Don’t let National Ice Cream Month end without some ice cream cake. In today’s tip, you add to the fun by giving each person his or her own individual-size ice cream cake.

All you need are two ingredients—cake and ice cream—plus an optional garnish. And a fun flavor pairing, although chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream work fine.
 
RECIPE: INDIVIDUAL ICE CREAM CAKES

Ingredients

>Berries
>Candies
>Caramel, chocolate or fruit sauce
>Chocolate chips or shaved chocolate
>Sprinkles
>Whipped cream

1. CUT and layer the cake and ice cream in the dish, leaving a bit of room at the top for sauce or other garnishes.

2. HIDE surprises between the layers: mini chocolate chips, M&Ms, Reese’s Pieces, shaved chocolate, sliced strawberries. Place the layered dishes in the freezer until you’re ready to serve.

3. GARNISH the top with anything you like. One of our favorite garnishes: miniature York Peppermint Patties (we buy them by the carton-full at Costco).
 
TIPS

SLICING: Peel the carton from the ice cream to slice the ice cream into layers. Trim and fit the variously-sized pieces of ice cream and cake in the individual dishes.

SUBSTITUTE: If you have all the ingredients except the cake, you can substitute cookies or sweet muffins.
  

The Cubano Dog, adapted from the Cuban Sandwich. Photo courtesy Lightlife.

Here, the hot dog and bun replace the pork and bread. Check out the different types of sandwiches. The differences between hot dogs and sausages is below.

The recipe is from Lightlife, a Nibble Top Pick Of The Week that specializes in delicious meatless alternatives. But any dog works: beef, bison, chicken, turkey or veggie.

RECIPE: CUBANO DOG

You can use store-bought pickles instead of making your own (it’s quick and easy!).

For The Pickles

Preparation

1. MAKE the pickles. In a heat-proof bowl, toss together cucumbers and dill. Set aside.

2. HEAT the vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, salt and garlic in a small saucepan over medium-high heat for 3 to 5 minutes, until the liquid begins to simmer and the sugar dissolves. Pour the liquid over the cucumbers and toss to coat evenly. Cover and place in the refrigerator. The pickles can be prepared up to 2 days in advance.

3. TOAST the rolls. If using Portuguese rolls, first slice them in half. You can toast them under the broiler at the same time as you broil the hot dogs. and the bread is toasted.

4. TURN the oven to broil. First cook the hot dogs in a medium saucepan, covered with water. Bring to a boil; turn off the heat. Let the hot dogs sit in the water for 2 minutes.

4. ROLL 1 slice of ham around each dog. Place on a baking sheet (along with the hot dog rolls) and broil for 2 minutes. Remove the baking sheet from from broiler and add 4 slices of cheese to each dog. Broil for an additional 1 to 2 minutes or until the cheese is melted.

5. REMOVE from the oven. Top each dog with 1/4 cup of drained pickles. Serve with mustard.

You’ve come a long way, baby. The original Coney Island hot dog can be dressed in many types of garnishes. Photo courtesy Body By Bison.

The hot dog—also called a frankfurter and a wiener—is a type of sausage: ground meat stuffed into a casing*. The American hot dog differs from other sausages based on ingredients, origin and size.

The original name for the hot dog, frankfurter, comes from a small town called Neu-Isenburg, located on the road from Frankfurt to Darmstadt. Every town in Germany has its own sausage recipe: blend of meat, spicing, etc.

The frankfurter, a slender sausage like today’s frank, was made from pork. The name “wiener” comes from Vienna, Austria; the German name for Vienna is Wien. The wiener is similar to the frankfurter in recipe, but slightly shorter in size.

Sausages appear in print as far back as Homer’s Odyssey, about 850 B.C.E. The earliest possible reference to “hot dog” occurs in the late 17th century.

The written record is incomplete, but a sausage maker from Coberg, Germany named Johann Georghehner may have invented a sausage he called “little dachshunds,” or “little dogs.”

Recipes for the predecessor of the American hot dog came to U.S. with immigrant butchers of several nationalities. While as uncertain as the Georgehner story, it is believed that in 1871, Charles Feltman, a butcher from Germany, opened up the first Coney Island hot dog stand selling 3,684 “dachshund sausages” in a milk roll during his first year in business. [Source: HotDog.org]

Since sauerkraut and mustard were typical accompaniments to German sausages, they found their place atop the hot dog, later to be joined by many other toppings; for starters, bacon, cheese, chili, ketchup, onions, pickles/pickle relish, salsa and slaw.

While we don’t know the different recipes of the first American hot dogs, it is beef rather than pork that has prevailed—possibly, because Nathan’s, today the world’s biggest hot dog brand, was a kosher recipe.

