Early July Trip to Ohio

Get excited! I'm belatedly posting some pictures from our trip to visit Sue's family in northern Ohio!

This is Sable, who belongs to Sue's brother and his family (they were visiting from South Carolina). Sable's an incredibly well-behaved German shepherd. She sat quietly in the living room of Sue's parents. Outdoors, Sable chased woodchucks!

We were there for Independence Day, and this year instead of driving to see a professional pyrotechnics display in one of the nearby towns, we had fireworks in the driveway. Nothing big--you can't buy fireworks in Ohio, except for sparklers, snakes, and snap-and-pops, which can be purchased there in common drugstores. So we had fun with those fairly mild incendiary entertainments.

Sue and I have been together nineteen years (our anniversary was last week!), and in all of these years I've never witnessed "the cannon." Long ago, a friend and former coworker of Sue's dad fabricated a genuine, working, miniature version of a cannon. The barrel is brass, the wheels are iron. And it really works!

Sue's family used to load this thing up with black powder, a fuse, and stuff a paper napkin or something in the barrel and use it to blast in the new year each December 31! It's a tradition in their family. They also used to fire it every July 4. But this was apparently all twenty years ago--at any rate, I've never seen them shoot THE CANNON!

And yeah, it was LOUD! Take that, you silly bottle-rocket people! --Boom!!

No summertime trip to northern Ohio would be officially complete without a trip to Cedar Point amusement park. Do I look like a big fan of amusement parks? No. But Cedar Point is different--it's on a narrow piece of land that pokes out into Lake Erie, and cool breezes keep it relatively tolerable--even during this hot summer. And there's something to be said for the therapeutic primal-scream therapy delivered by some of the crazier rides.

I took the picture above from the Giant Wheel, the park's venerable, huge Ferris wheel. The green rollercoaster in the background is my favorite ride in the park, the Raptor (click for a point-of-view video!). It's one of those "feet dangling" coasters. It's so cool--it's like you're flying!

This one's called the Skyhawk. It's a huge giant terrifying "swingset"--very interesting to do, on account of the great height and speed, but overall it's not as much fun as the big rollercoasters. (Sue took this picture--that's me in the circle! Wahhhhh!!!!)

As of July 4, this is what was left of the big Con Agra grain elevator that used to be a major landmark in Huron, Ohio, and the Sandusky area in general. Most of it was destroyed during a controlled implosion in early January, but the big silos have had to be knocked down more gradually with wrecking balls. I hear the thing is completely gone now, though I understand a great pile of rubble remains to be dealt with. Condos, apparently, will replace the famous symbol of Ohio's agricultural productivity. (Click here to see a video of the implosion of the plant--pretty exciting! The community made a big party out of the occasion.) (Do you get the idea that people in northern Ohio like to blow up stuff--?)

Toft's ice cream is another of those things we must do when we visit northern Ohio in the summer. To my Central Missouri friends, Toft's is the northern Ohio equivalent of Central Dairy: If you don't feel like tackling an entire vat of ice cream, better ask for the "kiddie" size! (Pictured is a "small" serving of their "Buckeye Bites" flavor--peanut butter and chocolate, like mini "buckeyes" candies!)

Salem UCC Annual Ice Cream Social

“An annual ice-cream social brings friends and former members from many communities for an evening of fellowship and fun.”

—Moniteau County Missouri History, vol. 1 (1980)

Well, my friends, that statement in a county history book hardly begins to describe the scene on August 27, 2011, at a plain white church on Route K southeast of California, Missouri.




We went there with my folks and met up with cousins and my aunt and uncle, so we all arrived early in order to sit together. This meant we got to watch as carloads of people gradually arrived and each picnic table was filled. Here at this country church, we witnessed the true meaning of “gathering.” There is no “town” here, but there is definitely community.

A little about the history of the Salem United Church of Christ: the congregation was started in 1848 by a group of German immigrant families who gathered to worship even before their own homes were completely built.




They called their church the “North Moreau Evangelical Church.” As with many other German Evangelical churches in Missouri, they are now merged with the Reformed churches, the Congregational churches, and others to form the United Church of Christ (UCC).

Until 1889, the Salem Church shared its pastor with the congregation in California. By 1922, with the latter town’s growth, the shared pastor was based in California and supplied Salem, an arrangement that still exists today.

