Roasted Brentwood corn to be exact.

If you’re wondering why we make gelato out of corn the answer is simple, it tastes great. Take a moment to think about how sweet a fresh cob of corn can taste. Think also about how delicious the flavor of yellow corn can be and you get why we make gelato out of it.

This year our corn is coming from Dwelley Farms in Brentwood. The Dwelley family has been been farming their land since 1926. As you can imagine, houses and other development now surround their farm but still they keep growing wonderful products for people to eat. Corn is one of their bigger crops and they don’t sell it to wholesalers, but instead, their own roadside stand, just 40 miles from our kitchen. I know because I have made that drive several times now to pick up the fresh from the stalk ears of corn. I also picked up a few peaches for the drive back.

We are often asked how we come up with all of our flavors. The inspiration comes from many places, dinner out at a restaurant, seeing a product in a grocery store, even a regular cookbook. Our favorite inspiration comes from when we meet another local food artisan and collaborate on a flavor or two.

Our first collaboration was with John Scharffenberger at Scharffen Berger Chocolates back in 2004. More recent collaborations include working with James Freeman at Blue Bottle Coffee, Michael Recchiuti at Recchiuti Confections, the team at TCHO Chocolates and Ahmed Raheem at Numi Tea.

Our current collaboration is with Semifreddi’s Hand-Crafted Bread & Pastries.

Here’s the story:
We were exhibiting our gelato at the Fancy Food Show this past January and a friendly man yelled at us from down the aisle, “Hey, Naia! I love you guys.” I said I loved him too and asked who he was. That is how we met Tom Frainier, of Semifreddi’s. We talked about bread, gelato and the Bay Area food scene. We told him we wanted to do a gelato with bread in it and he thought we were crazy. We liked him right away.

Tom and his brother-in-law, Michael, invited us to tour around their beautiful new facility in Alameda. Michael and Tom are not only smart and clever, but wise. We learned a lot from them that day. We also shared some really nasty gossip that I can’t repeat, as much as I would love to.

We left with a huge assortment of their products to experiment with and try to craft a few flavors out of. They still thought we were crazy about the bread and gelato idea. Chris and I took all of the samples back to our kitchen and tasted and tested. We chopped and blended, cut and diced, froze and thawed and tasted some more. It was pretty obvious to us that Semifreddi’s was going to work really well for us.

Our first go-around back at Semifreddi’s was fun. People were eager to see what we had made. We discussed the 14 flavors we brought and narrowed a few things down. They were impressed and surprised that gelato and bread do go together quite nicely.

The second tasting at Semifreddi’s was used to pick the final recipes for the new flavors. Finally, we got all the Cinnamon Twist Bread, Biscotti and other ingredients we would need and got down to business. On a sunny and hot Friday Cinnamon Twist Gelato hit our stores, and sold out. Now Biscotti is there, too, and soon it will be followed by more Semifreddi’s surprises.

Last weekend we visited one of our favorite farms, CMC Farms, located about ten miles west of Fresno. You may have noticed CMC Farms at various certified farmers’ markets; they have a unique offering of grapes, citrus, stone fruit and nuts, displaying the passion that Cruz and Manas (and Children: “CMC”) Saghdejian have about their own fruit. Our favorite crop from CMC are their Early Wonderful varietal pomegranates in the fall. Vartan, the youngest of the Saghdejian children, takes his job as farmer and salesman very seriously, and met us out on their second generation family farm to discuss the 2010 crop and show us the care they put into their fruit.

Vartan showed us how well organized the farm and the trees and vines are, allowing seven full-time workers on average at the farm to plant and harvest fruit. We talked about how important the “certified” in certified farmers’ markets is, and the business of retail, wholesale and the role of the fruit packers. We discussed the conspicuous “Dust Bowl” signs posted by larger macrofarmers along the I-5 corridor, its associated politics, and effects of current events on the working and economic conditions at the farms. It was encouraging that even amidst the times, a small well-run passionate family farm can survive and thrive.

