Welcome back to Yum But Why. I'm Tina. With me is Her Mom, Aparna. And today we are talking about one of the greatest foods ever invented. Ice cream! Ice cream. The cold, creamy, endlessly delicious treat that basically every culture on earth, and maybe not even on earth, has their own version of. And we are gonna get into all of that today.
SPEAKER_01We're gonna cover the true history of ice cream. And spoiler alert, it starts a lot earlier and way further back than you might think.
SPEAKER_02We've got frozen treats from around the world, some very questionable ice cream jokes ice cream jokes. The science of brain freeze, fun facts, and we have a very special interview today with the founders of a local Bay Area ice cream shop doing something really unique. They're blending Indian flavors and traditions with the American tradition of ice cream.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. It's called Kofi Creamery, and when I went to try it, it was really good. Let's get into it.
SPEAKER_02Alright, let's start with a history lesson, of course. We'll go back 2,500 years to ancient Persia, which is modern day Iran. The Persians built large beehive-shaped stone structures in the desert called Yakchal, which means ice pit. These were basically ancient refrigerators, so well designed that they could store ice all year long, even in the desert. Wait, they made ice in the desert? I don't know about made it, but they stored it there. And then they used that ice to make frozen treats. By around 400 BC, Persians were already making one of the earliest known frozen desserts, Haluda, made with thin starchy noodles, rose water syrup, and ice. That sounds really yummy. So Persia invented ice cream? So, like with a lot of things, it's hard to say who really invented ice cream, but this is one of the earliest forms that we know about. Meanwhile, over in China, the earliest records of something close to the ice cream came from the Tang Dynasty. That's around 618 to 907 AD. Historical records suggest people made chilled or frozen milk-based desserts, possibly using fermented milk and flour.
SPEAKER_01Fermented milk? Isn't that kind of like a yogurt ice cream?
SPEAKER_02I guess so. I don't know. We'll have to find it. I don't know how we'll even find that. We have to go back in time. Here's a really cool connection to our guest today. In India, Mughal emperors enjoyed kulfi, a frozen dessert made from condensed milk in molds, flavored with cardamom and pistachios. And in royal kitchens, ice was sometimes brought from mountain regions or stored during the winter time to use to make ice cream. So across several ancient cultures, people discovered that mixing salt with ice makes the mixture colder and helps freeze dessert faster. The same science, lowering the freezing point, is still part of how traditional ice cream making works.
SPEAKER_01So a bunch of different cultures and places were all figuring out ice cream at the same time. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02From China to Persia to the Arab world and India, there were all kinds of different frozen treats being made. And it's really cool in this day and age to see how those have crossed over and started to mix.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Now let's talk about the science of ice cream.
SPEAKER_02What do you mean the science of ice cream? Ice cream is a delicious frozen treat. What about science?
SPEAKER_01Ice cream is basically four things mixed together fat, sugar, water, and air. But the way those four things are combined is pure science. When ice cream freezes, the water turns into tiny ice crystals. The smaller those crystals are, the smoother and creamier the ice cream feels. The bigger they are, the more icy and grainy it feels.
SPEAKER_02Is that why some ice cream feels kind of icy? Like if we put it in the freezer and take it out after a while, it gets these ice crystals?
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Every time you take the tub out, scoop some and put it back, the temperatures goes up and down a little. And that makes the ice crystal slowly grow bigger over time. So what you're saying is that we should finish the whole tub in one sitting for science. That would be delicious. But also, the more you turn ice cream while it's freezing, the smaller the crystals stay and the more air gets mixed in. That's what makes it creamy and scoopable instead of a solid frozen block.
SPEAKER_02What about brain freeze? Because that is also science and also a nuisance. I don't want anything to get in the way of my ice cream consumption.
SPEAKER_01Brain freeze. Okay, so when something cold hits the roof of your mouth, the blood vessels there shrink from the cold and then quickly open back up. Nearby nerves send a pain signal that your brain actually mysteries as coming from your forehead. So that means the pain isn't even in my brain? No. Your brain gets confused about where the signal came from. It's called referred pain.
