Cinnamon Ice Cream

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cinnamon, cinnamon ice cream, ice cream, ice cream flavour personality, national ice cream month, seasonal desserts

I unknowingly made ice cream on National Ice Cream Day! Not only is the third Sunday in July National Ice Cream Day in the U.S., the entire month of July is National Ice Cream Month. Who knew such a day and month even existed? Apparently, it was designated as such in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan.

I only learned of this event through an interesting magazine article I came across last week. Baskin-Robbins partnered with Dr. Alan Hirsch, a nationally recognized smell and taste expert and founder of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, to identify what some of the most popular ice cream flavours suggest about someone’s personality. Have a look at your favourite flavour and see if there’s any truth to it. As for myself, I am a Chocolate!

• If your favourite flavour is Vanilla, you’re more likely to be impulsive, easily suggestible and an idealist.
• If your favourite flavour is Chocolate, you’re more likely to be dramatic, lively, charming, flirtatious, seductive and gullible.
• If your favourite flavour is, Very Berry Strawberry, you’re more likely to be a tolerant, devoted and an introvert.
• If your favourite flavour is Mint Chocolate Chip, you’re more likely to be argumentative, frugal and cautious.
• If your favourite flavour is Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, you’re more likely to be ambitious, competitive and a visionary.
• If your favourite flavour is Pralines ‘n Cream, you’re more likely to be loving, supportive and prefer to avoid the spotlight.
• If your favourite flavour is Jamoca (i.e. coffee), you’re more likely to be scrupulous, conscientious and a moral perfectionist.
• If your favourite flavour is Chocolate Chip, you’re more likely to be generous, competent and a go getter.
• If your favourite flavour is Rainbow Sherbet, you’re more likely to be analytic, decisive and a pessimistic.
• If your favourite flavour is Rocky Road, you’re more likely to be aggressive, engaging and a good listener.

Regardless of what day or month it was, I was in the mood for homemade ice cream. Cinnamon ice cream, from Chez Panisse Desserts cookbook. Amazing how 5 simple ingredients could make such a luscious treat!

Cinnamon Ice Cream   Yields a generous quart

1 1/4 cups of half-and-half, 10% coffee cream

2 1/2 cups of whipping cream, 35% or double cream

1 cup less 1 tablespoon of sugar

1 cinnamon stick

1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

6 egg yolks

Warm the half-and-half, cream, sugar and both kinds of cinnamon in a saucepan. Steep for 15 minutes, always keeping the temperature below boiling.

Whisk the egg yolks just enough to break them up and pour in some of the hot mixture, stirring constantly. Return to the pan and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the custard coats the spoon, about 15 minutes. Pour into a bowl, removing cinnamon stick. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for 24 hours.

When thoroughly chilled, freeze according to the instructions of your ice cream maker. Transfer to a container with a lid or cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until thoroughly set.

Once set, serve and enjoy! Or you could make an ice cream sandwich. My daughter Charlotte had baked some shortbread cookies and what better way to enjoy this buttery crumbling cookie with the warming flavour of cinnamon ice cream!

Vino e Fragole

Tags

desserts, Italian wine, strawberries, strawberries and wine, strawberry desserts

One of the fondest memories I have of my dad is of his winemaking . As with most Italians who arrived in Montreal straight off the boat, one of the treasures my dad and uncles took with them from the Old World was the art of making wine. Vino. I’m not sure if all Italians made their wine heavy and strong, but it seemed to be de rigueur in our circle of family and friends. So much so that the women needed to add 7-Up or mineral water to their wine, whereas us youngsters would add a few drops to our 7-Up, just enough to flavour our drink and give it a purplish hue. Oh, how pretty it looked! Yes indeed, we were introduced to wine at a young age. It wasn’t a daily event mind you, mostly during holiday celebrations or festive occasions.

Every autumn, come September and October, trainloads of grapes would come rolling into Montreal from California. Red grapes. White grapes. Yummy grapes! My dad made both red and white wine. The men would take turns going to each other’s homes and lend a hand with this arduous task. One night in my dad’s garage. The next night in my Uncle Tony’s. The night after that, my Uncle Silvester’s. And I can proudly say that I played a pivotal role in helping my dad make his wine. Not just with the extraction of the deep-red droplets through the wine press. Oak barrels were used to ferment the grapes in for about one week to 10 days. They were just over 3 feet/95 cm tall, making it difficult to reach the bottom of the barrel. My dad would lay the barrel on the floor and I would crawl into it and scrape the bottom of the barrel. The fumes were remarkably intoxicating, and after scraping the bottom of 5 barrels, off I went to bed where I would be out like a light!