I think it’s pretty safe to conceptualize the early German Evangelical churches as being stripped-down Protestant churches for German-speaking immigrants. In other words, being Protestant, they shrugged off the trappings and hierarchies of Catholicism, but they also declined the regulations and expectations of the Lutheran Church, as well. What was left for Protestant Germans? In the American Midwest, one answer was “simple churches like this one.”




After seeing the gloriously decorated interiors of this region’s Catholic churches, the simplicity of the Salem Church is astonishing. The sanctuary is functional: There are pews, hymnals, and Bibles. There’s an altar, a pulpit, and a place for the minister to sit. The altar bears a cross, a few candles, and trays for offerings and/or communion. There’s a piano and a few other tables, decorated nicely, but not lavishly.




My dad (who knows much, much more about this stuff than I do) pointed out that the framed pictures of Jesus were probably not present in the early years of the church—again, out of a desire for simplicity.

And yet there is a great deal of meaning in these objects; this is a congregation that treasures its long history, and the church’s material possessions hold significance for those who know that history. For instance, the antique chandeliers in the sanctuary are the old kerosene chandeliers that have been renovated and converted to electricity. And the pews! In 1947, each family cut and donated logs that were made into the pews—a wonderful project for the congregation’s centennial in 1948.




So these aren’t “just” lights; these aren’t “just” pews. They represent history and continuity.




And as with many, many little white-painted country churches, the cemetery is right by the church, clearly visible out the windows as you sit in the pews. There are big old trees; there are tombstones with dates from the 1700s.




It’s always a fascinating and sobering thing to wander around in cemeteries like this and piece together family relationships and family tragedies.




There’s so much history here. I could go on, for instance, about how the original log church still stands right next door, was used as a German school, and now is a storage and multipurpose space for the church—but I’ll let you learn about that for yourself sometime. We need to move on to the ice cream!




Actually, it was much more than ice cream. There was enough food there to make a light dinner. They served brats and hot dogs (with all the trimmings); chicken salad sandwiches; and ham sandwiches made with locally made Burger’s ham. There were chips and sodas and ice tea, paper plates and plastic cutlery.




The trays intrigued me—they were from all over the place. They were old and mismatched, clearly donated. Some are no doubt collector’s items that would bring twenty bucks apiece on eBay. And it was really fun to eat off a tray that had originally come from Marineland of the Pacific (of all places). Sue’s tray celebrated the glorious state of North Dakota—someone decades ago must have donated a complete series of all 48 U.S. states!




You might be wondering why I’m not showing you pictures of ice cream, but it should be obvious: You just don’t sit around and photograph homemade ice cream; you eat it!

Indeed, as we went through the line, my cousin David looked askance at me as I added a few multicolored sprinkles to my ice cream: “How can you even think of putting toppings on homemade ice cream??”

He had a point. But I kind of wondered why there should be a “rule” about it. Do we need catechizing over ice cream toppings? . . . But then I was raised in a UCC church and he’s a Lutheran, and maybe that’s the difference right there! We laughed about it; variety is the spice of life!




And that’s the point of all this gathering and celebrating, isn’t it? We get together to share fellowship and fun, enjoying the fact that some of us like sprinkles or chocolate syrup on our ice cream, and some of us just came for the bratwurst with kraut.

And even if some of us are part of an extended family-and-friends network while others are new-friends-we-just-hadn’t-met-before, who have never even driven down Route K . . . we’re all welcome to share in the fun of the cakewalk.





Hey: In reading about this church, I learned that “Christmas programs have been omitted only twice—once during the Civil War, the other during the 1918 flu epidemic” (ibid.). Something tells me this church’s Christmas program would be well worth attending! Meanwhile, I think you can depend on the ice cream social taking place each year on the fourth Saturday of August! Plug it into your calendar now, so you won’t miss it next year.

A big thank-you to Uncle Richard and Aunt Carole, who knew about this event and invited us all to attend. They also gave me some pages photocopied from Moniteau County history books—to help with this post, which they correctly anticipated I might want to write!

Another thank-you to Sue, for sharing her photos with me. The good ones in this post are hers; the so-so ones are mine!

Thanks, especially, to our family members who joined us at Salem Church. You know what Grandma S. would say: “The more we get together, the happier we’ll be!”