SPEAKER_02If you want to melt your brain freeze, apparently if you press your tongue against the roof of your mouth to warm it back up or sip some room temperature water, you'll be back to good in no time.
SPEAKER_01Hey, then your ice cream consuming can go back to normal.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. This is the best thing I've learned all day how to cure brain freeze. We'll have to test this out by eating ice cream. Alright, let's do a quick world tour of frozen treats. Are you ready? Yep. Alright, in Turkey, they have dondurma. This ice cream is made with an ingredient called cellep flour, ground from a purple orchid root and mastic resin. It makes the ice cream stretchy and chew chewy like taffy. And street vendors perform tricks with it, twirling and tossing it before handing it to you. I highly recommend you look up a video of Turkish ice cream. The the street vendors are really, really good at making it a very fun and silly experience.
SPEAKER_01I want to like teleport to Turkey just for the ice cream. That's crazy how the ice cream is stretchy.
SPEAKER_02Play-doh. In Japan, there's mochi ice cream. Ice cream is wrapped in a chewy sweet rice dough. Modern mochi ice cream was actually popularized in the US by a Japanese-American entrepreneur named Francis Hachimoto in the 1990s.
SPEAKER_01I love mochi ice cream. It's so good. In Ecuador, they have helado de paila. A traditional story traces helado de paila to Rosalia Suarez in the late 1800s. She stirs fruit juice in a copper bowl surrounded by ice and straw until it froze into a sorbet-like dessert. Family still make it the same way today. I should try that.
SPEAKER_02I don't know if I have the arm strength. In the Philippines, they have sorbetes. They're sold from colorful pushcarts on the street and often made with carabao milk, which is water buffalo. They sometimes make it with coconut milk. And it comes in flavors like ube, which is purple yam, and even cheese. Cheese ice cream? I'd try any kind of ice cream once, and it's apparently it's very popular there. I guess we should go to the Philippines. That should be our next trip to try cheese ice cream. Apparently there's good mangoes. Yes. Ooh. And finally, uh in Alaska, there's an indigenous dish called Aku Tuk. A-K-U-T-A-Q. It's a traditional Alaskan native dessert, and it's a frozen dessert made with foraged berries like salmon berries and blueberries, mixed with animal fat. It was originally a way to preserve and transport nutritious food.
SPEAKER_01Wow, ice cream has been around in so many forms for thousands of years, and every culture made their own. This brings us perfectly to our guests today.
SPEAKER_02We are so excited to welcome one of the founders of Kofi Creamery, Preeti Narayanan. Kulfi Creamery is an Indian-inspired ice cream shop with locations in San Leandro and San Francisco, and their flavors are unlike anything you've ever tried. Here's the interview.
SPEAKER_00Hi, my name is Preeti. I'm very excited to be on this podcast. Uh I am so thrilled to be the first interviewer, a little bit nervous too. As I said, my name is Preeti. My wife and I own Kofi Creamery. We've been doing uh we've been doing Indian-inspired ice cream for eight years, and we have two stores, one in San Leandro and the other in San Francisco.
SPEAKER_01Can you tell us what Kofi Creamery is and why you wanted to start it?
SPEAKER_00Well, I grew up in Bombay, and in uh in my city, what we do in summer, well, it's summer most of the time anyway. So when it's hot, you go out with your family and you have Kofi. Kofi is the Indian version of ice cream, it's actually a milk popsicle. There's no cream in it. Uh, it's um, it's uh, you know, it's the thing that you do as a family, and it was just something I loved. Whenever I think back of home, I think of Kofi. Uh when I came to America, you know, I fell in love with Ben and Jerry, uh, big fan of Chunky Monkey and you know, a lot of other ice creams. And I was like, why is there no fantastic, you know, high-quality version of Kofi here? Because the Kofi you get here are in small packs, really terrible ingredients. Um, you know, and I didn't think they tasted great. I was like, we need some version of like high-end kofi. And that was my inspiration to start the business.
