Jordanian Ice Cream - Street Food Middle East - Global Sales Mentor | Zach Selch

9 Aug 2020 · 2 min

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1:59

In this monologue, Zach Selck describes traditional Arabic/Turkish ice cream, highlighting its distinctive chewy, elastic texture derived from mastic resin, and its classic flavor profile of vanilla, cardanom, rosewater, saffron, and pistachios. He contrasts this traditional style with the more common Western-style ice creams now prevalent in Jordan, Syria, and other Arab countries, noting that the authentic, baroque ice cream is becoming a dying art. Selck encourages travelers to seek out the traditional pistachio‑cardamom‑saffron‑rosewater ice cream while it remains available, and concludes with a brief promotional pitch for international sales services.

Chapters

So I'm having Arabic ice cream, and it's a little bit different from Western ice cream. And if you take a look at the texture, it's a little sort of chewier, a little stickier. It's a little bit more sticky. Stickier, a little more elastic than Western ice cream. It actually has something in it called mastic, which is this resin from a tree that comes from Greece. And traditionally, Arabic ice cream, Turkish ice cream has used it, and it gives it also an interesting flavor. Well, the flavoring on this is traditional vanilla. With a little bit of cardamom, rosewater, saffron, and pistachios, and that's going to be your traditional flavor. I'd say more than any other. If you go to a place and they're offering you chocolate and strawberry ice cream in Jordan or Syria or an Arab country, they're probably just giving you regular Western-style ice cream, which it. Much more common than traditional ice cream in these countries today. This is sort of a dying-off art because it's not quite as, you know, fancy or baroque or modern as Häagen-Dazs or Western ice cream styles with multiple flavors and so on. But if you get a chance to have traditional Pistachio, cardamom, saffron, rosewater type ice cream. In an Arab country while you're traveling, you should take it up. When you decide it's time to grow your international sales, call us.