We Went to Prison, and Then We Had Ice Cream (Part 2)

I’m continuing my description of our outing on Saturday, June 11, when we visited two of Jefferson City’s hottest visitor attractions. First, we went on a tour of the historic Missouri State Penitentiary, which opened in 1836 and closed in 2004. Click here (or scroll down) to read about the prison tour!

I don’t know about you, but I always like to balance grimness with happiness. After I see a “dark” movie, I want to turn around and watch a lightweight cartoon with kitties and duckies in it. And the “prison + ice cream” combination offers the same kind of yin/yang balance. So after “doing time” at the Missouri State Penitentiary, we’d worked up an appetite for something, well, refreshing and light-hearted . . . ice cream!





Central Dairy Ice Cream Parlor

Jefferson City is rich with time-honored and retro frozen-dessert places, but the aptly named Central Dairy is indeed the “center” of it all. It’s in the Munichburg district, in the center of town, and as chance would have it, it’s only a few blocks from our house!

We used to walk here from Grandma’s house when I was a kid. My favorite has always been mint chocolate chip! Huzzah!




When we’re out in our yard during the summer, we can depend on motorists and bikers stopping by to ask directions to “that ice cream parlor”!




It is a local dairy, and has been since the 1930s; its first big surge in fame occurred in 1942, when Madison Street was extended and became US Highway 54 heading south out of town. From that point on, it became an incredibly popular stop for motorists en route to the Lake of the Ozarks. (Think of the days before a/c was common in cars!)

Even though US 54 was rerouted to its current position in 1965, Central Dairy has remained a favorite stop for folks heading down to the Lake.

Central Dairy was recently bought by Prairie Farms out of Illinois. Everyone hopes they will continue to honor the Central Dairy brand and its ice cream parlor!

This is the real deal, folks; nothing has changed! You can enjoy your frozen treat in the same little wooden booths that Archie, Betty, and Veronica (and their pals Potsie, Richie, and Fonzie) sat in during the 1950s, before air conditioning was ubiquitous, when cold drinks were necessary to make summertime bearable.




The ice cream counter was located near several local schools, so it was “the place” for young people to gather, drink milkshakes and chocolate malts, and date and gossip.

They serve real ice cream (not that goopy ice-milk stuff), though their offerings now include frozen yogurt, sugar-free ice cream, several new-fangled “premium” flavors, and more. They have one flavor called “Muddy River” (which seems quite apt, since it looks like the Big Muddy’s gonna be flooding in the next few weeks!).

My Great Aunt Minnie always preferred to buy her ice cream there at the Central Dairy counter, claiming that it’s much, much better when it’s hand-dipped: So much fresher than in the boxes at the grocery store! And yes, you can still buy ice cream there this way.

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An aside: Sometimes at her big, formal Christmas dinners, Aunt Minnie would serve Central Dairy peppermint ice cream for dessert. She would dip up perfectly round spheres of it ahead of time and freeze them for easy serving later; then she would roll them in coconut flakes and serve each on a lovely plate (with a lacy paper doily on it, no less), garnished with a fresh green sprig of mint. Aunt Min sure knew how to impress!

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The parlor’s prices are fairly retro, too! It costs two bucks for a “small” ice cream cone, which, if we’re speaking honestly, is actually more like a huge ice cream cone! But if you want to go all out, you can get all kinds of sundaes, banana splits, malts and shakes, fountain drinks, and a limited selection of hot dog and polish sausage sandwiches. If you order a banana split, you had better bring some friends along to help you eat it! The prices are surprisingly low and include tax, so a two-dollar cone actually requires two dollars out of your pocket.

During warm weather, and during any logical times for ice-cream consumption, the place gets packed—but don’t let that put you off: They have lots of friendly young servers working at once, the line moves very quickly, and there’s plenty of space inside and outdoors for eating (and chatting with other ice cream aficionados).




One word to the uninitiated: There are two doors, and one long ice cream counter. There’s no sign saying “line starts here,” but you should know that the line ends at the cash register (at the right) and starts at the opposite end (at the left). I recommend entering through the left door so you don’t have to push your way “upstream.” The locals all know this arrangement by heart and just do it. I tell you this because I don’t want you to be confused if you show up during an especially busy time.