SPEAKER_01What is your favorite flavor and why?
SPEAKER_00Ooh, that's a tough one. The my I have many. We make Indian flavors, we make American flavors, and we then mix Indian and American flavors. My favorite uh American Indian flavor is the salted caramel with Mysore Pak. Mysore Pak is a very famous dessert from South India, from the city of Mysore, originally. Uh, and my mother makes it, she makes it really well. And uh, you know, we we make it from scratch ourselves and then crumple it into ice cream. So that's a nice meld of salted caramel, you know, which is much loved in the Bay Area, and Mysore Pak. Uh, Indian flavors, there are so many I like, but I like in-season jackfruit, uh, which is yeah, which is made uh in Kerala. We make a jackfruit pudding that's made, that's famous in Kerala, uh, and we make that as an ice cream. So we cook jackfruit, coconut, and all that good stuff, and cook it down and make it. So that's that Indian flavor. And uh just a plain American flavor, uh very partial to malted chocolate and mint Oreo. Those are good.
SPEAKER_01So you were talking about like your favorite American and kofi flavors. What's the difference between ice cream and kofi?
SPEAKER_00There are different styles of making ice cream, but the French custard ice cream, which is what we make, uh is made with milk, eggs, cream, and sugar. That's it. That's the four ingredients. And if you see other ingredients like gorgum and xanthum gum and kerogenes and all that, you can just take it for granted. They're just um they're just not good ingredients for you. Okay. Uh the Indian Kofi is traditionally just milk cooked for a long time. When you cook it at a slow, slow temperature for a long low temperature for a long time, the it becomes like cream. The structure of milk changes, and then you cook it with uh spices and nuts, and you freeze it in these long triangular popsicle molds and on sticks, and that's a kofi. So it doesn't usually have cream or anything else.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um, what's your most popular flavor like with customers? Uh we make a Malay Kofi, we call it classic Kofi because it's a little bit different from Kofi you get in India. We make ice cream, so you know you can scoop it rather than you know chew it like uh a popsicle, and that is by far the most favorite favorite, favorite and most popular flavor.
SPEAKER_01The classic is always one of the best. Um, what are you looking for? What do you want a customer's reaction to be when they try your Kofi?
SPEAKER_00So, you know, when you're as old as I am and you lived so long, it's very difficult to find experiences where you go eat something and go, Wow, you know, this is so amazing. I've never tried it before. And it happened to me once when I went to my wife's uh uh aunt's place in Germany and she gave me an elder flower jam, and I'd never had that before. And I just it blew my mind. That's what I want. When someone walks in and tastes these flavors, I want it to be like a just an emotional reaction of how amazing this is, and I want them to know how amazing Indian desserts are because they really truly are incredible and very complex and you know, as amazing as you know, the the as f should be as famous as French desserts.
SPEAKER_01What's the hardest thing about running an ice cream business?
SPEAKER_00To find good people to work with. Uh it's uh it's a food business has uh has a diff has a problem in terms of retaining good employees, you know. Uh and uh, you know, it's just a tough business for to to to groom employees to uh you know work with the same person consistently over a long period of time.
SPEAKER_01What advice would you give to someone that's trying to start their own ice cream business? Like kid, adult, anyone?
SPEAKER_00Try it small, start small, don't invest too much. Uh hone your skills, figure out uh what you like to do, don't like to do, you know, and what you don't like to do, you can get help. You can hire someone. So you uh you do a business plan, which is a very good place to start. Your business is not going to be like the business plan at all, but you start somewhere, right? You make a business plan, and in that you say, Oh, you know what? I love social media, but I don't want to physically make coffee. And then you put a budget into that, saying, Okay, I'll hire someone to do this, I'll pay them at $20 an hour, $25 an hour. I will want them to work this many hours. This is the budget. So you have to be very, you have to understand what you like and what you don't want to do. And you also have to understand the business itself. So start small, try it out, go to school, you know, school caterings, birthday parties, weddings, see how what you know, how people like what they like, you know, who are the people who are there who are interested in the ice cream, and then also understand the business aspect, especially in terms of what you want to do and don't want to do.
