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to make gelato the morning of the day you want to serve it and harden it in the coldest part of your freezer, but all of these gelati will stay in excellent condition for at least a week if they are properly stored. We emphasize that you should use local produce at its peak of ripeness, or perhaps even one day over-ripe, to create the intense flavors that are famous in every city in the “boot” as well as in NYC. And invest in some plastic freezer containers with tight-fitting lids to use exclusively for your gelati, as savory flavors will linger in even well-cleaned containers, and the flavors of garlic or last night’s take-out Indian will mar your best work while the gelato sets up in your freezer.

The word gelato is derived from the verb gelare, which means to freeze, and basically, it is Italian ice cream. But gelato is often way lower in fat content than American ice cream, and it is usually served at a warmer temperature, resulting in a softer, more intensely flavorful product.

Styles of gelato vary throughout Italy, and elsewhere. There are industrial products made with water and flavored powders. You will see these piled high in the display case, wildly colored and full of baubles. Then there are the more artisanal styles of gelato, made with whole milk, real ingredients as flavoring, and egg yolks or cornstarch as thickeners.

At Otto, we infuse, or flavor, whole milk with ingredients such as vanilla beans, fresh mint, and high-quality chocolate. For most of our gelati, the milk is then combined with egg yolks, some heavy cream, and flavoring ingredients to make a cooked custard base, and we let the base mature overnight in the refrigerator to develop the flavors. We have a high-speed batch freezer that chills and churns the custard base very quickly. The gelato is extracted into metal containers and chilled for a few more hours in our blast freezer. Then we put the containers into a display case a few hours before service to temper them; the case is kept at 10° to 12°F.

We also serve a variety of bright, flavorful sorbetti. Fruit-based sorbets will be only as good as the fruit you make them with, so choose the most dead-ripe seasonal fruit you can find. If you will be using the fruit with its skin left on or grating the zest of citrus fruits, buy unsprayed organic fruit. Wash all fruit thoroughly. And churn the sorbet base as soon as it is thoroughly chilled, to maintain the fresh fruit flavor.

All fruits contain varying amounts of water and sugar, two of the basic elements of any sorbet. Some sorbets are sweetened with simple syrup and some with sugar, depending on the water content of the fruit. Too much water in a sorbet will yield an icy, weakly flavored product. Too much sugar will make it impossible to freeze the sorbet. Small amounts of lemon juice and salt will brighten and sharpen up the flavors. Alcohol can be added to sorbet as a flavor enhancer, but it also works as an “antifreeze,” so must be used with a light hand.

Coppette, essentially Italian sundaes, are the natural extension of pure gelato scoops and cups and a more evolved and thoughtful way of using the delicious building blocks different gelatos are for the pastry chef. In this chapter, we include some of our faves, which are truly Otto originals, all from the fertile, restless, and creative mind of gelataia Meredith Kurtzman. They will knock the socks off anyone you feed them to.

GELATO-MAKING TIPS

• It is best to chill a cooked gelato base quickly in an ice bath, and then to refrigerate it for at least 6 hours before churning it. Even better, let it chill and mature overnight.

• The gelato base should be very cold when you pour it into the ice cream maker. If it is warm, not only will it take longer to freeze it, but too much air will be incorporated in the process, resulting in an unpleasantly fluffy product.

• The gelato should be very thick, with an almost matte finish, when you stop churning it. Then let the gelato firm up in the freezer for at least an hour or two before serving.

• Homemade gelato is best served the day it is