We are always happy to be serving up some new flavors. After our very successful (and very crowded) public tasting, we narrowed down our selection and are proud to offer flavors we recently developed along with fellow artisan producers here in the Bay Area.

For our Blue Bottle Coffee flavor we created not only a new flavor but a whole new method for making coffee gelato. James Freeman sat down with us to discuss what is different about Blue Bottle Coffee and we had a cupping of several coffees. A day later, in our own kitchen, we decided that a cold press method of making coffee would make a delicious cup of gelato. And it does.

When we met Michael Recchiuti we knew we would like him because one of the first things he said to us was, “You should come by our kitchen and have some chocolate.” We spent several hours tasting chocolate, discussing gelato and working out ideas for a few Recchiuti flavors of gelato. Our stores are now selling the result of that, and several other conversations, Recchiuti Chocolate & Malt. We have several new flavors in the works as well, but we like to take our time so Michael will keep inviting us back.

Our guests were blown away at how true our tea flavors tasted. Ahmed from Numi Tea was instrumental in that because he showed us how to get the maximum amount of flavor out the tea. There are several flavors of Numi Tea we will be offering. You can stop by now for Numi Earl Grey gelato which has a wonderful Italian Bergamont orange flavor to it.

TCHO Chocolate has been very popular in our stores. We are currently using the TCHO Chocolatey version which was very popular at the tasting. This chocolate is sourced from Ghana and is dubbed “chocolatey” because of the rich, fudge-like flavor.

Gelateria Naia is proud to host the Gelateria Naia Pre-Release Gelato Tasting.

Sample twenty-two (22!) never-before released gelato flavors created in conjunction with the founders at Numi Tea of Oakland, Blue Bottle Coffee of Oakland, Recchiuti Chocolates of San Francisco, TCHO Chocolate of San Francisco and St George Spirits / Hangar One of Alameda. From 6:00pm to 9:00pm on Thursday, February 4th, you will be able to sample as much as you like from a wide array of gelato made from the finest local ingredients available.

Some of the flavors include a sneak preview of: Numi Tea Aged Earl Gray, TCHO Chocolate Nutty, Blue Bottle Coffee Sidamo, St. George Spirits Absinthe, TCHO Chocolate Citrus, Numi Tea Rooibos Red Mellow Bush, and Blue Bottle Coffee Bella Donovan.

Several of our friends from these local artisans will be on hand to discuss or sample their products as well.

Proceeds from the event will go to Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) to aid the relief effort in Haiti.

*tickets need to be purchased in advanced*

Tickets are only available at brownpapertickets.com.

Sometimes making a new flavor can be an unexpected challenge. As we toured the Numi Tea warehouse with owner Ahmed Rahim, it was obvious he and his company are obsessed with tea. It was also obvious that there is a huge variety of teas, teasans, flowering teas, puerhs, herbal teas and on and on. Chris and I left the meeting excited and loaded down with two giant boxes of tea samples.

The reality of what we needed to do next sank in when we laid it all out in our gelato kitchen. We had nearly two dozen different tea varieties that needed to be made into gelato. That’s a lot of work so Chris and I came up with a plan, ask Todd to do it.

We brought 18 samples of tea gelato back for the entire Numi office for a tasting. We were rewarded with huge smiles and kind words. They complimented our fine gelato and we praised their high quality tea. In a few weeks you will be able to enjoy several flavors of tea gelato made with tea sourced from Numi, another great Bay Area company.

We are always working on new flavors. Always. There are a number of things that inspire us to create a new gelato flavor but the best inspiration comes from meeting people. Here in the Bay Area we are spoiled with an abundance of fellow food artisans.

Last week we met James Freeman at his beautiful new Blue Bottle roasting facility in Oakland. We explained how we make gelato and he talked about different ways they roast and brew coffee. Then we enjoyed a cupping of several single origin beans. Then James said, “Where’s the gelato?” He gathered some people and we enjoyed another kind of cupping.

From that one conversation we developed a whole new way to make coffee gelato, we call it the cold press method. Our Blue Bottle Coffee Gelato will be in stores soon.