Yep, summer has begun, and Missouri’s going to be heating up a lot in the next couple of months—and ice cream is a natural remedy. If you haven’t been the Central Dairy parlor, then by all means, go! (And if you want to bring me a lime freeze, I’d be much obliged!)





Bonus Trivia!

In 1920, Central Dairy started business in Columbia, not Jefferson City. The Jefferson City office was originally a branch. But Central Dairy’s former headquarters still stands in downtown Columbia, between the Alpine Shop and My Sister’s Circus. The building is now the home of Downtown Appliance and “Pickleman’s” sandwich shop (1104 and 1106 E. Broadway, respectively).

Next time you’re walking past the Field House on your way to India’s Kitchen, look for the words “CENTRAL DAIRY” engraved across the center of that building.

Randy’s Frozen Custard

Oh-so-conveniently located across from our beloved Happy Fisherman, this Osage Beach favorite has been around for decades. Randy’s Frozen Custard is one of those places that drips with cool, sweet happiness every hot summer evening, as folks line up for frozen treats.




Every vacation area has a place like this. In northern Ohio, for instance, up by Cedar Point amusement park, there’s the Pied Piper—been around since the fifties.

At Missouri’s hot and humid Lake of the Ozarks, by evening, most vacationers have already spent hours in the sunshine, boating, fishing, swimming, golfing, jet-skiing, staggering in and out of shops, and all the rest of that tourist stuff. (Don’t forget the skee-ball, go-karts, and bumper cars!) Naturally, you work up an appetite for frozen custard!

And hey, the locals enjoy Randy’s, too—they’ve spent the day taking care of all those tourists, and they need to replenish the nine billion calories they burned up doing that!




Randy’s specialty is the Ozark Turtle—a sundae made with frozen custard, gooey-sweet, warm caramel sauce, hot fudge, and topped with plenty of incredibly well-toasted pecans, that have a superb crunch and just enough salt to balance the sweetness of the rest. Check out the sizes: the “small” one is what I’d call a “regular” serving!

Yes, there are other places to get frozen dairy treats down at the lake, but you should put Randy’s at the top of your list—just for the nostalgia factor, if not for the value and the sheer deliciousness of the Ozark Turtle.




I recently tried to order a mock turtle sundae at our neighborhood soft-serve place, and there was no comparison. The pecans were listless, bland, and lacked crunch. The caramel was more sticky than flavorful. And it was built of that soft-serve stuff, vacant, not like delicious frozen custard. They meant well; they tried. But you get the picture. There, I think I’ll just stick to blueberry milkshakes and chocolate dip cones.

When at the lake, go to Randy’s. (And don’t confuse it with Andy’s, which seems to be an explosively expanding joint from Springdale or Springfield or somewhere, coming soon with four-billion-watt bright lights to a development near you.) Go to Randy’s.




One more thing: If you need a Randy’s fix and you’re stuck in Columbia for some reason, don’t fret—just head to the Hy-Vee shopping area out on West Broadway: There’s a Randy’s outpost there! A bonus of that location is that it’s close to Shakespeare’s Pizza West! So close, in fact, you can smell the pizza while you wait for your concretes and sundaes. (Heaven must be a lot like this, huh?)

“Kid-friendly” is, of course, a given. —So bring the family! Don’t be put off by a long line during peak hours; that just means it’s totally worth it!





One more thing—true story—one night this past week, it was about eight o’clock, and Sue and I drove all the way to Columbia just to get Ozark Turtles. Yes: it’s that good.

Carrot-Cardamom Ice Cream

. . . With pistachios!




I’m still on this frozen-dessert kick. You would think I would have plenty, puh-LEN-ty, of opportunities to get frozen treats, being situated here a block away from Zesto and three blocks from Central Dairy, but . . .

Well, maybe I just love my ice cream maker. But it’s more likely that I’m grooving on new flavor combinations they just don’t offer anywhere in this town. The sky’s the limit on ice cream flavors—it’s a shame to focus on the old tried-and-true all the time.

So here’s my most recent concoction; so far, I think it’s my favorite.

It’s based on traditional dessert flavors of India. It seems that Indian desserts revolve around pistachios, almonds, and cashews; raisins, sultanas, or currants; creamy dairy products, halwa, or rice pudding; coconut, mango, strawberry, or other fruits; and rose water, saffron, and/or cardamom. (I have recipes for carrot halwa and carrot pudding, and that’s where I got the idea to add carrots.)

