National Sundae Day

History in the Making: Hot Sauces + Cold Ice Cream = Melting!

If you google “sundae” the first two hits you get are wikipedia answers.  The first, of course, is the ice cream confection that just about everyone is familiar with.  You know the one – ice cream, goopy sauce of some description, maybe a marschino cherry on top. But the second one … whoa.  I almost went there.  Really.  I chickened out though.  Boiling pig intestines and filling them with noodles and pig blood just didn’t seem all that appealing and, besides, as un-Canadian as this may be, we are celebrating American Food Holidays here (silly Canadians don’t seem to have one for each day of the year – we are so out of it) so I went with the more American ice cream dessert.

I should add in here that today is also Remembrance Day – which doesn’t really have anything to do with sundaes, but I just felt it would be wrong to write something about November 11th that didn’t also take a moment to acknowledge the sacrifices of all those who have fought in and suffered through humanity’s many wars.  As the saying goes, “Lest We Forget”.  Sometimes it’s pretty easy to forget stuff like that when you’re someone who gets to live a life in which your key responsibility for the day is blogging about ice cream.

There is much debate about the origin of the sundae with two American cities fighting to take credit for the invention.  Whether it was an accidental compromise made to avoid the sinfulness of serving an ice cream soda on a Sunday (Two Rivers, Wisconsin), or whether a fountain clerk got creative in an effort to impress his boss and a local reverend (Ithaca, New York), there is no doubt that the sundae is a near ubiquitous American dessert.  Whether it be the soft-serve McDonald’s variety in a plastic cup (which, has its own fan site and strangely, makes a great dip for McD’s fries – really), or the $1,000 Grand Opulence Sundae from Serendipity in New York, there is no doubting that a sundae is a special yummy sticky messy treat.

While I was mulling my choices of toppings for whatever gourmet sundae concoction I was going to make for my blog, I did some research (wiki really – it’s pathetic that the sum total of most of my research these days comes from wiki) and was delighted, delighted, to discover that Bananas Foster is actually a sundae.  I love Bananas Foster.  Really, really.  How can you not love bananas fried in butter and brown sugar and then flambeéd in rum?  You’d have to be crazy, that’s how.

I didn’t exactly make Bananas Foster though.  I have this deep and abiding fear that my house is going to burn down.  Flambeéing anything in my house is out.  Period.  I did a little further research at Epicurious.com and rummaged around in my cupboards and freezer and eventually concocted what might have been the Greatest Sundae of All Time – and it did not involve gold leaf or celebrities.

I fried my bananas in butter and brown sugar, added a titch of cinnamon and nutmeg and then settled for deglazing the pan with rum instead of lighting it on fire.

I made two sauces.

Boil, Boil, no Toil, no Touble!

One is a Cardamom Praline Sauce that I found on Epicurious and I invite you to click on the link for the recipe.  I picked it because the second I got this assignment, I knew I was going to make something with Cardamom in it for my sundae.  Why?  Because.  Cardamom is good.  It likes desserts.  Desserts like it.  Plus all the reviews of this recipe raved about how good it was, and how easy.  They were all correct.  It’s truly brilliant – just use more Cardamom than the recipe calls for – like a 1/2 tbsp.  N, previous guest blogger on National Candy Corn Day and willing test subject said, “the cardamom sauce tastes like Christmas.”  I do believe she was on to something.

For the other sauce, I tossed 2 cups of frozen local strawberries (the good sweet everbearing kind), 3 tbsp white sugar, 1/2 c. Sambuca, 2 tbsp. orange juice concentrate, 4 tbsp. water and a squeeze of lime juice into a saucepot.  Cooked it on medium-high until it came to a boil and then simmered until the liquid was much reduced and I had a nice thick syrup with chunks of berry floating about.  God it was good.

"Secret" Ingredients ...

Two scoops of Praline Ice Cream surrounded by the fried bananas, a glop of Cardamom sauce on one side, a glurp of Strawberry Sambuca sauce on the other, a blob of fresh whipping cream on top – let’s just say that everything got real quiet for a while.

My two willing test tasters N and K

I confess, I ate the same thing again the very next day.

B.

p.s.  I was going to try the Brandied Fruit on the ice cream but I just wasn’t brave enough.  It’s brown.  Not pretty.  Not appetizing looking.  Still smells ok but I think I might have to confess to epic failure on that one.  I won’t even show you pictures.  It’s too nasty.

National Pumpkin Day

This year's Thanksgiving Pie

My good friend C's cute kid in the pumpkin patch, because I just couldn't get there this year!

