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Marlow

Journal

Notes from the kitchen

A record of the season rather than a blog: what arrived, what went wrong, and why a flavour appeared or left without warning. Entries are printed here in full, newest first.

14 July

The season

The lemons came good three weeks early

Bohdan rang on the Tuesday to say the Amalfi crop had run ahead of itself and would we take four crates now rather than eight in August. We said yes before working out where they would go, which is how most decisions here get made, and then spent the afternoon moving the pistachio draw to make room.

Lemon cheesecake is the flavour people write to us about most, and it is on the list for about five weeks a year. It is not scarcity as a tactic. It is that a lemon held in cold storage for two months tastes like a lemon-shaped idea, and the whole point of the flavour is the bitterness in the pith, which is the first thing to go.

So it is on now, earlier than it has ever been, and it will be gone by the second week of August. If you have been waiting for it since March, this is the notice.

2 July

Getting it wrong

The pistachio was bad for six weeks and we sold it anyway

In April we changed grove. The old one had a poor year and the new supplier sent a sample that tasted right, so we committed to a season. What we did not do was taste the paste after it had been through the churn, and the churn is where the problem was — a slightly higher oil content, which reads as richer in a spoon and as waxy at −14°C.

Six weeks of pistachio went out like that. Nobody complained, which is worse than if they had, because it means it was fine and forgettable rather than the thing we are trying to make. Nadia noticed it on a Friday afternoon eating a second from the crate.

We have gone back to the original grove at a higher price and the batch size has dropped from ninety to seventy as a result. If you bought pistachio between the middle of April and the end of May, send us the date stamp and we will put a replacement in your next box.

19 June

The kitchen

Why the mochi vanish in August

Mochi dough is a humidity problem pretending to be a recipe. It is steamed, kneaded, rested and wrapped in the same day, and it wants a room at about 21°C and under 55% relative humidity. Our kitchen in August is neither of those things, and a dehumidifier big enough to fix it would cost more than the mochi line earns in a year.

So from roughly the middle of July to the first cold week in September we make them twice a week instead of five times, in the early morning before the room warms up, and we cap the number. It is the one gap in the range that is entirely about the building rather than about the ingredients.

The alternative — a tapioca blend that holds up in heat — makes a mochi that bites like a rubber band. We tried it for one summer. It is why the recipe has not changed since.

31 May

Delivery

Two and a half kilos of dry ice, and why the box is loud

Every box that leaves here carries between two and three kilograms of dry ice, sublimating at roughly a kilogram a day. That is what buys the four-hour margin we promise, and it is also why the box hisses gently if you put your ear to it, which we are told is unnerving the first time.

We pack the ice above the product rather than below it, because cold air falls. Half the guides online tell you to do the opposite and half the couriers we have used repack it that way when they consolidate. If your box arrives with the slab at the bottom, that is not how it left.

Open it in a ventilated room, do not put the slab in a sealed container, and do not handle it without the glove in the lid. It is −78°C and it will take your fingerprints off before it feels cold.

8 May

The kitchen

What the seconds crate taught us about the range

The seconds crate started as a way of not throwing out short-filled cups. It has turned into the most useful research we do, because people at the door will tell you things they would never put in an email — usually while eating.

Three flavours came out of it. Toffee was a mistake in a base batch that somebody liked enough to ask for again. Lavender was an experiment we had written off as too soapy until four people in a row said otherwise. And the chocolate mochi got its thinner shell because a regular said the old one was “all coat, no dog”.

It runs from four on a Friday until it is empty, which in July is about eleven minutes. Everything in it is two euros and none of it is guaranteed to be the flavour you came for.

20 April

Buying

We stopped buying fruit through a portal

For the first two years, mango came through a wholesale platform. You log in, you pick a grade, a lorry arrives. The fruit was consistent in the way a spreadsheet is consistent: correct on every measure except the one that matters, which is whether it tastes of anything.

It took four weeks of no mango at all to move to buying direct, and it cost us a flavour through the whole of a spring. What we get now is a message with a photo and a rough weight, and occasionally a call to say do not bother this week. That call is the entire value of the arrangement.

It also means the mango list moves. Alfonso from March, Kesar when Alfonso ends, and a gap of two or three weeks in between where there is simply no mango on the site. We would rather that gap were visible than filled with something worse.

The flavour list is a record of a season. That is the only thing we are really selling.

A woman in an orange sweatshirt biting a mango ice lolly.

Shorter notes

Changes that are true and take one line. Worth reading if you order regularly.

9 July
The blast cabinet was serviced. Texture in anything churned on the 3rd or 4th may be slightly coarser.
27 June
Vanilla is now Ugandan rather than Madagascan. Same price, longer finish, marginally darker fleck.
11 June
Teddy’s in Dún Laoghaire reopened for the season. Lollies only until October.
24 May
We are trialling a paper lid liner. If yours sticks to the ice cream, that is the trial and we would like to hear.
2 May
Raspberry is off until the Wexford crop lands, around the third week of June.
15 April
Friday door hours moved from three to two o’clock. The queue was starting earlier than we were.
29 March
The gift box now ships with a reusable liner instead of the moulded insert.
6 March
Chocolate is back to a single origin. The blend was easier to temper and duller to eat.
What is on now