{"id":256280,"date":"2019-09-09T07:00:48","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T10:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/?p=256280"},"modified":"2019-09-15T22:55:26","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T01:55:26","slug":"brazilian-and-palestinian-create-arab-gelato-brand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/brazilian-and-palestinian-create-arab-gelato-brand\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazilian and Palestinian create Arab gelato brand"},"content":{"rendered":"

S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 The creations by Alaa Kaseem and Luciana Tucci are flavorful and unusual. The pair brought together the Italian art of gelato and Arab tastes to fund Al Kaseem<\/a> Gelato. The brand from S\u00e3o Paulo is the result of the Brazilian\u2019s skill mixed with ideas by the Palestinian born in Syria. They met three years ago in the pub Al Janiah, where Alaa works as a manager, and Luciana was a client.<\/p>\n

He already worked in the food industry in Syria and arrived in Brazil four years ago. Luciana worked with a friend at a gelateria, where she produced the ice creams. From the encounter came the idea to innovate the market, including an Arab touch to the product. \u201cFlavors I made before were more common. He talked about flavors they eat like dates, apricots, figs, coffee with cardamom. And we don\u2019t see these ice creams around here. I said, \u2018Nice, we should mix Italian ice cream with Arab flavors!\u2019\u201d said Luciana, explaining gelato is a lower-fat, more consistent ice cream.<\/p>\n

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Now the brand\u00a0 features 13 Arab-flavored ice creams<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tests to develop the gelato’s unusual recipes started in 2018. \u201cSome flavors I made in December. We gave our friend ice creams as a wedding gift. I made banana with dates; that was the first recipe,\u201d Luciana said. \u201cThankfully, the owner of this Endossa (store where the product is sold) was there. She tasted it and tried to discover who created it and said she wanted to put it for sale here,\u201d Alla said.<\/p>\n

They accepted the invitation to work as a \u201cfood bike\u201d in the store, which operates with collaborative trade. Last March, Al Kaseem Gelato opened in the location in Vila Mariana in S\u00e3o Paulo. \u201cWe started here, and people liked and started asking for more, even for delivery. Business grew and I said: \u2018Now the bike won\u2019t do it anymore,\u2019\u201d Alla said.<\/p>\n

So, around a month ago, the pair opened a kiosk in the same address. Still inside Endossa store, the space serves Arab ice creams, tea, coffee and pastries. The food bikes from the beginning still work itinerantly and attend events. Now Al Kaseem Gelato sells for eight restaurants in S\u00e3o Paulo, including Al Janiah.<\/p>\n

Recreating Arab flavors<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Ice cream parlor in Souq Al Hamidiyah in Syria\u2019s capital city serves the traditional Damascene ice cream<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Out of the parlor\u2019s thirteen gelato flavors, the pair highlights Buza \u00c1rabe. \u201cThe only place where this ice cream is sold is Damascus, Syria. The store that invented this ice cream is very old,\u201d explains Alaa, referring to the traditional Damascus Ice Cream Parlor. With ingredients like cream and pistachios, but without a recipe to follow, they worked on tests. \u201cHe showed me a video on how to do it. I watched over twenty times and really wanted to taste it. I asked, how are going to Syria to eat it? And he said, let\u2019s try to do it, I know how it is, I\u2019ve tasted it!\u201d Luciana recalled.<\/p>\n

After a whole day testing it, they managed to reach the flavor Alaa remembered. \u201cWe stood at the kitchen from 8 am to 6 pm, trying to nail the flavor,\u201d says the Arab, who took the product to friends who had already tasted the original treat. \u201cThey said: \u2018Wow, it\u2019s the same!\u2019 We thougth, \u2018Well, we nailed it!\u201d explains Luciana.<\/p>\n

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Apricots are some of the main ingredients at Al Kaseem Gelato<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Having graduated and worked her whole life in the corporate world, making gelatos became a passion. \u201cI started working with a friend in administration, and a year and nine months ago I took the classes and it worked. I started creating. It\u2019s an alchemy making ice creams, a math, and I started creating flavors,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Now they work on establishing the brand\u2019s name and acquire a physical space just for them. \u201cThe goal is to grow, so we give a freezer with Al Kaseem\u2019s logo for the restaurants that buy from us. We want to carry the brand and create a partnership with the restaurants. We are working to get there. We\u2019ll soon have an Al Kaseem\u2019s headquarter,\u201d Alaa said on the plan to buy equipment for production and its own kitchen.<\/p>\n

For now, they are working on launching more gelato flavors for the summer. One of the ideas is using \u201cmiski,\u201d a plant resin Arabs consume with food and, Alaa says, with many ice cream creations, \u201cnothing tastes like it.\u201d The traditional Alaska Ice Cream Parlor in the neighborhood of Para\u00edso in S\u00e3o Paulo used to serve miski ice cream.<\/p>\n

Translated by Guilherme Miranda<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thais Sousa \/ ANBA<\/div>\n
Press Release<\/div>\n
Louai Beshara\/AFP<\/div>\n
Press Release<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From coffee with cardamom to dates, Alaa Kaseem and Luciana Tucci mix Arab taste and culture into a gelato brand that was born in S\u00e3o Paulo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2324,"featured_media":256253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[9649,11117,11134,11132,6808,11135,11133,9897,10080,9611],"class_list":{"0":"post-256280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-arab-en","9":"tag-al-kaseem-gelato","10":"tag-al-kaseem-gelato-en","11":"tag-arab-gelatos","12":"tag-arabe-en-2","13":"tag-gelato-en","14":"tag-ice-creams","15":"tag-palestine-en","16":"tag-sao-paulo-en","17":"tag-syria-en"},"wps_subtitle":"From coffee with cardamom to dates, Alaa Kaseem and Luciana Tucci mix Arab taste and culture into a gelato brand that was born in S\u00e3o Paulo.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2324"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}