SPEAKER_01That's good advice. I'm gonna use that when I wanna start an ice cream business.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Is this ice cream business the next venture?
SPEAKER_01Maybe, hopefully. I like ice cream.
SPEAKER_00We we need more Indian representation ice cream, so come over.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What is the biggest myth about Indian desserts? Like something that is too sweet.
SPEAKER_00Uh that is too sweet, and I it's it's easy, it must be easy to make because they're cheap.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Neither of that is true. I Indian desserts are very complicated and they are sweet, but no more sweeter than no more sweet than a regular cake you get in America, you know.
SPEAKER_01How did you make up all these fun flavors? Like where did you get the inspiration for the flavors?
SPEAKER_00Uh just like you, I like to eat. So I go eat everywhere, anywhere. I if I go and look at a menu, I will if I don't know something, that's that's what I order. Uh that's I I never go and pick this. I know not never. There are days where I just go eat the sushi, I know, you know. But most often I'll go try something completely new. I don't even read about it because I want to have the fun experience of just trying it and figuring it out, you know, and I'll just go and I'm like, Yep, I don't know that, I want that. What is that? You know? And so that's a lot of fun. There's a lot of there's a lot of uh dishes uneaten too, but many a times I try to try, I try something just that just blows my mind. And then that'll make me think, oh, if you combine this with what I know, with what my mother makes, something will come out of it, you know? And I try it, some of it works, some of it doesn't work, but whatever works, make it makes it to the store.
SPEAKER_01Like the guava chili flavor, that sounds really good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so well, guava chili is different because you know, I uh in I used to go to school in India, and outside the school, there'll be a baya, there'll be like a guy with uh, you know, the hand cart, like a tail, it's called, and that'll be piled up with mangoes, you know, the raw mangoes and guava and all, you know, tart fruit. And what he'll do is he'll chop it and then he'll put some chili powder and some salt on it and give it to you. That was a snack. So I grew up always eating guava with chili powder and salt. That's just that's that's that's the inspiration for the flavor. I actually would not know how what to do with it if I didn't eat it like that.
SPEAKER_01That sounds really good. Okay, question what is the best topping for mango ice cream? Like curious thing.
SPEAKER_00Mango ice cream. Oh, you could do chamois, something tart or tahine.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, sometimes I eat mangoes with tahine, or that's what my friends like.
SPEAKER_00But if you want to do a double flavor, I do the Kulfi and the mango, it's so good. The spices from the Kulfi just you work beautifully with the mango.
SPEAKER_01What flavors are you working on now?
SPEAKER_00I am working on an orchata, but like an Indian version of Orchata. Um I'm working on two things. One is like uh I'm trying a Julebe Orchata, which is quite a riot, or I am uh I I'm looking, I have tried uh like a green tea orchata. Oh, that sounds really good. Orchata is uh raw rice and cinnamon and uh like evaporated or condensed milk, and or condensed milk. It's a white drink that you get in Mexican restaurants.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I was like, well, it'll it'll be fantastic with like a jasmine tea with full jasmine flavor. So I've been trying, not hit the right note just yet. It takes a it takes a long time, it takes typically about three months from when I have an idea before I put it out in the store. If it goes out in the store, because sometimes I'll do the whole thing and I'm like, no, uh, it doesn't. Because when you make something in a small batch at home, that which is how I do, I practice, I try, I will make one, I'll make two, three different varieties of the same flavor. Then I will taste test, I will get my wife to blind taste test, and I'll figure, okay, this is what you know, two of us like. And then I will like, okay, what if I change the salt a little bit? What do if I add a little bit more sugar? What if I do this? So I do multiple rounds, and then I keep doing this till a time where I I like it. Or sometimes I'll do multiple rounds and I'm like, no, this is not gonna work. Or sometimes I'll do it a small batch and it'll be great, and then I'll do it in, I'll do it in a big batch. You know, you have to we make I make like two cups at home, and then I turn that into uh how many cups is that? Uh 45 cups, right? Three gallons, something more than that in the store. And I'll make my first batch. And when I take it from a small quantity and build it up to a big quantity, sometimes it won't work. It just doesn't taste good. Because like when you're multiplying the ingredients, it gets like Yeah, sometimes it gets very intense, you know, like a cardamom. If you put too much of it, it gets bitter. So you it sometimes works in a small quantity when but when you make a bigger batch doesn't work. So you gotta either say, okay, this flavor doesn't work, or you go back and you kind of play with the flavor again, knowing how it did not work in a big batch.