Here’s the formula—notes follow, including an easy technique for grinding your own fresh cardamom.


Carrot-Cardamom Ice Cream

1/2 cup carrots, peeled and grated
7 green cardamom pods
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup sugar (or to taste)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/3 cup unsalted pistachios, coarsely chopped
optional: yellow and red food coloring

Place the grated carrots into a steamer and cook until tender. Mash and place them into the refrigerator to chill thoroughly (mash coarsely, if you want to see little flecks of carrot in the ice cream; puree if you want it smooth). While the carrots are cooking, grind the cardamom (see below) and stir together the cream, milk, sugar, and vanilla.

When the carrots are chilled, add them to the mixture. They should turn it a pleasant pale orange color; if you want more color, add a few drops of yellow and maybe one drop of red coloring. Make sure the mixture is completely chilled before proceeding to the next step.

Pour the mixture into your ice cream maker (I use a Cuisinart 1.5 quart model) and freeze per the appliance’s instructions. At about the last five minutes of freezing, pour in the chopped pistachios so they get incorporated into the mixture. When frozen, transfer to an airtight container and place in freezer to harden completely.





Notes

Shelled, unsalted pistachios are available in ethnic grocery stores. The same goes for whole green cardamom pods. Sure, you can find whole cardamom at supermarkets, but it’s usually overpriced; at an international grocery, you can get greater quantities for less.

And you could use cardamom that’s been ground previously, but it is much less flavorful than fresh—the difference is like night and day. If you use “pre-ground” cardamom, you’ll have to use a lot more—about a heaping teaspoon, by my reckoning. (Did I mention that cardamom in the pod stays fresh for a long time? Take it from zillions of Indian ladies: It’s a much better value to buy it whole in the pod!)





Grinding Cardamom

It’s easy to grind your own cardamom. First, you need a mortar and pestle—you might think this is something that’s only used in “Ye Olde Apothecary Shoppe,” but once you have this device in your kitchen, you’ll be surprised at how useful it is.

You could alternatively use a spice grinder (a coffee grinder dedicated for spice grinding), but unless you’re grinding a large quantity of spices, I find the spice grinder is annoyingly hard to clean. The mortar and pestle, on the other hand, is simple to use and easy to clean. (And it feels good to use—get out those aggressions!)

This technique was passed on by Aman Aulakh, in one of those wonderful “Punjabi Home Cooking” classes she led with her mother, Gurcharan, at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Aman (who grew up in St. Louis) told us a story about one time she was in India, cooking with her relatives, and they had her grind up some fresh cardamom. She dutifully started slitting the pods open with a knife and picking out the seeds with the knife tip.

This is a tedious process, and I could identify with her totally, having done the same thing myself. (Just thinking about all that work puts cramps in my hands!)

But her aunties looked at her like she was nuts: “What are you doing?” they asked her. Then they showed her the “easy” way: Drop the whole pods into the mortar (bowl), then start banging on them with the pestle, straight down. The pods, being dry, split right open, and after a little more pounding the outer shells can easily be fished out of the bowl before you grind the seeds completely. Duhhhh . . .!




When she demonstrated this technique in our class, I almost slapped my forehead; I know I rolled my eyes. But I was comforted to know she had been doing the same thing, and that I wasn’t alone. . . . Ohhh, this is easy. And fun, too!




(Mmmmm, and delicious!)

Cantaloupe Sorbet

Melons—Sweet juiciness in frosty pulp. The high water content of melons makes them the most refreshing of hot-weather fruits, but for the same reason they are not suitable for cooking into sauces or pies. Chill them in the refrigerator, in the creek, or in the shade. Cut out a thick crescent and bite in. Don’t you wish your mouth was bigger?

—Edward Espe Brown, Tassajara Cooking (Boulder: Shambhala, 1973), 115.

Yesterday, my friends, I had occasion to drive out Highway 50 to Sedalia, and as I returned I stopped for provisions at the Dutch Bakery, a Mennonite-owned market in Tipton. My prime objective was to visit the bulk-grains aisle and replenish my stock of oat bran for my famous muffins.