This is the time of year when pumpkin patches are on the mind.  Alongside the highway, on the way to the ferries, the large pumpkin fields of Mitchell’s Farm are full of parents and children in search of the perfect pumpkin.

These aren’t the best eating pumpkins, truth be told.  These are carving pumpkins.  You know, for jack o’lanterns.  Pretty much the only part of these pumpkins that gets eaten is the seeds (I mean, you can make allll sorts of delicious things – like roasted pumpkin soup, or stuffed roasted pumpkin, or grilled pumpkin spears, or ricotta pumpkin agnollotti – but what I’m saying is that these pumpkins mostly seem to get used to make hallowe’en decorations).  Mmmmmmmm … roasted pumpkin seeds!  Delish!  I like them with a little bit of olive oil and seasoning salt on them.  Alternatively, a little olive oil, some garlic powder, salt and pepper.  You scoop out all the gooey stringy insides of the pumpkin and pick out the seeds from the pulp.  I like to roll them around in a paper towel or a dish cloth to get the majority of the pulp off before tossing them with the oil and seasonings.  Some people rinse them to get all the goo off, but I like how it adds to the pumpin-y flavour and caramelizes a little.  In the oven on cookie sheets at 350 for some random period of time equal to how long it takes for them to get toasty and Bob’s Your Uncle! (where does that saying come from anyway?).

What I really love pumpkins for, in case no one picked this up from my Brandied Fruits post the other day, is pumpkin pie.  God love a good pumpkin pie!  For true pumpkin pie, made from scratch, you’re supposed to use sugar pumpkins, not the big, tough old things that people use to create ghoulish artwork every October 31st.  Of course, I am usually in a time crunch when I make pumpkin pie because it seems to be a holiday thing and the meals it goes best with are those that involve a lot of oven-intensive dishes – turkey, candied yams, stuffing, roast vegetables and the like.  So the pie almost always gets short-shrift.  Horrific, if you ask me.  It also means I almost always … okay … always use canned pumpkin.  Nothing wrong with that actually.  Just make sure to just use the pure pumpkin, not the instant pumpkin pie filling pumpkin.

I’m not one to buy my pastry pre-made.  I pride myself on my ability to make a great pastry.  So that’s what I do.  I used to use the recipe off the back of the Fluffo box (vegetable shortening – though lard is also good), but either I have somehow invented that in my own head, or they changed the recipe this year.  Either of these things is possible.  In any event, I can’t share my fail-safe perfect pastry recipe here with you.  Not yet.  I am in an ongoing heated competition with some other pie-makers and this competition will continue until I am, once and for all, named the Supreme High Best Piemaker.  Until then, top secret baby. Top Secret.

I will share one of my favorite pumpkin pie recipes with you though.  It’s not mine, but I often rely on it.  It’s from the Silver Palate Cookbook and it’s awesome.  Go here to read the whole thing. I frequently use this recipe as a base for my own variations.  I will tell you this tidbit – if you switch out the ground ginger for fresh ginger, and if you add a couple tablespoons of molasses and a few spoonfuls of maple syrup, instead of the brown sugar … mmmmmmmmm.  I should also add that although I like this recipe because it is not hugely sweet, I often use even less sugar than it calls for.  I tend to do that.  I like to taste the fruit, or vegetable as the case may be, in my pies.

Pumpkin Pie should always be made Deep Dish.  Why?  Because then the slices are bigger.  Duh!  Like most custard based pies, it’s tricky to make a pumpkin pie that doesn’t crack in the oven and most recipes you will find are not for a deep dish pie.  The key is to start it out hot (425 – 450) for the first 10 minutes, like you would with a cheesecake, and then turn the heat down to 325 and cook it slowly over a long time.  Watch it though.  Don’t leave it in too long.  It’s okay if it’s still ever so slightly shiny and wet looking in the middle, so long as a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out mostly clean.  Don’t worry – they always set.

This pie stayed in the oven a tiny bit too long, which is why you see a cracks and some brown spots on it, but it still tasted yummy!

I prefer my pumpkin pie still warm out of the oven and smothered in fresh whipping cream.  Maple whipped cream is good.  If you make some candied pecans, or even pralines, and crunch them up as a topping for the pie, that’s good too.  Because pumpkin is a vegetable, I like to tell myself that it is a healthy meal choice and I definitely enjoy my pie for breakfast.

This last Thanksgiving, I made two pumpkin pies (one for each Thanksgiving dinner I went to).  My kid had a bite of my pumpkin pie – his first.  Then he proceeded to eat half of my piece of pie.  Then he had a whole piece to himself.  He is definitely my child.

B.