SPEAKER_01Can you tell us about the dosa cone?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so we're South Indians. My uh we eat dosa well, when my parents are there, we eat dosa every day. And when my parents are not around, we eat those at least once a week. And we make our own dosa batter. So uh and it's fermented, right? The dosa batter, so it's got a little bit of tartness, it's not very sweet. So I was like, this would be a perfect complement to a clap Malai Kulfi because a Malai, a classic Kofi ice cream is made by heating milk and sugar and you know, letting it sit for a long time, and it's a really condensed, thick milk. And it's kind of a flavor that coats your tongue. You know, it's fatty and it's sweet and it's delicious, but it needs something light and crisp and tart. At least that's what I thought. The American cones are so sweet, the regular cones you get, it just adds to the sweetness of the kofi and doesn't do anything, you know. So I wanted something that was savory. And I was like, we make dosas, but the problem with dosas is when you make dosa and you keep it out, it gets soggy. It doesn't stay crisp. And a cone needs to be crisp. We worked on the cone for a year, a whole year, to figure out how to make a crisp cone. Could not make a crisp cone. We'll make it at home, we'll leave it out for half an hour, and it'll become like this, it'll become like a soggy paper, you know, like a just not fun to eat. So I was it was very challenging to figure out how do you do how do you make this cone to be crisp and light and stay like that for a while.
SPEAKER_01What next for Kofi Creamy? What's what are you trying to change or add to make it a better experience for customers?
SPEAKER_00I think we give a very good experience. It's a fun place to be and we'll bring out more flavors. But what I really want, and it's happening, I'll tell you why it's happening because we have so many kids around uh where San Frans, the San Leandro Koolfi is, and they're all elementary school kids. When they many of these kids are trying ice cream for the first time at our store and grabbing for it, and then as they grow older, the parents will come and say they don't ask for ice cream, they ask for Kulfi. Meaning in their in their world, because the ice cream parlor is there and they eat the Indian flavors and they know Koofie as the ice cream, they as they assume these the kids assume that Kofi is ice cream. Wherever they go, they point to ice cream and say Kofi. And I want that. I want I want uh Kofi to be as famous as I don't know, uh chocolate chip cookie dough, you know, that it this flavor be everywhere in America. This just become part of the American fabric, and it has to start somewhere.
SPEAKER_01That's uh Really good thing. Yeah, yeah, like adding culture.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. We are a melting pot of so many of the things that are American today came from somewhere. You know, immigrants got it and then it it just you know it became part of the American culture in terms of food. I want that for our flavors.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think that's all our questions, but thank you for your time. Okay, time for ice cream jokes.
SPEAKER_02Oh boy.
SPEAKER_01How does an ice cream cone congratulate you on the anniversary of your birth?
SPEAKER_02By giving you ice cream in a cone.
SPEAKER_01No, it's Sherbert Day. It's my birthday.
SPEAKER_02Like Sherbert?
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Alright. Another one.
SPEAKER_01Why is ice cream so bad at tennis?
SPEAKER_02Because it doesn't have any arms.
SPEAKER_01No, because they have a soft surf.
SPEAKER_02Oh. Womp womp.