Then I got sidetracked by the carts and carts of ripe local watermelons and cantaloupes. I leaned over and poked my nose down into the cantaloupes—inhaled—ahh, there we go! I had to buy one!

It was large, and there’s only two of us, so I decided to cut up half to eat “plain,” and then to “do something else” with the other half. . . . But what to do?

When I’m looking for interesting things to do with vegetables and fruits, I tend to consult two books: Tassajara Cooking, by Edward Espe Brown, and the much more recent Farmer’s John’s Cookbook, which I also love. (Remember the chilled cucumber-mint soup? What an awesome recipe!)

Both books offer fresh ideas for flavor combinations. Brown, in Tassajara Cooking, suggests the interesting combination of fresh cantaloupe drizzled with lemon juice and topped with a mound of cashew butter (“Cantaloupe Fancies,” p. 115).

I would have never thought of that, but although cashews aren’t my thing, I’ll bet this combination would send some people over the moon.

Farmer John offers recipes for a cantaloupe-and-tomato salad, for instance, and for “Cantaloupe and Cardamom,” which is fresh-cut cantaloupe jazzed up by ground cardamom, some fresh lime juice, a bit of black pepper, and chopped fresh cilantro (p. 214).

Again, I wouldn’t have come up with that combination on my own—but it is indeed very interesting; adding those flavors makes you “interpret” cantaloupe in a whole new way.

I landed on this cantaloupe sorbet recipe from Farmer John’s Cookbook. (I’ve been using the ice cream maker a lot recently!)




Below is essentially the same exact recipe as provided in—note the official, complete bibliographic citation—Farmer John Peterson and Angelic Organics, with Lesley Littlefield Freeman, Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 2006), 214. I have made slight amendments, but quantities and ingredients are the same.

This sorbet is incredibly refreshing, and it lacks the strong, puckery-sweet quality that other sorbets usually have. The cantaloupe (not sugar) is unmistakably the star ingredient, and the ginger adds an addictive je ne sais quoi.

Farmer John’s Cookbook says this recipe serves 4—and it’s light enough you could eat a lot of it at a sitting—but I think it serves a lot more than four people, considering sorbet is usually served in little dabs.

Ginger Melon Sorbet

—approx. 4 cups cantaloupe, cut into cubes (about half of a large cantaloupe)
—1/2 cup sugar
—1 1/2 tbsp. lemon juice
—2 tbsp. grated ginger (see neat trick below!)
—garnish: mint leaves

Add all ingredients into food processor or blender and purée until smooth. Depending on capacity of food processor, you might have to work in batches.

Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s directions.

Now, for your bonus cooking tip, check this out!

Convenient Grated Ginger

When I’m in a rush (which is most of the time), I have tended to avoid recipes calling for fresh-grated ginger because of the preparation ginger requires. And no matter what grater-gadget I used, I always scuffed my knuckles at the end, or else it seemed that I always had a nubbin of ginger in the fridge that I never used up.

But here’s a neat trick to make fresh ginger be more convenient. I learned this from the St. Louis mother-and-daughter “Punjabi Home Cooking” team of Aman and Gurcharan Aulakh. They use ginger a lot!

Peel a large bunch of ginger and chop it up (I recommend slicing it very thinly against the fibers), then pulse in a food processor to grind it up. Add some water if you need to. Transfer it to a zip bag (don't make it very thick), squeeze all the air out, and seal. Freeze. Then, when you need “fresh grated ginger,” it’s always on hand; just break off what you need (that's why it needs to be a rather thin layer, so you can break it). It’s not technically “fresh,” but it’s incredibly close, and the convenience rocks!

(You can also process and freeze fresh garlic, too; this comes in handy when you’re cooking Indian food and must start off nearly every dish with some garlic in the skillet!)

Mamey Sapote Ice Cream

I just told you about our trip to Florida, right? And how we stopped at the famous tropical fruit stand in Homestead called Robert Is Here—right? So here’s more of the story.

Yes, I did get a few “new” fruits to carry home with me on the plane! I selected two different underripe fruits and got ripening tips from one of the friendly Robert Is Here staff.

One of those fruits was a sapote, a.k.a. mamey sapote, a.k.a. Pouteria sapota. Because I’m a botany junkie, I have to give you a little background on the plant. If all you want is the ice cream recipe, then scroll down to the bottom—but I contend you’ll appreciate your food more if you learn more about it.




