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Gulf Today
31-07-2025
- General
- Gulf Today
The cold truth
While still living in the village of Chemlan in Lebanon's Chouf mountains, we had an old-fashioned wooden ice cream bucket with a handle to turn a tall metal container. We used to put our ice cream mixture into the container, place it in the bucket, surround it with ice sprinkled with salt and turn until frozen. Homemade ice cream was far more delicious and fun than driving to the town of Aley where a shop sold twenty types of ice cream, including yellow melon and mulberry as well as standard flavours vanilla and chocolate. We left the bucket behind when we became refuges in Cyprus during Lebanon's civil war. Several years ago, I was in Damascus' ancient Souq al Hamadiyah waiting for a shopkeeper to wrap up a parcel when I saw a riotous gathering further down the street. I wondered if this was a political or economic protest as Syria was experiencing hard times and went to see what was happening. The 'riot' was outside the Bakdash parlour where customers had gathered to buy ice cream. Founded in 1895, Bakdash is famous for its traditional mastic-flavoured ice cream manually churned with wooden paddles. The milk-cream-mastic mixture was initially chilled with ice brought from the mountains. In 2013, Bakdash opened a branch in Amman to serve Syrians settled there and the wider community. Earlier I had witnessed a smaller crowd at an ice cream parlour in the residential Karrada quarter of Baghdad. During May 2017, this proved to be a deadly location when a Daesh suicide bomber killed 26 people and wounded dozens as they broke the Ramadan fast with ice cream. While in Aleppo in Syria, I have always paused at Mahrosa to enjoy a dish of milk pudding topped with vanilla ice cream sprinkled with crushed pistachios. My driver, Joseph, could not visit Aleppo without this ice cream fix at this parlour although there are dozens more ice cream shops in the city, Syria's commercial hub. Ice cream has long been a global food just as coffee has become a global beverage. While coffee, which originated in Yemen, is prepared and served in multiple ways, the basic ice cream recipe is the same. It includes milk, cream, and sugar and multiple flavourings and fruits. Frozen desserts long predate coffee. Historians suggest they first appeared in 550BC in Persia, which had a very sophisticated and advanced civilisation. A first century AD Roman cookbook included recipes for deserts chilled with snow. Between the 8th-12th centuries the Japanese made a desert with flavoured syrup and ice shaved from blocks stored during the winter months. During China's Tang dynasty (618-907) a frozen goat's milk dish frozen called 'susan' became popular. During the Yuan dynasty (1206-1368), imperial chefs made another frozen dessert called 'iced cheese' flavoured with fruit, honey and wine. Legend holds that Moghul Emperor Kublai Khan gave the recipe to the Italian Silk Road traveller Marco Polo (1254-1324) who took it back to Italy. In the 16th century, India's Moghul rulers brought ice from the Hindu Kush mountains to make kulfi, a dish made with cream flavoured with saffron, cardamom, rose water, or mango which remains popular today in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Gulf. The 17th century saw ice cream introduced to France and England while the confection crossed the Atlantic to North America and was consumed by founding fathers of the United States George Washington, Tomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. In 1866, ice cream reached New Zealand. Ice cream became popular around the world during the first half of the 20th century after hosts of vendors produced and promoted their own varieties. Ice cream has even become a political weapon in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Ben & Jerry's, founded by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in 1978 in the US state of Vermont has become a global brand. In July 2021, Ben & Jerry's announced it would end sales in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory and Israeli settlements which are illegal under international law. Ben & Jerry's argued sales in Palestinian lands is inconsistent with the values of the firm which supports a number of charities as well as action to counter global warming. The Republican Trump administration is currently using ice cream imports as a means to condemn rival Democrats. The office of the US Trade Representative wrote on July 20 on X, 'America had a trade surplus in ice cream in 2020 under President [Donald] Trump's leadership, but that surplus turned into a trade deficit of $40.6 million under President [Joe] Biden's watch.' The ice cream deficit is with Japan, South Africa, the European Union, Brazil, Canada, and Turkey. Although from these countries, imports count for a small portion of ice cream consumed in the US which remains a major exporter. From 1995 to 2020, ice cream exports earned the US from $20 million to $160 million, according to the online platform Observatory of Economic Complexity. The chief customers were Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Canada. In 2021 and 2022 the surplus disappeared and an ice cream deficit of $92 million and $32 million appeared. Italy has become the chief provider of imported ice cream. However, imports amounted to a tiny fraction, 0.18 per cent of the total, in 2024 while the US exported about 1 percent of total domestic production, 1.31 billion gallons during that year. Meanwhile, US individual consumption of ice cream has fallen from 8.3 kilos a year in 1975 to 5.3 kilos by 2023. Photo: Reuters
