Chimney Sweep

The Finest Espresso Break Is an Affogato

Affogato means “drowned” in Italian, and you can drown almost any ice cream. Fior di latte and crema are the most popular in Italy, but vanilla and chocolate are excellent too. Dulce de leche would be wonderful, with its caramelized milkiness, as well as the bitterness of cherry amaretto. Pistachio is a welcome break from the rolling freeway of the routine. Pisticci, a trattoria in Morningside Heights in Manhattan, drowns a tartufo – a bomb made of vanilla and chocolate ice cream with a maraschino cherry in the middle, all surrounded by a hard chocolate shell – in espresso. The chef, Edmundo Garzón, told me that he serves 50 to 60 of them a week. “The secret is the coffee,” he said. “Espresso coffee. Very fresh, one shot. Double shot is too strong. Good coffee.”

But you don’t even have to use coffee in your Affogato. According to Tuscan food writer Emiko Davies, an affogato in Italy could be a simple crema ice cream drowned in chocolate or cherry syrup, or a hazelnut ice cream drowned in marsala. “I even saw a gelateria in Turin drowning a lemon and raspberry sorbet in beer,” she said. A sgroppino, a scoop of lemon sorbet drowned in prosecco, could be considered Affogato’s Venetian cousin. In Marcella Hazan’s “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking”, a recipe for “The Chimney Sweep Gelato” calls for sprinkling a custard ice cream with finely ground espresso and drowning it in scotch or bourbon.

Nick Larsen agreed that the evening drink he regularly makes at home – a pinch of salted caramel ice cream and condensed milk drowned in cold brew – could be viewed as affogato. “It’s just not a hot extraction,” he said. He saves the real stuff for Sugar Hill Creamery, the ice cream parlors in Harlem that he runs with his wife Petrushka. I have already eaten a lot of Larsen Affogato, every time I have changed the type of ice cream to suit my mood. The tangy hum of the malty vanilla ice cream brought out the complexity of the espresso. The coffee ice cream with turmeric and ginger candy had notes of masala chai and warmed me with its electricity. Plain vanilla provided the blanket of cream and caffeine that made me want to make even more.

Hallie Meyer, the owner of Caffè Panna in Gramercy Park, said her shop was regularly visited by solo customers like me in the afternoons. You sit down, order an affogato and leave. “It almost feels ripe to have espresso poured over your ice, you know?” She said. I asked Meyer to guide me through her ideal affogato. That’s it: a clear glass so you can watch the ice drown. No eggs in the ice cream base “because I want to try the dairy products,” she said. The espresso should come up half to three quarters of the scoop. And on top of that, her Pièce de résistance: a dollop of panna, Italian for “cream”.

For me, the best Affogato is one where you can’t tell where the feathery edges of the melting ice cream begin and where the yellow-brown foam that rests on the espresso ends. One of the creamiest affogati I’ve ever tasted was at the Gran Caffè L’Aquila in Philadelphia. I asked for a scoop of Fior di Latte, which I often enjoy in an affogato because of its pure milk taste. The barista drank the espresso and then had to cross the café, where the ice was displayed, to scoop the Fior di Latte. This walk was the perfect time to easily cool the espresso so that the ice didn’t melt too quickly when it came into contact with the coffee. The foam stayed thick and buttery – or was it the Fior di Latte?

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