When I moved to Paris, I was living in a small rooftop apartment. I was quite naïve, and a number of times, someone who was dirty with soot would knock on my door and ask me if I wanted my fireplace cleaned. My apartment did, indeed, have a fireplace, but I never used it, so I declined. One chimney sweep was extremely persistent and told me it was the law that I had to have my fireplace cleaned, and tried to force his way into my apartment. So I pushed him out, shutting the door behind me, and went downstairs to talk to the guardienne of the building. Guardiennes are forces to be reckoned with. When I arrived in my apartment building, my friends said I needed to tip her right away. She hadn’t done anything, and she wasn’t very friendly, so I was perplexed what I was tipping her for. A few days later, I learned: I asked her to let an electrician in when I wasn’t home and handed her a €20 bill for her trouble, which was the best twenty euros I’ve spent in France. For the next few months, she always greeted me with a big smile, and I got my mail, which she delivered every day. (In those days, not all buildings had mailboxes, and I know more than one person who, for some reason, doesn’t always get all their mail.) Even better, I soon got my name included on the list of tenants posted in the lobby of the building, which usually takes a least a year, if you’re lucky.
I later learned that the guardienne,* in addition to taking care of the building, their other job is to be the conduit for any and all gossip in the building. Unlike doormen in New York who are known for their discretion, you will probably be talked about, and I always got an earful about several of the neighbors when I ran into her in the lobby. Close to Christmas she became especially friendly and I tipped her generously…enough to last through March, until I had to find some other reason to hand her money. Guardiennes, I learned, are like vending machines: You needed to keep feeding them money to get the goods.
You don’t mess around with guardiennes either, and when I told ours about the chimney sweep who was trying to rip me off (I learned it’s one of the numerous door knocking scams in Paris), she ripped him a new one. He was an arnaquer, a word that’s important to know if you live in Paris. It was one of the various scams you need to look out for, like the “found” gold ring on the street, people asking you to sign petitions, and getting ridiculously overcharged by shady locksmiths when you get locked out, with people getting a reasonable quote to have the door unlocked, then being handed a bill for €2000 to €3000 when the job is finished.
I was reminded of that chimney sweep incident recently, when I was looking at the 100+ bottles of liquor that I have on hand from writing Drinking French. I loved writing that book, and it was fun testing and developing the recipes, but unlike bartenders who have lots of bottles at their disposal, when I wanted to test a recipe with, say, 1/2 ounce of Dubonnet or Scotch whisky, I had to buy a bottle of Dubonnet or Scotch. (In case you’re wondering why I included Scotch in a book about what French people drink, French people are the biggest consumers of whisky in the world.) After writing the book, not only do I have a lot of bottles of alcohol, I started being gifted even more bottles. And my collection continues to grow, outpacing our ability to drink it all.
In spite of the amount of whisky that’s consumed in France, French people aren’t as fond of cocktails as Americans. Part of the reason is that a glass of wine or a draft beer in a café hovers at around €5-€7 ($6-$8), whereas cocktails start at €12-€14 ($14-$16). In related news, beer has surpassed wine consumption at home in France. When I was writing the book, a friend in the spirits business, who has a cocktail bar in Dijon, told me that another reason people in France prefer wine and beer is they drink longer, starting right after work and sometimes not finishing until midnight, even on weeknights. I’m always surprised to pass cafés at 11:45pm on a Tuesday night and seeing them packed with people. Don’t they have to be at work the next morning?
Looking at the bottles I have crammed on several shelves, there are a few bottles of Scotch tucked in there. I’m not a big Scotch drinker but hate to see them languishing. Then I remembered chimney sweep’s gelato (gelato spazzacamino, in Italian), which Marcella Hazan wrote about in her book The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Marcella is having a moment again, with a new documentary that recently came out:  It’s not available to watch here due to international rights, but Marcella and I shared an editor, and I did get to meet her a few times. The first time was when she came to Chez Panisse and the hostess hung her extravagant, ankle-length mink coat on the coat rack next to where I worked in the pastry station. (We always had to be careful not to get caramel or butter on the guests’ coats.) When she went out to the dining room to have dinner, of course, I had to try it on, although I have a feeling that she wouldn’t have minded. And honestly, who wouldn’t want to be Marcella Hazan, if only for a few minutes? Another time we met was when we were invited to a dinner at Disneyland in Florida with a group of other people in the food business. She sat next to me with her usual tumbler of Jack Daniel’s on ice in front of her and kept looking around for an ashtray. (There wasn’t one.) The over-animated server came to our table with a wedge of cheese and gave me, and the elderly woman sitting next to me, a lesson in Italian cooking: “You know, young lady,” he said, looking straight at Marcella, “Parmesan cheese is not that stuff in the green can!”
After his spiel, when he moved on to the next table, Marcella turned to me and in her husky voice said, “What the f*ck did he just say?” To this day, one of my all-time favorite moments in this business was watching someone trying to explain Parmesan cheese to Marcella Hazan. I am not sure who came up with chimney sweep gelato but since her book was one of the cookbooks that got lost in my Big Move** (or maybe I didn’t tip the guardienne enough that month?), I can’t say for sure. The dessert is a bowl of gelato sprinkled generously with powdered espresso beans and doused in liquor. I did scoot around the internet to try and discover proper attribution, and found a comment that Marcella left about it:
There’s a gelato di crema recipe here, adapted from Marcella’s recipe, which has a tablespoon of Grand Marnier and orange zest added, but as Marcella said, good-quality, store-bought ice cream is fine. As for the liquor, Marcella famously drank Jack Daniel’s, hence the recommendation. But most mentions of the dessert call for Scotch whisky and that’s what I used; however, I’m not about to mansplain that to Marcella. Unlike the fur coat incident, that, I think, she would have minded.
Chimney Sweep’s GelatoGelato is the Italian word for frozen and is applied to the many varieties of ice cream made in Italy, from the egg-based gelati found in the north of Italy to starch-thickened ice creams enjoyed in the south. I followed Marcella’s lead and used good-quality vanilla ice cream that I made myself. But if you have a favorite recipe or brand that you like, use that. I suppose you could get out your scale or measuring spoons to make this. But do you really need (or want) to? Here’s how to prepare it:
*Guardienne often gets translated into English as “concierge,” which leads people to believe that perhaps they’ll help you plan trips and book spa services, but they don’t do any of those things. At least in my experience. **When I moved to Paris twenty-plus years ago, I’d shipped two cases of my most cherished cookbooks to me from San Francisco. Many were personally signed to me by people such as Julia Child, Madeleine Kamman, Richard Olney, Maida Heatter, Marion Cunningham, and Jane Grigson when they came to eat at Chez Panisse. All of those books somehow, got lost, with neither the U.S. Postal Service nor La Poste taking responsibility for them. I still wonder where they went and who has them. If someone does have them, I hope they’re enjoying them… You're currently a free subscriber to David Lebovitz Newsletter. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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Monday, August 25, 2025
Chimney Sweep Gelato
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