Due to the arrival of my recent best friend, toy, I have been googling everything about ice cream, making ice cream, and making dirty ice cream. DIRTY? Everyone who lived here in our country for sure has tasted some version of what we call the dirty ice cream, and it’s clean as a whistle. Though it’s called dirty, it isn’t really. And when you say its name, it’s more with affection and excitement for that treat than when you say it when you see my ate’s room.
The local ice cream, also known as sorbetes, has been one of my childhood favorites (until now), and I always ensured I had the (then) P5 ready, more expensive than the usual P2.50 because I prefer the one in sugar cone, not in the wafer one. Flavors ranged from cheese, to chocolate, and more recently, cookies and cream. It’s made the same way as regular ice cream but with a mix of the cheaper kakang gata (coconut cream) that lends its sweet creamy taste to the ice cream that makes it different. I’m not sure if anywhere else they still practice stuffing the ice cream container in an alternating ice/salt/ice combination, but for sure it is different. And the dirty part? Well, anything being sold in the streets is bound to get dirty. The oh so famous kartela with the bell that you can hear streets away. But hey, it’s covered, and kept clean. (If only manong sorbetero had alcohol in his kartela to clean his hands with during service. Wait, have you ever seen a manang sorbetera?)
So there. It’s not dirty, but just a bit localized. So who wins? I’ll be happy with both any day, as long as it’s in a sugar or belgian cone!
Domestic Urbanite 