More thoughts on food, I'm afraid
As an appendix to yesterday's posting, I'd like to note that Starbucks are also advertising a Neapolitan frappuccino. It appears to be a strawberries & cream with whipped cream and chocolate syrup on top. It is kind of clever - but then it is not really a neapolitan experience, is it? What if you get it without the whipped cream? Then there is no vanilla flavour in the trio at all - not that the whipped cream is vanilla-flavoured in the first place!
I have never been a fan of the plain vanilla flavoured ice cream. Vanilla bean yes - but the plain stuff is *too* plain and boring and yucky. Given a choice of neapolitan ice cream flavours, I'd pick the chocolate - it is very hard for even crappy ice cream manufacturers to really screw it up. Nasty synthetic strawberry, on the other hand, is all too common.
But what if you could pick your own perfect ice cream trio? One of my favourite questions to ask people are their top 2 all-time ice cream in a tub flavours, and their favourite ice cream or ice block on a stick or in a cone. The idea is that you could only have these flavours for the rest of your life, unadulterated (no sauces, fruit, etc. to mix in - just the ice cream).
I used to say lemon sorbet and one other flavour, which I can't for the life of me remember (it was creamy and delicious and sweet though). Maybe Movenpick vanilla brownie? Maybe not. Anyway, for my stick/ cone, I'd pick a Fruju Tropical Snow every time.
But in recent weeks Movenpick has conspired to turn my world upside-down - I can no longer name two ice cream flavours I'd happily eat for the rest of my life, to the exclusion of all others.
The first culprit was blueberry and... ricotta? marscapone? At any rate, it is delicious. Then a friend (well, she is my friend, even if she contributed to my dilemma) introduced me to lemon melissa & strawberry. It is a lovely, almost cheesecake-filling-like flavour, but delicious even if, like me, you don't really like cheesecake. (The "melissa" part, incidentally, is lemon balm.) Add to the dilemma the ever-delicious tiramisu flavour, and I am well and truly screwed.
What good is it asking people to name only 2 flavours when I can't pick them myself??
In other food-related matters, I have fallen well and truly in love with sweet chilli sauce. Not just any sweet chilli sauce - specifically, Golden Sun brand Thai sweet chilli sauce with ginger. (It's actually from Thailand, so it really qualifies as genuine Thai sweet chilli sauce!)
Everything is better with this sauce - everything. Indeed, I cannot imagine a meal that would not be improved by it (ok, sweet stuff like desserts maybe - but otherwise not). Gone are the days of sniping at The Trouser for adding condiments to my lovingly-prepared meals without tasting them first - now I have seen the light.
OK, so this isn't the first time that I've fallen for a condiment. But peanut butter and I were inseparable for over 20 years, many of them formative. It was inevitable that I would need to move on and discover new things.
It was not mutually exclusive, of course (such relationships seldom are) - but the love ran deep and true. We only parted ways when I found out that the love was not mutual - and even then there was a considerable amount of to-ing and fro-ing on both sides.
Now, like any self-respecting person, I avoid my ex. (Actually, the smell of it makes me feel slightly ill.) 20 years is a good run in anyone's books, after all. Now this particular brand of sweet chilli sauce and I - well, that's different. I've lived a little - my palate has matured. It really could be the real thing!
I have never been a fan of the plain vanilla flavoured ice cream. Vanilla bean yes - but the plain stuff is *too* plain and boring and yucky. Given a choice of neapolitan ice cream flavours, I'd pick the chocolate - it is very hard for even crappy ice cream manufacturers to really screw it up. Nasty synthetic strawberry, on the other hand, is all too common.
But what if you could pick your own perfect ice cream trio? One of my favourite questions to ask people are their top 2 all-time ice cream in a tub flavours, and their favourite ice cream or ice block on a stick or in a cone. The idea is that you could only have these flavours for the rest of your life, unadulterated (no sauces, fruit, etc. to mix in - just the ice cream).
I used to say lemon sorbet and one other flavour, which I can't for the life of me remember (it was creamy and delicious and sweet though). Maybe Movenpick vanilla brownie? Maybe not. Anyway, for my stick/ cone, I'd pick a Fruju Tropical Snow every time.
But in recent weeks Movenpick has conspired to turn my world upside-down - I can no longer name two ice cream flavours I'd happily eat for the rest of my life, to the exclusion of all others.
The first culprit was blueberry and... ricotta? marscapone? At any rate, it is delicious. Then a friend (well, she is my friend, even if she contributed to my dilemma) introduced me to lemon melissa & strawberry. It is a lovely, almost cheesecake-filling-like flavour, but delicious even if, like me, you don't really like cheesecake. (The "melissa" part, incidentally, is lemon balm.) Add to the dilemma the ever-delicious tiramisu flavour, and I am well and truly screwed.
What good is it asking people to name only 2 flavours when I can't pick them myself??
In other food-related matters, I have fallen well and truly in love with sweet chilli sauce. Not just any sweet chilli sauce - specifically, Golden Sun brand Thai sweet chilli sauce with ginger. (It's actually from Thailand, so it really qualifies as genuine Thai sweet chilli sauce!)
Everything is better with this sauce - everything. Indeed, I cannot imagine a meal that would not be improved by it (ok, sweet stuff like desserts maybe - but otherwise not). Gone are the days of sniping at The Trouser for adding condiments to my lovingly-prepared meals without tasting them first - now I have seen the light.
OK, so this isn't the first time that I've fallen for a condiment. But peanut butter and I were inseparable for over 20 years, many of them formative. It was inevitable that I would need to move on and discover new things.
It was not mutually exclusive, of course (such relationships seldom are) - but the love ran deep and true. We only parted ways when I found out that the love was not mutual - and even then there was a considerable amount of to-ing and fro-ing on both sides.
Now, like any self-respecting person, I avoid my ex. (Actually, the smell of it makes me feel slightly ill.) 20 years is a good run in anyone's books, after all. Now this particular brand of sweet chilli sauce and I - well, that's different. I've lived a little - my palate has matured. It really could be the real thing!
posted by The Skirt at 4:46 pm
4 Comments:
Lived in Singapore as a kid and for some reason it's taken upon itself to be the IceCream Flavours testing capital of the world. So, here's a couple I remember: Rose Petal IceCream - quite nice but nothing too flashy, Corn IceCream - avoid at all costs, should come with health warning.
Couldn't actually tell you my fave flavours at the moment, I would feel like a traitor to all the others I didn't mention.
Hmm... I quite like corn, but it does sound a little dodgy.
The Trouser loves red beans, so he loves red bean ice cream - well, any Asian flavoured ice cream really (green tea, sesame, etc.) - but especially red bean.
I remember bubblegum ice cream as a kid - and a mysterious flavour called "Blue moon" that was megalicious.
I think I would like Singapore - NZ is definitely not the best testing place - we didn't even have vanilla choc-chip ice cream till good old Movenpick brought in stracciatella!
What about a top 10, or your fave in-a-cone or on-a-stick?
I just wanted to say that sweet chilli sauce on ice cream actually sounds quite nice. I might even try it next time we have a bottle of the stuff in the fridge.
Oooh, yummy! Let me know how you go - and what brand and flavours work well together (if they do). I used to like ketchup (Heinz) and dark chocolate together, but sweet chilli sauce and ice cream even better.
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