There is a word for the distinctive metallic smell that permeates the air whenever it rains after a dry spell: petrichor. Coined by Australian chemists Isabel Joy Bear and Richard Grenfell Thomas in 1964, the word is a combination of the Greek “petros” meaning “stone,” and “ichor”, the magical liquid that flowed through the veins of the Greek gods. I detect it just as I step off the train in Coleraine. A few apologetic spatters of rain have hit parched ground, signalling the end of a long, unbroken stretch of ice cream weather.
Arnaldo and Daniela Morelli, purveyors of the award-winning Morelli’s ice cream, keep a more vigilant eye on the weather forecast than most.
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A gastronomic quest
Neven Maguire travels Ireland with his kitchen table to indulge in the very best of what Ireland has to offer
At the Kitchen Table
Neven Maguire meets Arnaldo and Daniela Morelli, purveyors of the award-winning Morelli’s
Rainy days and sundaes
Flavour explorations
To date, there are seven flavours in the Simply Better range
“Have you ever met an ice cream man who wants the bad weather to come?” Arnaldo Morelli asks me rhetorically, as the droplets of rain patter against his office window.
Sunshine equals sales in the ice cream business, and while it is not as seasonable as it once was (Christmas, for example, is now one of their busiest periods) a long stretch of hot weather of late has meant that Arnaldo, his sister Daniela and their 25 employees have been working flat-out seven days a week to keep up with demand. When you sell gelato for a living, you have to make sorbet while the sun shines.
The shelves in the Morelli office off the Ballycastle Road are laden with ice cream-related publications. I thumb through a faded copy of Ice-Cream Making and Selling by Godfrey Staines, from 1950. There is also a huge doorstep of a book, Los secretos del helado: el helado sin secretos (The Secrets of Ice Cream: Ice Cream without Secrets) by Angelo Corvitto. This comprehensive book was a bible of sorts for the late Guido Morelli, as evidenced by the highlighted pages, notes, annotations and underlined sections in this well-thumbed copy. Recalling his obsession with the perfect ice cream and Corvitto’s recipes, Daniela laughs, “Dad was his stalker”. Arnaldo’s niece lives near Corvitto’s home town of Girona, and so a meeting was arranged between the two great ice cream men. “It was like meeting his hero, wasn’t it? He got all dressed up,” Daniela remembers.
Corvitto’s book discusses making ice cream for a restaurant, but Guido could see the application for production on a bigger canvas, as Arnaldo describes it: “on a large scale that was still artisan, in small batches”. Right up until his death, Guido was devising new formulas and flavours.
“He was always trying new things and he was ahead of his time as well, wasn’t he?” he says. Daniela nods. It is obvious where the two of them got their love of the business.
Five generations of the Morelli family have been making award-winning ice cream in the classic Italian style. As part of the Simply Better Range, they have no intention of slowing down, whatever the weather, writes Simon O’Neill
THE SECRET DIARY OF AN ICE CREAM MAKER
Another thing that is apparent from reading these volumes, with their in-depth diagrams and sketches of machinery components, is that making ice cream is not just a matter of throwing a bunch of ingredients in a bowl and letting them chill.
“Ice cream-making is quite technical.” Arnaldo says. “An ice cream recipe has to be balanced between the sugars and the fat. There’s a bit of maths involved. And my dad was a great one for recipes and a lot of the ones that we still follow came from him. For instance, the chocolate ice cream that we make, which is the Simply Better Triple Chocolate, that was probably the last recipe he came up with before he left us. It’s a nice legacy to have, isn’t it? He’s put smiles on a lot of faces.”
That Italian love of music, food, wine and good conversation underpins what they do at Morellis. There is a lot of joy associated with ice cream – something that comes out in all manner of family occasions. It is indeed a nice gift to bequeath to future generations.
Having secured the produce, the mixing and making takes place in the facility below the Morelli’s office.
“There are two stages to making ice cream. You’re making the mix the day before it’s frozen. The batches that were made yesterday were all frozen today through a big industrial ice cream freezer.”
The raw materials – the fruit, cream, chocolate and other components – give the ice cream its flavour, but another vital component in ice cream-making is air. It is aeration that gives it that unmistakable melt-in-the-mouth texture, as Arnaldo explains,
“If there was no air, it would be like a solid block. You incorporate the air gently and, combined with the ingredients – the double cream and we use a little bit of butter as well – they add to the texture. All that comes together to give the ice cream its richness.”
THE CREAM OF THE COAST
The Morellis are always innovating and coming up with new recipes, but the recent heatwave has meant that all product development has been briefly put on hold as they have been in full-on production mode. To date, there are seven flavours in the Simply Better range, including the Jamaican Rum and Raisin, Caramelised Hazelnut, Irish Made Mixed Irish Berries, Strawberries & Cream, Butterscotch, Guido’s much- lauded Triple Chocolate and another perennial favourite, the Madagascan Vanilla Bean Ice Cream. The Morelli’s vanilla is subtle on the palette, allowing the premium ingredients to shine through. As well as freezing at the right consistency, the ice cream has to melt at the correct rate as well – not too quickly or too slowly. As Arnaldo and Daniela modestly put it, “There’s a bit of work to making ice cream.”
