We Don’t Scream Over Ice Cream

Nathan and the Modernist Cuisine team are in the mid­dle of a whirl­wind tour of New York show­cas­ing the book and the recipes therein. From small sam­ples pre­pared on live tele­vi­sion to large mul­ti­course meals served to 350 renowned chefs and food crit­ics, the Modernist meals on wheels tour has been a mas­sive logis­ti­cal under­tak­ing with no mar­gin for error.

Of all the peo­ple and per­ish­ables that had to arrive at each venue on time and in top form, it was one of the least del­i­cate dishes that almost fell vic­tim to the inevitable complication.

Pistachio ice cream isn’t really ice cream at all. Rather, it is a con­structed cream made from pis­ta­chios and emul­si­fiers. It con­tains no egg or dairy prod­ucts and thus can be made well in advance, stored, and shipped at room tem­per­a­ture. It does, how­ever, need to be churned and chilled before serv­ing, which turned out to be a big, last minute problem.

Back in Seattle, the team made 12 liters of pis­ta­chio ice cream well ahead of the New York events. After a series of plane, train, and auto­mo­bile rides, the pis­ta­chio ice cream mix­ture arrived at the venue a few hours before it was to be served to 350 people.

As planned, the team loaded the mix­ture into the ice cream machines where it was to be churned and chilled into what can only be described as an intense yet pure tast­ing pis­ta­chio gelato. After a few hours of slow churn­ing in the machine, it devel­ops a tex­ture that is indis­tin­guish­able from the soft serve ice cream that usu­ally comes out of an ice cream machine. In this case, how­ever, one of the machines refused to coop­er­ate, break­ing down before the first batch could be made.

Fortunately, the facil­ity had two ice cream machines and the team cal­cu­lated that they could still serve all 350 guests cold pis­ta­chio ice cream on time using a sin­gle machine. They set out to do just that—until the sec­ond machine failed.

Panic ensued.

Guests would be arriv­ing in a few hours expect­ing their meals to con­clude with the pis­ta­chio ice cream, which has become one of the most iconic recipes in the book. The team quickly hatched a new plan: One of them would rent a car to take the warm mix­ture and a cooler of dry ice to the near­est ice cream machine.

Rental car? Check. Cooler of dry ice? Check. A work­ing but cur­rently idle ice cream machine owned by some­one will­ing to let us use it? Not so fast! In a city where you can sup­pos­edly get any­thing you want in a hurry, an ice cream machine turned out to be remark­ably hard to find.

Ultimately though, New York and the culi­nary com­mu­nity came through. Across town, leg­endary chef Johny Iuzzini was just fin­ish­ing his desert ser­vice at Jean Georges. He gra­ciously agreed to let the Modernist Cuisine team use his ice cream machine.

After being whisked across Manhattan and chilled, one liter at a time, in the kitchen at Jean Georges, the pis­ta­chio ice cream hit the tables at just the right time and tem­per­a­ture. It was such a big hit that some of the guests formed a mob and cor­nered Nathan, demand­ing the recipe.

The day’s cri­sis averted, the team packed up and got ready for another chal­leng­ing day of blow­ing their culi­nary col­leagues’ minds with Modernist mas­ter­pieces. For the Modernist Cuisine team, it was just another day at the Cooking Lab.