The sweet and elastic Turkish ice cream
Dondurma is the typical Turkish ice cream. Its basic ingredients are usually: cream or whole milk, whipped cream, sugar, salep (a flour derived from the dried tubers of some wild orchids, with a thickening function, which makes the ice cream semi-solid and resistant to melting even at high summer temperatures) and chews (an aromatic vegetable resin obtained from mastic, which serves to give the mixture its distinctive aroma and its characteristic gummy, sticky and stringy consistency, similar to that of chewing gum).
The ice cream makers of Istanbul
When you walk through the narrow streets of Beyoglu, a stop in front of the stalls of the Istanbul ice cream makers is inevitable. Who are not only ice cream makers but also skilled jugglers. With all customers, children and not, prone to jokes or not, they enjoy making magic with cones. They pretend to drop the ice cream, not to be able to detach it from the iron stick with which they manipulate their cake, they offer the cone and immediately afterwards they pull it towards them. In short, a fun for some, a price to pay for those who want to enjoy their ice cream immediately and in peace.
The taste of this Turkish street food is very sweet and above all elastic, different from the classic Italian ice cream.