My fondest memory of my dad’s wine was during strawberry season. He made the loveliest strawberries in wine. I just LOVED it! It was an elixir for me and I still LOVE it to this day! Although my daughters did not have the opportunity of meeting my dad nor of tasting his wine infused with 7-Up, I wanted them to have a taste of his favourite strawberry treat. Vino e fragole.

Strawberries in Wine

Strawberries

Sugar

Red wine

Cut the strawberries in half, or quarter them if they’re big. In a bowl, add the strawberries and sugar to your liking, perhaps a tablespoon per cup of strawberries. Add your favourite red wine, enough to just cover the strawberries. It’s essential that you use a good quality wine as you do end up drinking it in the end.

Taste it and adjust the amount of sugar. It does get slightly sweeter as they macerate. Cover and refrigerate at least 24 hours. The longer, the better! For adults, I like to serve them in wine glasses so that any left-over wine can be easily slurped. Buonissimo!

Recipe to Riches

Tags

canadian cooks, contest, food competition, recipe to riches, recipe to riches contestants

I have some exciting news to share. Well, it was exciting news up until this past week-end but I wasn’t supposed to go public with it at the time. Let me explain.

Recipe to Riches is a show which could be seen on Food Network Canada over the last couple of years, making the switch to CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) this year. It’s a reality food competition giving the opportunity to amateur Canadian cooks to share their unique and original recipe with the rest of Canada. Recipes are judged based on taste, presentation, originality, the story behind the recipe and it’s suitability to become a mass produced grocery store product. The prize? If you make it through your food category (desserts, appetizers, mains…), you win $25,000 and move on to the finals. The finals consist of mass producing your product, creating an image, packaging and a marketing campaign to promote it. You actually get to package your product with a caricature of yourself on the label. You are then sent out onto the streets of Toronto to promote it. Finally, your product is made available at Loblaw’s across Canada (a Canadian food chain), giving Canadians the opportunity to purchase your product and vote for their favourite recipe. The grand prize? $250,000! That’s a quarter of a million dollars! I think that sounds better, no?

My sweet and crazy girlfriend Sue rang me on a Tuesday morning a few weeks ago and asked me about Recipe to Riches. In those exact words, “What about Recipe to Riches?”. “What about it?”, was my reply. It turned out that the auditions were the very next day at the Loblaw’s just 5 minutes from where we live. “It’s a sign.”, declared Sue. “A sign for what?”, I wondered. Sue believed it was a sign for me to give it a shot. Just like that! She assumed that I could come up with something worthy of this major food competition being held the next day. Just like that! And just like that, I did! I wowed the judge, the professional tasters, one of the show’s producers, even one of the technicians running all over the place! Bourbon Bacon Jam was my recipe to riches and they loved it! So much so that I received a call from one of the show’s producers’ Monday last week, announcing that they were flying me to Toronto on Friday for an on-camera audition to be held on Saturday. You cannot imagine the exhilaration I felt! The excitement! In my mind, I not only spent the $25,000 for winning my category, I went on and spent the entire quarter of a million dollars!

22 competitors from Montreal and the Maritime provinces were flown out to Toronto on Friday and put up in a lovely suite with a kitchen. You gotta have a kitchen in your hotel suite if you’re competing in a food competition! I had the loveliest view of Lake Ontario, the Toronto skyline and the CN Tower, which isn’t much during the day time but Oh! so lovely all lit-up at night. I kept the curtains open in my room so that I could catch a glimpse as I tossed and turned all night long.

