A part of Orense’s gastronomy died a little when the last of its two most traditional ice cream parlors, La Ibense and El Cortijo, closed. Seven years ago María Caldelas, with a long history in the hospitality sector, decided to become the heir to an artisanal way of making, adding several advantages that have made her product unique: “We use organic milk and local products to be a healthy alternative to yogurt. ice cream, industrial ice cream and other processed products. As I had a large workshop in the center of the city, I got a small place on Rúa do Paseo and I started there.”
People came to his store and word of mouth made it an unavoidable point for the ice cream lover. Fame reached restaurants and hotels and with it, the boom: “They asked me if I could make ice cream with a specific flavor, not so much for dessert but to accompany dishes, thus the idea of ??gourmet ice cream was born. We put work and imagination into it and today we have more than 400 references.” Naturally, she also makes conventional products (vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, cream) but today María works side by side with some of the most renowned chefs in Galicia – Pepe Vieira, Miguel González, Pepe Solla – always looking for new and unexplored flavors with a workshop available to the chef who brings him a brilliant idea: “If the product is good, the ice cream will be good,” says María Caldelas.
One of the first creations until reaching the present experimental game was goat cheese ice cream, mustard ice cream, and tomato and basil ice cream to accompany salads. Among the most recent, corn with olive oil and Himalayan salt. In the middle it has built a legend with such surprising flavors as octopus á feira, pineapple with cilantro, Savel cheese, mango with chili, quince, boletus, queimada, codium seaweed, 1906 beer and several wines from the Méndez-Rojo family (whose Dolores Redondo winery describes in All this I will give you, a novel that takes place in the Ribeira Sacra and was given to her by Planeta). He even made mussels working with a cannery. Particularly successful is what she calls “flavor of Ourense”, made with the city’s famous thermal waters and highly sought after by spas and resorts. Of course, her work is supported by the Galicia Calidade seal.
It should be noted that all their ice creams taste like what their name says because they are made with that primary product. There are no added aromas. No preservatives or colorants either. There is no trick or more cardboard than the little sign that says, for example, pulpo á feira: “One day, chatting with Paco Gómez, the best pulpeiro in Galicia and, therefore, in Spain, it occurred to us to try it. We worked in the workshop for several days with great effort until we achieved it; Before there was a sorbet that was made with the water from cooking the octopus and that… Anyway, it’s not the same. We do not use water but a milk-based cream and we transfer the octopus á feira recipe to the ice cream: octopus, paprika, oil and salt. As it is”. This product is usually served as an accompaniment to seafood salpicón, ceviche or octopus carpaccio.
María is especially proud of ’13 lights’: “It is the name of one of the most powerful, if not the largest, solidarity events held in Galicia: in the last edition, more than 200,000 euros were collected for children without resources. “I made a chocolate cake that I soaked in Brincos, Méndez-Rojo rosé wine, egg and lemon shortening, a layer of chocolate with PetaZetas (so that the explosions in the mouth suggest the 13 lights) and a layer of gold and dehydrated raspberry” .
La Central Heladera is also the author of Beso Beach ice cream. From Galicia to Formentera. And this is a perfect example of conceptual ice cream, that is, personalized for a specific client: “We argue it in the following way: the kiss can be bitter like orange and tangerine, spicy like ginger or aphrodisiac like cinnamon.” Thus, today you can find this ice cream in Beso Beach in Formentera but also in Ibiza, Marbella, Sitges, Estepona, Mallorca and Sierra Nevada.
It also makes ice creams based on desserts from the geographic area of ??the restaurant that serves them. This is the case of a famous establishment in the Trives region: “A sponge cake called ‘bica’ is very typical there, similar to the roscón de Reyes but more buttery,” explains María, or that of an olive oil producer from Jaén that He wanted ice cream with his own fruit and Iberian ham, half with the Montaraz brand. Wineries are demanding it at an avant-garde moment when tastings need new textures: “For five liters of ice cream we use three bottles, so customers try that wine in a different way.”