New Statesman
11-06-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
Syria may be a broken country, but it's energised by hope
Workers at the 19th-century Bakdash ice-cream parlour, in the Hamidiyah market, old Damascus. Photo by Louai Beshara / AFP via Getty Images The roundabout outside the Sheraton Hotel in Damascus has a new electronic sign: 'Thank you President Trump. With your support we will Make Syria Great Again.' There is a new leadership in town here, and comprehensive sanctions relief – following a meeting in May between Donald Trump and Syria's President Ahmed al-Sharaa – has the potential to provide the biggest boost to the country since the fall of Bashar al-Assad's government in December 2024. It is more than 16 years since I came to Damascus on a fruitless mission to try to persuade the then president, Assad, of the risks of Iran's nuclear programme to regional stability and as a block on Syria's desire to engage with the West. The intervening period has been marked by one of the most brutal armed conflicts in modern memory. Around seven million Syrians are refugees outside the country, predominantly in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, but also in Germany and Sweden. Around 22,000 Syrians have been admitted to the UK. The country's infrastructure has been ruined by the intense fighting. There are bombed-out buildings across tracts of land within a few minutes' drive of Damascus's city centre. Hospitals, schools, bridges and homes have been destroyed. Just across the square from Aleppo's historic Citadel there are ruins where once stood grand buildings. The UN Development Programme estimates reconstruction costs could reach $1trn. Then there is the mental toll on the families of the 500,000 Syrians killed and the countless imprisoned, wounded, tortured and 'disappeared'. The consequences of the conflict on refugees appeared as headline news in 2015, and after the 2022 earthquake across the Turkey-Syria border, there was a surge of international attention and funding. But until the surprise overthrow of the Assad regime, the country had dropped out of public consciousness. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) – the organisation for which I am CEO – was unusual in keeping Syria in the top ranks of our 'emergency watchlist'. Most states in the region and beyond were coming to terms with an Assad government. The war was supposedly over. But impunity and cruelty don't build legitimacy or support. As Robert D Kaplan writes in his recent book, Waste Land, 'The more control there is… the greater may be the eventual reaction against it.' Assad's forces melted away, and Damascus was taken with hardly a shot being fired. I was in Syria to say thank you to the IRC staff for their work over 12 years of conflict, to understand for myself the scale of the challenge – 16.5 million people are thought to be in need of humanitarian assistance – and to take a measure of how we can help. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe The IRC employed over 800 Syrians during the conflict. Our humanitarian focus has been healthcare, protection, education, and economic recovery, helping around one million Syrians per year. We were unable to register to work in government-controlled areas, and so for most of the conflict worked in north-western Syria, in Idlib and Aleppo provinces – places dominated by armed opposition groups, accessed via crossing from Turkey – and the north-east of Syria, where Kurdish-led groups are in control. There, American and Turkish forces circle each other warily, while Islamic State remnants continue to conduct attacks. The IRC supported 36 hospitals across the two provinces, and I visited Idlib Surgical Hospital, where our teams ran services, organised pharmaceutical supplies and offered specialist support in areas like maternal health. The patients told me about lost husbands – the personal cost of the war. But when I asked whether they were hopeful for the future, most smiled. Today, such conversations are punctuated with the renewable energy of hope and possibility. The buildings are dilapidated and the equipment is run down, but health services in previously opposition-held areas like Idlib are better than in areas that were under Assad's control. I saw the difference on a visit to one of two working hospitals in Homs, where doctors said money had been frittered away by the former regime. Their patients were desperate for the basics. Markets in Damascus, Idlib and Aleppo were alive again. The famous ice cream store, Bakdash, in the old souk, was packed, as it was when I visited in 2008. So far about 450,000 refugees have returned to Syria. The government has to try to achieve a series of daunting policy and political combinations. Improved security for all communities alongside accountability for crimes committed under Assad. Economic renewal to create the funds for social improvement. Delivery for its political base while