The on-camera audition turned out to be more than just seeing how personable you could or couldn’t be on-camera. We had beat out over a thousand contestants in Montreal and the Maritimes, only to do it all again with about 800 Torontonians! Only this time, under super-hot spot lights and in front of cameras. Surrounded by strangers instead of family and friends. And before a very petite, prim and proper, unsmiling judge. You see where this is heading, don’t you? Whereas in Montreal my Bourbon Bacon Jam created quite the buzz, in Toronto the 3 different foods I presented got but one tiny bite. Along with this comment: “It smells wonderful! I can taste the bacon, the roasted tomatoes, the caramelized onions… but it’s not ready for our shelves.” What did that mean exactly? You had to be there to see my expression go from excitement to utter disappointment! Or you might see it on the telly. My disappointment was not due to the fact that in my mind I had spent the $275,000, but because I REALLY, REALLY wanted to move on and do this! I so needed something new and exciting to get me going and this was my ticket.

Although I was disappointed with the outcome, it truly was an exciting opportunity and I don’t regret it for a minute. I met some wonderful fellow Canadian foodies with whom I shared a wonderful day on Saturday, wallowing our sorrows in alcoholic beverages at some bar in Toronto. Yuri from Montreal with his deliciously addictive meatballs. Devyn from Moncton, New Brunswick, with his Oh! so divine, deep-fried, sweet potato spring rolls. Mandy from St. John, New Brunswick, with her out-of-this world mashed potato and coconut cookies dipped in dark chocolate. Terry from Halifax, Nova Scotia, with what I’m sure was a delectable curry dish if she made it past thousands of others and landed in Toronto. And Lyndsey from Sussex, New Brunswick, with her decadently yummy but healthy Pollywogs.

We then proceeded to our very air-conditioned hotel lounge and continued with wallowing our sorrows in alcoholic beverages, courtesy of Terry and her hubby Mark. Mark made some very yummy drink consisting of gin, cranberry and water, on ice, and it was perfect!

The photos of me presenting my recipe to the judge were taken at the Montreal auditions by my friend Sue. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures during the Toronto auditions. The Recipe to Riches logo/photo is from CBC.

Asparagus Bites with Speck

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appetizers, asparagus, asparagus appetizer, asparagus with speck, Italian appetizers, roasted asparagus, smoked prosciutto, speck

Should you be lucky enough to find some asparagus in your area, you should give this simple yet delicious appetizer a try. We’re still seeing asparagus here in Montreal. I guess sometimes it pays to live in a colder climate. Hmmm. I’ll have to re-think that comment.

You all know prosciutto. But are you familiar with speck? Speck is, basically, smoked prosciutto. And if you love prosciutto, you will love speck! Native to the Alto Adige, a region of Northern Italy which straddles Southern Austria, speck is a protected designation of origin (D.O.P.), as with most Italian food products. This guarantees that we are getting a product that tastes as good as traditional prosciutto and made in a way that honors the small-scale handmade approach to smoking meat. The cuisine for this part of Italy, which includes the province of Bolzano, is quite distinctive and speck is one of the most prominent.

Making speck begins with curing the legs of pork in salt and a spice combination which may include juniper berries, laurel, pepper, nutmeg and coriander. After this the smoking process begins. Speck is smoked slowly and intermittently for two or three hours a day, with the whole process taking about 3 months. Slow smoking allows for the inner layers of meat to be really penetrated with the flavours of the wood – commonly juniper and pine woods.

In the Alto Adige, speck is highly revered and is often eaten with most meals. It is equally revered in my home as well. Deep red in color with heavily marbled traces of fat, speck is served thinly sliced as an appetizer, or used to flavor cooked dishes. Or as I like to use it, rolled around a beautifully roasted or grilled asparagus spear!

Asparagus Bites with Speck

a bunch of asparagus

thinly sliced speck, or your personal favourite ham or cured meat

extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper

Trim off the tough ends of the asparagus. Lay them out in a roasting pan. Drizzle with some olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Give them a gentle toss with your hands.

Pop them in a 400 degree F oven for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the asparagus. You want them to have a certain crunch and firmness to them so that once wrapped with the speck, or ham, it can be picked up with your hand and be easily munched on without falling apart. Once done, allow to cool completely.

When they’ve cooled, you can begin to roll the speck around the spears. Begin with the slice of meat facing you on the horizontal, and place the spear vertically on one end. As you begin to roll, do so at a slightly twisted angle, allowing for the speck to twist around the spear, covering most of it.

Serve immediately. Otherwise, cover with plastic wrap and keep refrigerated. Remove from fridge 30 minutes before serving. Enjoy!