Two Fife businesses have teamed up once again to bring gelato fans a taste of Tayside.
Jannettas Gelateria in St Andrews has recently brought back three flavours, including one using Tayberries grown on Pittormie Fruit Farm near Cupar.
With a unique taste, the Tayberry gelato will be on the gelateria’s menu for the next few weeks and customers can ask for a tasting sample if they want to try out the flavour before buying.
Co-owner of Jannettas Gelateria, Owen Hazel, said that, though it’s not the first time they’ve used the Tayberry in the form of gelato, they like to use as much local produce as possible when it comes to flavours.
He said: “The Tayberry gelato isn’t a new thing for us as we’ve made it before, but we’ve brought it back after rejigging it a wee bit.
“We use Pittormie’s produce quite a lot and Euan has been growing the Tayberry there for a while so we get it through him. It’s lovely but has quite a sharp flavour and is quite unusual. It’s just something very distinctive and we really enjoy making flavours with local produce and you can’t get much more local than that.
“Using the Tayberry was just an obvious path for us to go down, to be honest. I think we’ve been using it for about three or four years now and it was the name of it that really caught my attention. It was also because it was available locally and had a nice story to it, and it’s got a lovely flavour. It tastes quite sharp, and I think it’s becoming more popular.”
Completely natural
With so many flavours available at Jannettas on a regular basis, the more unusual ones, like the Tayberry, aren’t as popular when the shop gets busy, though Owen insists that customers are always welcome to taste a flavour first if they aren’t sure.
He added: “We have a situation here at Jannettas where, although we’ve got 54 flavours, at times when the queue is quite long, people tend to get what they’re familiar with and they don’t want to get it wrong because they aren’t likely to queue up again. That’s usually in the height of the summer though it’s not as common at this time of the year.
“We can give tastes of flavours as well if people want to try it. But it looks lovely and it has a very rich colour to it. The flavour is completely natural as well as we haven’t added any colouring, which I think make the colour a bit more robust and it stands out in the cabinet.
“We have 54 flavours and about 45 of them are there all the time, with the others on rotation. You couldn’t not have the mint chocolate chip, raspberry ripple, chocolate and strawberry though and we will always have them.”
Unusual flavours
Owen and his team aren’t strangers to creating products that use unusual flavours.
“We’ll keep the Tayberry flavour out for a wee while. We tend to work on new flavours at this time of year when there’s a bit more time. What generally happens is that we get an idea, we’ll try it in a very small batch in case it doesn’t go well, and sometimes we get it right first time,” said Owen.
“We’ve done some unusual flavours such as orange and mascarpone, the Tayberry to a certain extent, and white chocolate pistachio rose. I think people like to see we’ve got them, but they tend not to have them just in case they get it wrong. But I think the benefit we have is that if anyone in the town is craving any sort of ice cream flavour, they know they’re likely to get it from us than many other places as we have such a wide range.
“There are a few differences between gelato and ice cream. One of them is that there is slightly less fat in a gelato than there is in ice cream, which means the flavour is slightly more enhanced. The other difference is that the gelato is made in a machine that has less air than an ice cream one – it isn’t as whipped as an ice cream may be. It’s also generally made in much smaller batches.”
Homegrown
Having first originated at the James Hutton Institute in Dundee, the Tayberry is still grown by Euan Cameron at Pittormie Fruit Farm, where Owen and other local businesses source much of their produce from.
Euan said: “A Tayberry is a cross between a raspberry and a bramble so it tastes a wee bit like both but there are also tummelberries and loganberries, which are the same mix but taste different. However, Tayberries have a real distinct perfume to them and it’s that smell you really notice first. It’s like a hint of raspberry, but the true flavour is really hard to describe.
“The earliest I’ve ever harvested them is about June 25 but it’s usually early July that we harvest them and we get about a four or five week season. By around the August 10 that’s us finishing up with the Tayberries. Last year, the weather was really nice in April and May so it was a bit earlier in June we started harvesting them.
“I think you can grow Tayberries in other places but they were bread at the James Hutton Institute in Dundee.
“Owen and Nicola at Janettas take some Tayberries every year, as well as the Williams Brothers brewery in Alloa for their Roisin beer. Both that and the gelato are probably the most unusual ways in which we’ve heard of our Tayberries being used.”
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