly in the NY heat. So the brothers added more egg to their recipe to help the frozen treat stay cooler longer & frozen custard was born! After finding success in Brooklyn, the brothers took their show on the road & opened frozen custard stands in Atlantic City & Seaside Heights. Eventually, the recipe was showcased at the 1933 World’s Fair and became beloved by folks in the Midwest, with Milwaukee becoming the “Unofficial Frozen Custard Capital of the World.”
While there isn’t an original Kohr custard shop in Coney Island anymore, frozen custard is still abundant on the boardwalk. There used to be a Rita’s right off the subway that I’d go to a lot when I lived in Gravesend, but now Coney Cones is your best bet for some frozen custard!
3. Cooking 🧑🍳
Do you remember long long ago when I waxed poetic about the amazing dinner party I attended & raved about the brothy beans I ate? Well, I reached out to the That Dinner Thing organizers & they were kind enough to share their recipe with me 🥹 Their recipe was adapted from an original by @cafehailee & I cannot wait to make it.
The principle here is to essentially build a pesto with kale as a heartier green, cook some beans in aromatics, and then finish the beans with the pesto. I finish the beans with butter to keep it vegetarian and add some richness (to an already rich dish!) but there’s versatility here. Alternatively, thinning out the sauce in step 9 would yield a pretty cool vegetarian pasta sauce. I used canned beans because of the scale of trying to reach 40 servings, but dried beans would also work well, step 4 would just need to be around an hour and a half.
2 cans cannellini or any large, creamy bean (alternatively, 28 oz dried soaked)
2 shallots, halved lengthwise
1 garlic head, halved
5 thyme branches
Salt
9 oz kale, chopped roughly into bite sized pieces, stems included
1 garlic clove, smashed
2 tbsp pistachio, unroasted
½ cup pecorino romano
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup water from the bean pot (see step 4)
1 tsp Chili powder
Salt and pepper
Lemon zest
Lemon juice
Pecorino romano for serving
Good olive oil
In a large stock pot, bring water to boil, salt
In a separate large stockpot, add a thin layer of oil on medium heat, place shallots & garlic head face down, cook undisturbed until deeply brown, around 10 minutes
Tie 5 thyme leaves together with twine, set aside
In the stockpot with shallot & garlic, add salt, drained beans, thyme bundle, & add water to top beans. Optionally, include some chili powder in this step. Let simmer for 20 minutes if using canned beans, one hour for soaked dried beans. This is entirely a matter of texture, so be sure to check beans.
Blanch greens for 30 seconds to a minute or until a dark green color, remove greens & immediately place into ice bath to stop cooking.
Remove shallot, garlic & thyme from bean water, making sure to skim for any aromatic skins (a few remaining thyme leaves are fine)
Place blanched kale, smashed garlic clove, pistachio, salt, pepper, pecorino romano, olive oil, chili powder, & ¼ cup of water from the bean pot into a blender. Blend until smooth. Season with salt & pepper to taste.
Drain beans into colander, set aside. Rinse and wipe down the stockpot.
In the now empty stockpot (dish conservation!) melt 1 tbsp of butter until foamy, add pesto & cook on low for 3-5 minutes, until warmed through & flavors mingle
Remove from heat, add the zest & juice of a lemon, season to taste
Serve alongside fresh pecorino romano & high quality olive oil, serve alongside some sort of crusty bread, preferable toasted.
Now speaking of bread….I have another recipe to share with you! Abigail from This Needs Hot Sauce was kind enough to share her family’s challah recipe. I baked it for the first time last Friday & was surprised at how easy & delicious it was! May is Jewish American Heritage Month & I hope this challah made my ancestors proud. If you make the challah & brothy beans, let me know how they come out.
4. What’s Good 😎
Bushwick Daily shared two great articles this week.
One details a chess player who frequents the Nook coffee shop. All I know about chess I learned from watching Queen’s Gambit, but I really enjoyed how the author created a narrative around the chess moves & brought us into their strategy.
The second talks about the skate track that popped up at Maria Hernandez Park after the recent renovations. I thought it was part of the renovations but apparently no one really knows how it got there! It may have sat unused in Coney Island for a bit before it made its way to Bushwick.
If you celebrate Mothers’ Day (& even if you don’t), you should get this flan from Kora. Last year I bought an entire flan just to eat by myself (I let Lorenzo share) & it was an excellent decision. It was the smoothest silkiest flan I’d ever eaten.
Maya Congee Cafe is having a congee + kuih pop-up this Saturday! I love congee & have been developing an appreciation for all manner of soups in my old age (especially dessert soups, don’t get me started). Kuih is sort of a general term, but they’re usually little glutinous rice flour blobs of varying colors & flavors & they’re delicious.
Lactaid, please sponsor me
Gonna throw my wedding ring at Drew when he walks through the door tonight and scream, "IF YOU REALLY LOVED ME, YOU WOULD'VE TAKEN ME FOR A DONUT SUNDAE BY NOW!!!" Also, gonna def fuck with those beanssss.