Rabarbergrød

Rabarbergrød

For those of us who grew up in the US on desserts made by mixing boxes of powder with hot water, the categories were simple:  jello was jello and pudding was pudding.  Many favorite Danish desserts, however, blur that line, combining bright fruit flavors and a silky pudding texture.  

Rød grød med fløde or "red porridge with cream" is a classic summer dessert that calls for the ripe bounty of the season: strawberries, currants, raspberries, and rhubarb. It's essentially a summer compote, a thick stew of lightly cooked fruit served cold, usually med fløde, "with cream." ("Rød grød med fløde" is also one of the most notoriously difficult expressions for non-Danes to say, making it a classic test for language learners--and, during wartime, for spies attempting to infiltrate the country.)

Rabarbergrød is a single-note variant of rød grød made from rhubarb alone.  One version calls for simply cooking the chopped stalks with sugar until soft, but for a more elegant and colorful result, the fuchsia juice is separated from the yellow-grey pulp, then reheated with starch (potato, corn, tapioca, arrowroot...) until it thickens.  It can be served room temperature or cold, but of course med fløde.  

Rabarbergrød  /  Rhubarb Porridge or Pudding

1 lb chopped rhubarb

5 c water

3/4 c sugar (or to taste)

1/2 c corn starch dissolved in a little water (if using a different starch you may have to adjust the amount or the cooking method)

sugar and cream to serve

Cover the rhubarb with water and boil until soft.  Transfer to a mesh colander to strain off all the pink juice and return the juice to a saucepan.  Stir in the sugar and bring to a boil again.  Remove from the heat and add the starch, stirring quickly and continuously.  Pour into a glass bowl to cool.  Serve room temperature or chilled with cream and a sprinkle of sugar.  

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Cheerwine

Cheerwine

For many American entrepreneurs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the bubbling sludge of their money-making dreams was soda syrup, not Texas crude.  Since sodas started out as a way of administering tonics and medicines, pharmacists were responsible for many of the field's early successes (including Hires root beer in 1876 and Coca-Cola in 1886), but fizzy drinks soon transitioned away from their medicinal origins.  

While the early sodas featured roots and herbs with some claim to therapeutic properties (ginger, coca, birch, etc.), their younger cousins leaned towards fun, fruity flavors.  In 1917, a North Carolina general store owner named L.D. Peeler tinkered with a commercial recipe for soda syrup until he arrived at an extra-bubbly formula for dark cherry soda that he called Cheerwine.   

Licensed Cheerwine syrups were a hit at regional soda fountains, but Peeler expanded his market even further by taking advantage of the 1899 invention that allowed for the bottling of pre-mixed servings of carbonated beverages.  Today the Cheerwine Bottling Co., headed by Peeler's great-grandson, relies on yet another generation of technology to spread the word.  Thanks to social media, sponsorship deals, a appealingly retro logo, slick radio spots, zeigeist-y slogans ("Born in the South.  Raised in a Glass," "Keep Calm, Drink Cheerwine"), and a tour van that visits college campuses across the country, Cheerwine seems set to bubble on for another hundred years.  

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Burro Bananas

Burro Bananas

Although half of the global banana crop and most of the bananas consumed in the US are of the iconic Cavendish variety, there are hundreds of other bananas out there--not all of them mild-flavored, yellow, or shaped like a telephone receiver.  Compared to it's more ubiquitous cousin, the Central American "burro" banana is adorably stubby, like a well-used pencil, with a flavor that leans towards tartness and a firmer, almost crunchy texture.  

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Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams

Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams
3-scoop cup, $5.50

On at least a hundred occasions I've filled a Baskin-Robbins' cup with one of the clashing-est combinations possible:  one scoop of peanut-butter-chocolate AND one of daquiri ice.  And never has a B-R server paused and gently suggested to me that perhaps the flavors I'd requested might not pair very well together.  I had to go to Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams for that.  

I first had Jeni's several years ago at the original location in the Columbus, Ohio covered market and quickly decided that a second serving would justify a return trip to Ohio.  Since then the business has boomed and you can now find Jeni's outlets sprinkled around the Southeast.

The lines are long and slow, but even so the servers patiently encourage careful decision making and thorough sampling.  Before coming in I'd read the profiles of all of the current flavors online and made a plan, but I still sampled almost everything--you know, just to be sure. 

My first choice was Yazoo Sue with rosemary bar nuts:  "Built from the ground up with a creamy, rich, and mellow cherry wood-smoked porter (by Nashville's Yazoo Brewing Company) and fistfuls of savory 'bar nuts'—peanuts, pecans, and almonds dusted with rosemary, brown sugar, and cayenne."  Second, Black Coffee:  "We steep Batdorf & Bronson's single-estate coffee right in the cream (rather than in water). Our process yields coffee ice cream that tastes as delicious as a cup of intensely flavorful coffee smells."

Last, I shoehorned in the flavor that my concerned server suggested might not play well with the others, Cherry Lambic Sorbet:  "If your memory says, 'Skip it because it’s gonna taste like artificial, super-sweet cherry flavoring,' don’t trust your memory. In fact, our Cherry Lambic sorbet won the Gallo Family Vineyards award in 2008. We used the money we won from this award to begin direct-sourcing vanilla beans and pure vanilla extract from Ndali Estate in Uganda."

When I wouldn't budge, we came up with a compromise:  my server used waffle cookies to craft a dam between the creamy flavors and the tart one.  

Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams

1892 Eastland Avenue

Nashville TN 

615/262-8611

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