making good on promises to people who suffered in the former government-held areas. Improving services, rebuilding infrastructure, and creating opportunities for the millions of refugees who may hope to return to a new Syria some day. I put questions on politics, economics and relations with Trump, to President Al-Sharaa and his foreign minister. They were candid about the scale of the challenges: for example, the sanctions relief has not yet translated into investment and economic growth. They emphasised that they had no desire to quarrel with neighbours, including Israel, which has repeatedly launched air strikes on Syrian territory. Before the war Syria was a middle-income country, allied to Russia and Iran but beckoned to modernise by the West. The last 15 years have been worse than tragic. But the Assad family finally met its match at home, not abroad. Maybe, just maybe, Syria can be great again. [See also: Rachel Reeves' economic credibility is on the line] Related
San Francisco Chronicle
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
A stretchy, hard-to-find ice cream arrives in the Bay Area
In the Bay Area, we are blessed with ice cream. Soft serve; ice cream made with Japanese dairy; maximalist scoops studded with chocolate-dipped potato chips; floats with fermented fruit sodas; anchovy sundaes; pints created by a pastry chef who studied at a gelato university in Italy. We have incredible Indian, Turkish, Mexican and Persian ice cream. Yet the region has long lacked booza, an Arab ice cream known for its distinctly stretchy texture. No longer: Roast & Toast, a new cafe in Berkeley, has become one of the rare local sources for the treat. Roast & Toast opened at 1746 Shattuck Ave. in January, with emerald-green walls and Arabic music playing over the speakers, but only recently started selling fresh-made booza. Owner Fadi Alhour, a native of Palestine, noticed booza trending on TikTok in the Middle East, thanks in part to a viral song in which an employee from a Dubai booza shop rhythmically chants the treat's main ingredients while workers use giant mallets to pound the frozen treat into creamy, stretchy existence. 'It's trending,' he said. 'So many people are asking for it.' Unless you're looking for it, you might miss the booza in Roast & Toast's glass scoop case, tucked among tubs of salted caramel and matcha gelato. It's dense and chewy — spoonfuls of booza stretch elastically like a seductive cheese pull. Roast & Toast tops it with chopped pistachio and kataifi, shreds of sweet phyllo dough. Booza, sometimes referred to as the world's first ice cream, dates back to the 15th century. It was popularized by Bakdash, a famed shop in Syria that opened in 1885. Booza is typically made with milk, cream, sugar, salep (orchid root tubers) and mastic, a natural tree resin also used to make gum. While most ice cream is churned, booza is traditionally pounded by hand with a large pestle. Alhour, though, believes the pounding is 'just for show' (and indeed, it's part of the social media attraction). He argues the mastic and salep are what sets booza's texture apart. He's been tinkering with the recipe for months, first on a home ice cream machine, and then a fancy gelato cart displayed prominently inside the cafe. He grinds the mastic by hand in a mortar and pestle — he learned an electric grinder causes it to clump and stick together — and mixes it with pure, powdered salep sourced from Turkey. A little goes a long way: He mixes about a teaspoon of each with milk, cream, sugar and rose water for the base mixture. After 10 minutes in the gelato machine, the booza transforms from loose liquid to bulbous, marshmallow-like density. It is so thick that it's broken the machine multiple times. Roast & Toast serves an original booza flavor and another with cardamom and rose water. Alhour writes down flavor ideas when they come to him; future experiments may include dark chocolate, matcha or brownies. He had never made ice cream before this, nor run a food business. He previously operated a mechanic shop and a shipping business, where he would often make espresso for friends. The coffee interest begat a cafe, then one that served sandwiches, then ice cream. Before Roast & Toast, booza has been underrepresented but not totally absent in the Bay Area. Some Middle Eastern grocery stores in the region sell pints of booza from a Texas company. Similarly chewy Marash-style ice cream is on the menu at San Francisco Mediterranean restaurant Dalida; fresh booza can also be found at Levant Dessert, a Middle Eastern bakery in Menlo Park, Levant owner Maya Fezzani, grew up in Lebanon and Syria and has memories of eating booza at Bakdash. She's been making it for several years in Menlo Park. Her shop doesn't have the capacity for hand-pounding, so here it's churned, flavored with orange blossom and rolled into a pistachio-covered log. Fezzani has mostly kept things classic flavor-wise, though she is working on an apricot version. She also seized on the viral Dubai chocolate trend to make a sundae layered with booza, chocolate, kataifi, pistachio and tahini. Whether booza will catch on in the U.S. remains to be seen. 'It's up to the market,' Alhour said. But, like in the Middle East, a video on Roast & Toast's Instagram has already been drawing in customers.