Mamey sapote is a tree fruit native to southern Mexico but which is now grown and loved throughout Central America and the Caribbean. And south Florida. Latin Americans enjoy eating it raw or made into a variety of frozen treats—Wikipedia says: “milkshakes, smoothies, ice cream, and fruit bars.” The same source describes the fruit’s flavor as “a combination of pumpkin, sweet potato, and maraschino cherries with the texture of an avocado.”

The fruit I purchased was shaped something like a football, with a mildly rough-textured rind. I selected one that was still pretty firm and underripe, so I could transport it home in my backpack and still have time (about a week) for it to ripen.




I wonder: Why in the heck isn’t this fruit carried in more supermarkets? It can be shipped firm and underripe, and it’s tasty and easy to work with. (Send me out there. I’ll stand in the produce department, handing out samples!)

Here are some pictures of what’s inside the fruit. I highly recommend looking at this Web site, which is from the book Fruits of Warm Climates, by Julia F. Morton. Its treatment of mamey sapote is much more interesting than Wikipedia’s brief “intro-primer.”

The bit about the texture being “like an avocado” is spot-on, even though the avocado is in a different family (the laurels) instead of the Sapotaceae (sap-oh-TAY-see-ee), to which this species belongs.

One of the hallmarks of the Sapotaceae is that most members have a milky latex sap. The chicle tree is another member, and its latex became the original chewing gum. (Hey, care for a Chiclet?) Chicle sap was still being used for chewing gum until the 1960s, when gum companies switched to cheaper, synthetic sources of, well, rubber.

So keeping in mind that the sap of this thing is latex-ey, make sure your sapote is nice and ripe before you cut it open. The guy at Robert Is Here told me to wait until it’s quite soft and starts getting kind of shrunken and wrinkled—which I did.

It turned out beautifully. The buttery-smooth flesh was salmon-orange and scoopable with a spoon. There was one big, lovely, shiny seed in the center. It did remind me of cutting an avocado.






We tried some of the fruit plain and in a bowl, and yes, it had the same kind of rich, sweet taste that pumpkins and sweet potatoes have, but with an extra “fruity” quality. A very distinct flavor. Personally, I thought it was kind of “strong” for my tastes. Maybe adding a dash of lime juice, like you can do with papayas, would help a newbie like me get used to it. Or just including it with other fruits on a platter.

The fruit, which was about 8 or 9 inches long, yielded about 2–3 cups of flesh, I’d say. Taking a cue from the Latinos, here’s what I did with the rest of the sapote.




First, I ran the sapote flesh through my food mill, using the smallest holes, to remove extra fibers and make it all smooth. Then I put it in the fridge and drove to the store for ice cream ingredients!

The following recipe is a combination of a frozen yogurt recipe and a “simple” ice cream recipe, which both came from the booklet that accompanied my Cuisinart ice cream maker. Simple: It uses no eggs and requires no cooking. It makes about a quart of ice cream.

By incorporating the vanilla yogurt into the recipe, I added creaminess while decreasing fat. It also added a certain yogurty tanginess that combines well (I think) with the sapote flavor. (Instead of brown sugar and cinnamon, I prefer sour cream or plain yogurt on my sweet potatoes—and I guess that’s kind of the same thing.)

(One final word: This recipe would work well with dang near any fruit pulp you want to use. It’s not rocket science!)




Sapote Ice Cream

2/3 c. heavy cream (chilled)
1/3 c. whole milk (chilled)
1 c. low-fat vanilla yogurt (use the costlier, creamier kind!) (chilled)
3/4 c. sugar
1 t. vanilla extract
1 c. sapote pulp (that’s been run through a food mill or pressed through a sieve to remove fibers) (chilled is a good idea)

Dissolve the sugar into the liquid ingredients, being careful not to whip the cream (indeed, you could just stir in the cream after mixing the sugar), and then fold in the sapote pulp.

Freeze in your ice cream freezer per instructions.




I use a Cuisinart ice cream maker, and this recipe makes about as much ice cream as the thing will hold. Since I had about 2 cups of processed pulp to work with, I made two of these batches, each a day apart (the Cuisinart’s freezer-bowl has to be refrozen between uses).