SPEAKER_01Next. That was amazing. That was a good one. Why did the newspaper talk to the ice cream? He wanted a cool something. He was looking for the scoop. Of course he was. Why did the ice cream truck break down?
SPEAKER_02Because it melted.
SPEAKER_01No, because the Rocky Road.
SPEAKER_02Have you had Rocky Road?
SPEAKER_01No, I've never tried it.
SPEAKER_02It's like chocolate ice cream with marshmallows and stuff. Why haven't I tried it? I don't know. We have a whole to-do list of ice cream after this.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Rapid fire ice cream facts. Ready? Ready. New Zealand is often ranked as the highest ice cream consuming country per person in the world. What? I would never have guessed. And four of the top seven countries are actually cold countries: Finland, Sweden, Canada, and Denmark. People eat more ice cream in cold places? No matter where you are, ice cream cheers you up.
SPEAKER_02I agree. You know, we should eat ice cream all year round. Yeah. During World War II, the US military actually built a floating ice cream factory on a barge in the Pacific Ocean just to keep soldiers' morale up.
SPEAKER_01Okay, trivia time. What ingredient gives ice cream its creamy texture? Heavy cream. Mm-hmm. What are the two main things that make soft serve different from regular ice cream? It's soft and it's served. Soft serve is served at a warmer temperature and it has more air whipped into it. Regular ice cream is stored at about negative 15 degrees Celsius, while soft serve is served at around negative four degrees Celsius. The warmer temperature plus extra air is what makes it soft enough to swirl straight from the machine. So it's basically fluffier and warmer.
SPEAKER_02I was mostly right. I saw a new trend where they're dipping soft serve in butter and putting a little salt on it and eating it. I'd try it.
SPEAKER_01That sounds interesting. What's the name of the classic dessert made with two bananas and three scoops of ice cream?
SPEAKER_02Banana split. I don't really like banana splits. Too much ice cream, too much banana. Eh.
SPEAKER_01I've never ever tried one, so that's interesting. What's the main difference between gelato and regular ice cream?
SPEAKER_02Gelato is better.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_02Gelato has less air in it and less fat than American style ice cream.
SPEAKER_01Right. That's why it tastes so much more intensely flavored. Less air actually means more gelato in every butt.
SPEAKER_02When we're on vacation, sometimes we just have gelato for lunch. We have a one gelato a day rule where we must have one gelato a day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I want to go to Italy so bad.
SPEAKER_02Then two gelatos a day in Italy. Like buckle belly. You heard it here. Now I can't go back on my word. Yes. What ingredient lowers the freezing point of ice cream and helps keep it scoopable?
SPEAKER_01Sugar. Not only is sugar delicious, but it actually stops the whole thing from freezing into a solid brick.
SPEAKER_02And one more. Why wait till you grow up? We can be professional ice cream taste testers. Today. Are you gonna pay me? In ice cream and gold spoons. So what have we learned today, Kinara?
SPEAKER_01That ice cream has been around for thousands of years in way more forms than people realize, and every culture put their own spin on it.
SPEAKER_02We learned that it's science. Fat, sugar, water, and air, and the difference between great ice cream and mediocre ice cream really comes down to the detail.
SPEAKER_01And right here in the Bay Area, Priti and Mads at Kofi Creamery are making something really special that connects culture, history, and scrumptious flavor.
SPEAKER_02So here's our challenge for listeners. Go find an ice cream or frozen treat from a culture you've never tried before. Maybe it's mochi, maybe it's kofi, maybe it's a paleta from a local Mexican shop. And when you eat it, think about the history and the people behind it.
SPEAKER_01And if you're in the Bay Area, go visit Kofi Creamery here in San Leandro and San Francisco.
SPEAKER_02Thanks so much to Priti for joining us today. And thanks to Kenara always for keeping it fun. Mm hmm.
SPEAKER_01Keep exploring, keep tasting, and keep asking. Yum but why? Thanks for listening.