Smooth, flavorful gelato may be Italy's greatest attraction

LEAFING THROUGH any guidebook to Italy, you'd naturally assume the country's headline attractions must be the stunning centuries-old cathedrals, museums bursting with world-class art, medieval hill towns perched like hats on vine-and-olive-covered hills and almost 5,000 miles of sun-kissed Mediterranean coastline.

But they're not. In fact, they all play a distant second fiddle to the real main draw: the smooth, intensely flavored and dangerously addictive Italian take on ice cream called gelato.

I've never met a single person who went to Italy and didn't come back raving about gelato. Even people who don't normally eat ice cream seem to fall under its spell, and return muttering about the intensity of that pistacchio in Venice, and the depth of that cioccolato in Rome.

I remember how much gelato I ate the first time I went to Italy. What started as an occasional indulgence morphed into a daily necessity; soon I was having afternoon and evening gelatos. Then I realized that if I skipped lunch I could justify another cup or two. Only later did I learn that in Sicily they consider gelato a perfectly legitimate breakfast, at which point I nearly wept to think of all the opportunities I'd squandered on stale hotel-buffet croissants.

To console myself, I swore a kind of oath to gelato. I decided that no matter how much travel, expense and additions to my girth it might require, I would get to the bottom of this willpower-defying ice cream and figure out not only what makes it so good but how I could re-create it in my own kitchen.

Many years and gallons of gelato later, I think I finally have it cracked. The good news is that gelato is not made with any expensive or obscure ingredients, unlike, say, Turkish dondurma ice cream whose texture depends on the illegal-to-export powdered root of a local orchid. While there are some regional differences, artisan gelato across the country is generally composed of ingredients available to home cooks anywhere.

Far more important is its freshness. Unlike our ice cream, gelato is usually served on the day it's made, when both flavor and texture are at their peak. Intensity of flavor is another defining feature, which is partly due to a higher proportion of flavoring, and partly due to gelato's lower fat content, frozen fat coating the taste buds and dulling our perception of flavor.

Here the news gets less rosy. For starters, it's almost impossible to achieve gelato's smooth-yet-dense consistency without an industrial chiller. Home ice-cream makers just take too long to freeze, allowing the buildup of lots of texture-ruining ice crystals. Second, ever noticed how gelato is soft, pliable and scraped rather than scooped? That's because it's held and served at a significantly higher temperature than our ice cream, and as a result melts — and releases its flavors — more quickly on the tongue. Unfortunately, most home freezers can't be set high enough.

I realized there's a reason Italians always go out for their gelato. If I had a decent gelateria in my neighborhood I probably would, too. But since I don't, I found myself faced with a choice: Live without gelato or accept a few compromises in the homemade version. I think you know which one I chose.

The trick to making gelato, I've discovered, is to incorporate as many of the above nuggets of wisdom as possible. By reining in the richness, amping up the flavors, including a thickening or stabilizing agent to improve the texture and serving it slightly warmer, it's possible to come tantalizingly close to the real thing.

The gelato formula I use is one I learned from a friend in Italy, the English cookbook author Liz Franklin. Liz owns a small cooking school in Abruzzo called Il Tratturello, and it was there she taught me this quick and unconventional method using mascarpone cheese and milk. Although Liz uses this formula to make all kinds of gelato, I find it particularly suited to fruit gelatos, because the mascarpone stabilizes the mixture while letting all the nuances of the fruit shine through. Like all good gelato, it has a mind-blowing intensity of flavor, with just enough richness to satisfy.

Try it with cherries, strawberries or your favorite stone fruit. Anything, really, as long as it's at the peak of ripeness. And because gelato is at its best when fresh, plan on eating it within a day or two at most. Think of it less as a time limit and more as a license to eat gelato whenever you feel like it — breakfast included.

Melissa Kronenthal is a freelance food writer and photographer.

Gelato di Frutta

Makes about 1 quart

1 to 1 ½ pounds pitted fruit (e.g. strawberries, blueberries, cherries, apricots, peaches, plums, melon)

½ to 1 cup superfine sugar

Fresh lemon juice, to taste

1 cup mascarpone cheese, stirred briefly to loosen

1 cup whole milk

1. Wash and peel the fruit if necessary, and cut into 1-inch pieces. Combine them in a large, nonreactive bowl with ½ cup sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice and let macerate at room temperature for at least an hour.

2. In a food processor combine the fruit and their liquid with the mascarpone and milk and process until smooth. Adjust the sugar and lemon as needed, keeping in mind that sweetness is dampened slightly by freezing.

3. Process the mixture in your ice-cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions. Serve immediately, or transfer to a covered container and place in the freezer for a couple of hours. Once it has frozen solid, soften for 20 minutes in the refrigerator before eating.

Note: For a nonfruit gelato, use this formula: 1 cup each mascarpone and milk to ½ cup sugar, and add flavorings such as melted chocolate, ground toasted nuts, vanilla or spices to taste.