Daniela then shows me through the production facilities on the ground level. It’s a surprisingly and, no doubt to many, a reassuringly small space for such a quality product. The “workhorse” machine that produces the majority of their ice cream is also more modest than you might imagine but can freeze 600 litres an hour. This scale of production allows Daniela and her colleagues to keep a keen eye on quality.
As part of their association with Dunnes Stores, the Morellis are meeting Simply Better Ambassador Neven Maguire for a chat at his Kitchen Table, for a new series of interviews. Each producer is asked to bring something personal along. When deciding what object to bring to their sit-down chat with Ireland’s favourite chef, Daniela and Arnaldo don’t have to think long.
“It has to be the old shell dish,” they agree. Daniela opens a glass panel and shows me the precious artefact: a silver antique from the old Morelli ice cream parlour in Portstewart.
“It’s a little dish from when our grandparents took over the shop in the 1930s. They used to get these really posh printed glasses that would have been very ornate and they served the ice cream in these little silver dishes in the shape of a sea shell.” This lovely relic from the bygone era of soda fountains and bobby-soxers has ‘Morelli Ice Palace’ engraved on the base.
THE ICE PALACE
The quality of the dairy ingredients in Ireland — it’s the best in the world
Next door in the fridge section there are dozens of purple containers they call ‘Napolis’ where ice cream is stored for use in the various Morelli shops. “It’s not normally as empty as this,” Daniela adds, “...but that’s what six weeks of good weather does!”
In Portrush, the Morelli ice cream shop is serving a busy stream of customers, despite the rain. The Open will be played just down the road from here in mid-July, when 280,000 fans will watch the golf. A huge mural of Shane Lowry on the gable of a building as you enter the town celebrates his victory there in 2019. No doubt, the green jacket Rory McIlroy acquired in Augusta at The Masters will draw even more and, if the sun shines, many of those punters will be looking for an ice cream to cool down, after the heat of the action.
“History is important to us,” Arnaldo says, “because of the generations that came before us. We’re very proud that we followed in our great uncle and our grandparents’ footsteps. We’ve got lots of competitors who’ve come into the ice cream industry, and there’s lots of good ice cream in Ireland. We respect our competitors, but they’ll never have our heritage and our story and our history. And that’s something that we’re very precious about.”
Having learned about the process, it’s time to sample the wares. Pistachio is “having a moment”, so I opt for a cone with a dollop of pistachio and a scoop of that delectable and indulgent Triple Chocolate. Not only does it taste absolutely delicious, but it melts at just the right consistency.
The rain is properly chucking it down as I leave Morellis in Portrush, polishing off my ice cream. The air is fresh and clean in the seaside resort town and, although most people greet the turn in the weather with a weary reluctance, for Daniela, Arnaldo and all who work at Morellis, it might just signify a little easing of pressure from the relentless demands of keeping the good folk on the island of Ireland stocked up with ice cream from the Simply Better range — at least until the sun comes out again.
Shop The Simply Better
Collection
Before you even calculate quantities and batches, you need to start with the raw ingredients. Being nestled on this stretch of the Causeway Coast, the Morellis have access to some of the finest produce there is.
“The milk and cream comes from Ballyrashane Creamery, which is just a couple of miles from here. We get their deliveries every day. We know it’s the freshest double cream there is. The quality of dairy ingredients in Ireland is the best in the world.”
The collaboration between the Morellis and Dunnes Stores has paved the way for produce from other Simply Better producers, too.
“That’s the beauty about Dunnes Stores. We’re using Strawberry Preserve from Wexford Preserves. Our Butterscotch sauce comes from What’s For Pudding and so on.”
Days past
The family’s shop on Stone Row in Coleraine
Just desserts
Arnaldo and Daniela with Neven Maguire at the kitchen table
SHOP
HERE
Book of wonder
Guido Morelli and his 'bible', Los secretos del helado: el helado sin secretos
“History is important to us,” Arnaldo says, “because of the generations that came before us. We’re very proud that we followed in our great uncle and our grandparents’ footsteps. We’ve got lots of competitors who’ve come into the ice cream industry, and there’s lots of good ice cream in Ireland. We respect our competitors, but they’ll never have our heritage and our story and our history. And that’s something that we’re very precious about.”
Having learned about the process, it’s time to sample the wares. Pistachio is “having a moment”, so I opt for a cone with a dollop of pistachio and a scoop of that delectable and indulgent Triple Chocolate. Not only does it taste absolutely delicious, but it melts at just the right consistency.
The rain is properly chucking it down as I leave Morellis in Portrush, polishing off my ice cream. The air is fresh and clean in the seaside resort town and, although most people greet the turn in the weather with a weary reluctance, for Daniela, Arnaldo and all who work at Morellis, it might just signify a little easing of pressure from the relentless demands of keeping the good folk on the island of Ireland stocked up with ice cream from the Simply Better range — at least until the sun comes out again.