Bad weather for chocolate, bis repetita. After a scorching start to the summer, a second wave of heat is about to hit us. Jade Genin remembers the first. “No one entered the shop anymore, I was very scared, she admits to 20 minutes. By mid-July, she had figured out how to bring her customers back. » With ice cream? “Yes, but light, refreshing and with 100% natural fruit. “The very ones that she is bringing out this week which promises to be hot, hot, hot.
snowy texture
For the refreshing side, the young chocolate maker remembered two foreign specialties “little explored in France”: Sicilian granita and Japanese kakigori. “I was inspired by what I had been able to taste in Italy, she says, beautiful almond granita made from the raw product. I wanted to associate this taste with the snowy texture of kakigori from Japan, where the ice is grated and not crushed. This technique brings an incomparable lightness to the tasting. »
However, the “snow granitas” that Jade Genin sells for between 7 and 8 euros a cup have only the snowy texture in common with kakigori. “The Japanese grate an ice cube of water to which they add a syrup of matcha green tea, black sesame or fruit. We don’t use syrup or flavourings,” assures the chocolate maker, whose method of production starts from the ingredient itself, as in Italy. “Hence the name granita-snow”, she explains before detailing the production of her ice cream.
Small gourmet caramel
“Fresh fruit is made into a fruit purée that we reduce to make it more concentrated in aromas,” she explains. This eliminates the need to add sugar”. Nuts are a little different. “We will mix them with water and filter to obtain a sort of fairly velvety milk. ” Unlike fresh fruit, “you have to add a little sugar to dried fruit, even a little caramel for a very nice gourmet side”.
The frozen fresh fruit reduction on one side, the frosted dried fruit velouté on the other, that’s what Jade Genin will work to grate to order, unlike Italian artisans whose machine to crush the ice cream rotates continuously. And in France ?
“Here, we don’t have the same water culture as in Japan. Nor the same need for ice creams as refreshing as in Italy”, notes Jade Genin to explain why French artisans have never taken these watery ice creams seriously.
Fresh or dried fruit
The poor quality of the granitas sold on the beaches or at fairgrounds, often shaved ice simply flavored with a simple more or less artificial sugar syrup, does not help. Jade Genin notices that in case of strong heat, curiosity prevails despite everything, encouraging the barge to push the door.
In her shop on the avenue de l’Opéra, she usually offers two fresh fruits and two dried fruits in addition to chocolate “which reminds us of where [elle] come “. Personally, Jade Genin admits to preferring dried fruit to fresh fruit. “Macadamia nuts and Tahitian vanilla together work really well,” she says. The texture is a real caress and the flavor is far removed from an industrial ice cream that has made this perfume its stock in trade. “Instead of having 1% dried fruit, she adds, we are more on 30 or 35%. »
Lemon, too sour
As for fresh fruits, she works a lot with strawberries to which she sometimes adds anise, more tangy passion fruit and sweeter mango, but “not too much lemon”, yet the original flavor of Sicilian granita. “I think it takes too much sugar to balance its acidity. Jade Genin’s menu changes a lot and often, depending on the raw materials at her disposal and her desires. “If you come back at the weekend, she says before leaving, I will prepare my meringue-passion flavor for you, a delight! »