Spying On The Sun-Times: Gelato, Grillable Breakfast, Tomatillos

Wow, you could combine all of those things into one hell of a delicious brunch! But let’s not get ahead of ourselves - one theme at a time.

First, gelato. Basically, everything you need to know about the difference between gelato and ice cream can be summarized as follows:

1) Gelato contains less air than ice cream (making it denser)

2) Gelato is served 10 to 15 degrees warmer than ice cream (making it creamier)

3) Gelato has less butterfat than ice cream (making it lighter)

For those of you who’ve had gelato, that makes intuitive sense. For those of you who haven’t, WTF?! Get yourself to Piccolo or something this instant! You can also find Ciao Bella, a childhood favorite of ours, in Whole Foods and at Fox & Obel (according to the article, Whole Foods also makes an in-house gelato).

Next up, grillable breakfast, or as Jennifer Olvera titles it, Breakfast B-Q. Sausage or steak, grilled and served with eggs, is fairly obvious. But have you given much thought to barbecued fruit? You should probably do your best to clean off meat gristle before you let that happen, though. Heaven on Seven owner Jimmy Bannos suggests grilling fresh figs with mascarpone, which sounds pretty amazing.

Finally, tomatillos - are your weekend guests ready for grilled tomatillo gelato at 9am? Maybe you need to get new friends, then. Actually, the one time we tried tomato gelato (tomatillos are tougher relatives of the tomato), it was pretty frightening. Better to use it in a fresh salsa, or, in fact, grilled works quite nicely too.

[Photo: tomatillos, denaid/flickr>]

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Spying On The Sun-Times: Gelato, Grillable Breakfast, Tomatillos