I’m obsessed with ice cream, and I’m not sorry

As I sit to write this piece, my computer is fully charged, my notes are organised and there’s a beautiful bowl of room-temperature alphonso mango with gently melting vanilla ice cream by my side, all set to nourish and inspire. Mango and ice cream is the taste of summer for me; for the rest of the year, it’s the ice cream that keeps me going.

I’ve been ice cream-obsessed for as long as I can remember. When I was growing up, my brother and I would devour carton after carton of ice cream; Kwality Vanilla to start with, followed by seasonal delights—sitaphal, chikoo, strawberry, and orange—from the local Apsara store. As the confidence of the store grew, so did its flavour list. My current favourite is pink guava, topped with a generous sprinkling of chilli powder and salt. When my grandmother used to come to stay with us, we would try a new flavour every night. Back then, we didn't worry about the dairy or the sugar (or the calories).

Honestly, I still don’t. I refuse to give up on my one-bowl-a-week habit. I make other compromises, like no sugar in my tea and ditching coffee completely. But the ice cream? Old habits die hard.

Perhaps it’s the memories I don’t want to let go of: eating a 99p ice cream cone with a Flake from the ice cream van that announced its arrival with a melody, near my grandfather’s house in north-west London; my dad driving the family in our boxy little Fiat to Breach Candy’s Snowman ice cream parlour to get a softy; and special treats of ice cream sandwiches at K Rustom’s at Churchgate. When my father died seven years ago, my mother and I would share a bowl of ice cream almost every evening; it became our little ritual, and a big way for us to deal with the grief. Of course, we were comfort eating—but then what is food, if not comfort?

The weird thing is that I don’t think my father ever got to taste what’s become my signature dessert, a homemade ice cream that most of my friends and family love, a rich, bittersweet coffee and chocolate ice cream. I won’t divulge the recipe because it isn’t mine to share, but there is nothing I love more than churning out big batches of it for my loved ones to share and enjoy. It’s my thing to take to parties and potlucks, and I’ve rarely had to bring back any leftovers. It’s even part of an annual potluck at the Vogue office.

As with everyone else in this lockdown, I’ve been revisiting old photos: reminiscing about movie marathons with friends and tubs of rocky road, summer holidays spent gorging on amarena gelato in Venice and baulking at kakigori in Tokyo (I’m not a fan). But there is so much left to try, and when the world opens up again, we’ll get back to creating more of these memories, one scoop at a time.

Also read:

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