SOUP TO NUTS: Meredith Goad

Here's the scoop

Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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	Staff photo by Gordon Chibroski Ren Floyd stirs the simmering cream mixture and Kristie Green cracks the eggs as they team up on a batch of organic coffee gelato at Maple's Organics. Green says it's the only certified-organic ice cream parlor in the state.
	Staff photo by Gordon Chibroski Jen Libby's daughter, Chloe, sampled the gelato and fund it to her liking.
	Staff photo by Gordon Chibroski Kristie Green, right, co-owner with Ren Floyd, makes a cone for a customer at Maple's Organics, a new ice cream parlor on Forest Avenue.

There are days when I do realize what a great job I have, as so many people often tell me.

I had one of those days recently visiting Kristie Green and Ren Floyd, who this spring opened a new organic ice creamery and bakery on Forest Avenue.

I watched with interest as they stirred the milk and cracked the eggs for some small, handmade batches of vanilla bean and Maine maple gelato. I listened as Green explained in detail the differences between Italian-style gelato and other ice cream, and talked about her passion for this work. Best of all, I got to taste some of the finished product.

Maple's Organics, at 796 Forest Ave., creates gelato-style ice creams, sorbetti and baked goods - cookies, brownies, berry-filled half-moon pies - that are all certified organic. I was most interested in the gelato, so Green and Floyd agreed to whip up a couple of batches while I watched.

Maple's (the business is named after Green's dog) is located in a house that's been converted into an ice cream parlor with a commercial kitchen. When I arrived at the kitchen door, there were two huge pots steaming on the stove. One contained milk for the vanilla ice cream, the other milk and maple syrup.

"With both of them, we start with whole milk," Green said. "And for whatever the mystery of ice cream alchemy, for some reason ice cream's better if you boil the milk first. We get our maple syrup from Strawberry Hill Farm in Skowhegan. We use the darkest one they have, which is the extra dark amber."

Green and Floyd make about 250 pints of ice cream a week, in addition to the three-gallon tubs they use for scooping up cones for customers in their store. Their ice cream is also available at Royal River Natural Foods in Freeport and Whole Grocer in Portland.

Less-expensive ice creams start with a powdered mix and have a lot of air beat into them. Gelato-style ice creams begin with a custard base and have very little air in them.

"Cooking the base is a really time-consuming step, and it makes this more of an artisanal process," Green said. "Gelato should have really creamy ice cream and a nice, dense texture without having a ton of butterfat."

After the milk and syrup start boiling, Green adds a little salt for flavor and to raise the freezing point of the mixture.

Both Green and Floyd have worked in local restaurants. Green hails from a restaurant family: Her grandfather opened the original Angelone's Pizza in the mid-1950s, and her aunts still run the remaining three stores. But before opening Maple's Organics, Green was working as a teacher, Floyd as an electrician.

Green daydreamed about opening her own natural foods business for years, and ice cream seemed like a natural fit since both Green and Floyd eat a lot of the stuff.

"We both try to eat organic food, we try to eat local food whenever we can," Green said. "We don't usually eat a lot of refined sugar, so there was nowhere to get ice cream. And last summer, you know, we like the ice cream, so we found that every day we were going out to the store to get Ben and Jerry's because there wasn't any other option."

As she started thinking about the idea of opening an organic ice cream store, Green found she was so excited she couldn't sleep.

Her original dream was to buy only local organic ingredients, but she soon found that organic milk is a tight commodity.

"What's gotten us is there's not enough organic dairy farmers," she said. "There's more demand than supply. And the processing equipment for dairy is very expensive, so all the farmers sell their stuff to Horizon or Organic Valley. Those are the two big national processors."

Green said she hopes to have a local supplier of organic milk by June.

"Organic vanilla beans are also very hard to come by," Green said as she stripped open some vanilla from Madagascar and added it to the milk concoction.

After a few minutes, the room is filled with the rhythmic thwack of eggs being expertly cracked against the side of a bowl. The couple's had a lot of practice.

"We go through about 50 or 60 dozen eggs a week right now," Green said. "We get the eggs from Sparrow Farm up in Gardiner.

By now the intoxicating odors of vanilla and maple are thick in the air.

Next comes the beating and tempering of the eggs so they won't scramble when they're added to the hot milk. Raw sugar is also added to the pots at this point.

Once everything's in the pots, the temperature has to be brought up to 160 degrees so that the eggs cook safely. But there's cream on hand that will have to added quickly once that temperature is reached in order to cool the mixture back down.

Again, the idea is to keep the eggs from scrambling. It's a delicate operation.

"The maple, because it doesn't have sugar added, there's not a lot to bring the temperature down, so it's a little more precarious," Green said. "It also is hotter because of the maple syrup."

The eggs scrambled a lot when Green and Floyd were first starting out, but it's a rare occurrence now.

Once the batches are ready, they sit overnight in the refrigerator downstairs. The vanilla beans stay in the vanilla while it ages. The longer a batch sits, the creamier it gets.

The next step is putting it into the small batch freezer in the kitchen, which can freeze 16 cups at a time. When it comes out, it's at about 28 degrees and has the consistency of soft-serve ice cream. This is the point where crystallized ginger would be added to make ginger ice cream, or fresh, puréed bananas for the banana ice cream. The peanut butter gelato is flavored with organic peanut butter from California.

Another big difference between gelato and regular ice cream is that gelato features strong, single flavorings, often with added fruit or nuts. To make cappuccino gelato, for example, Green adds five cups of ground espresso roast coffee to the milk after it boils. The toasted coconut flavor has coconut milk added to the custard base. The dark chocolate is flavored with cocoa.

The gelato then goes into a three-gallon tub and into the deep freeze, which brings it to a temperature of 15 degrees below zero. If it gets cold very quickly, ice crystals don't have as much time to grow.

"One of the big things with quality ice cream is ice crystal formation," Green said. "You want to have small, evenly dispersed crystals. The egg base makes that easier."

You know how much better ice cream seems to taste when it has sat on the counter for a while? That's another advantage of gelato - it's supposed to be served at a warmer temperature. After sitting at 15 below for a while, the tub has to sit out for at least a couple of hours before it's scoopable.

Since Maple's opened, the toasted coconut and Maine maple flavors have turned out to be the biggest customer favorites.

You might think that being around ice cream all day has soured Green and Floyd on the stuff. No way.

Green said she still eats some daily.

"I really like at the end of the day to make an ice cream cone and just eat it slowly," she said.

To see a sample menu for Maple's, visit www.maplesorganics.com.

Staff Writer Meredith Goad can be contacted at 791 - 6332 or at:

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