In 1916 Nathan Handwerker, a Polish immigrant, started a nickel hot dog stand on Coney Island with a $300 loan from two friends—Eddie Cantor and Jimmy Durante, both local boys. But it was his wife’s secret spice recipe that is attributed to the success over other vendors.
 
*Sausage can also be vegetarian; and bulk sausage is available without the casing.

A spicy pineapple-tequila cocktail with chile
liqueur. Photo courtesy Butter & Scotch |
Brooklyn.

At our request, mixologist Allison Kave of Butter & Scotch in Brooklyn sent us the recipe for her Grilled Pineapple Cocktail. The cocktail itself isn’t grilled, but the garnishes are.

Allison uses a mix of tequila and mezcal, plus Ancho Reyes Ancho Chile Liqueur. If you like sizzle, Ancho Reyes is a real find. You can add heat to other cocktails, or sip it straight.

And, give it as a host or holiday gift for those who share your spicy palate.

While you do get lots of chile heat from the liqueur, it is balanced by the sweetness of liqueur—a dimension lacking in hot chile-flavored vodkas, such as Hangar One Chipotle Vodka.

Ingredients For 1 Drink

 
Preparation

1. COMBINE all ingredients but the garnish in a cocktail shaker with cracked ice. Shake vigorously until chilled. (Bartender tip: when the shaker is frosty/misty on the outside, the drink is chilled.)

2. STRAIN into a chilled coupe, Martini or other glass. Top with a skewer of garnishes.
 
Garnish Variations

The small cube of grilled ham looks elegant in the photo above. But frankly, if we’re going to grill ham or pineapple at home—or even serve it ungrilled—we’re going to turn it into a nibble.

So, make the cubes as large as you like, and use as many as you like. Separately, you can make ham and pineapple skewers to serve with the drinks. You can add:

You can play with other ingredients in the recipe; for example:

 
 
CONFUSED BY THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF SUGAR?

There are so many different types, it’s easy to get confused. Our Sugar Glossary explains them all.
 
 
RECIPE: QUICK-PICKLED HOT & SWEET CHILES

Or, you can make your own. They won’t taste the same as the commercial brands, but they’ll be very tasty and ready in an hour! If you want, you can toss pearl onions and/or garlic cloves into the pickling liquid, and use them with the cocktail above or for other recipes.

Ingredients

 
*To reduce the chile heat, also remove the white pith and seeds. Whenever cutting hot chiles, be sure to wear gloves; then remove and wash them (or throw away disposables) to avoid getting burning capsaicin in your eyes.

 
Preparation

1. CLEAN and cut the chiles into 1/4 inch slices—you want them thick enough to skewer. If you have very small chiles, like bird’s eye or pequin, simply de-stem them and pickle them whole. Place them in a container with a lid.

2. COMBINE all the other ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Pour the hot liquid over the chiles; add the lid and shake to fully coat. Refrigerate for at least 10 minutes to bring to room temperature. They will stay firm in the fridge for up to 10 days.

“Is this for real?” a reader wrote, sending us a link to an article about fake olive oil. While we’ve covered this topic previously and also here, it’s worth revisiting. There’s a lot of fake imported oil claiming to be Italian olive oil.

In fact, fake olive oil has been a major scandal in Italy for decades. People have gone to jail for oil fraud, although that doesn’t stop the practice.

Unscrupulous Italian distributors import oil from Morocco, Spain (the largest producer of olive oil), Tunisia or elsewhere; bottle it in Italy and sell it a Italian olive oil. Sometimes, it’s a blend of a lower-quality Italian oil cut with non-Italian olive oil. Or it can be another oil entirely, such as soybean oil labeled “olive oil” on the manifest.

Totally fake olive oil can be made by mixing cheap vegetable oils with beta-carotene to disguise the flavor, and chlorophyll to provide the green color many people believe (erroneously) indicates higher-quality olive oil.

If the olive oil is bottled in Italy, it is not illegal to label it “Packed in Italy” or “Imported from Italy,” terms that easily deceive consumers. While a different country of origin is supposed to be listed on the label, often it is not. Italy is, in fact, the world’s largest importer of olive oil. Much of the oil sold as “Italian olive oil” isn’t, based on tests conducted in the U.S.

 
EVEN IF IT’S OLIVE OIL, IT MAY NOT BE “EXTRA VIRGIN”

Just because the label says “extra-virgin olive oil” does not mean that’s what’s in the bottle. In fact, it may not even be 100% olive oil. It can be a blend of lower-quality vegetable oils that may include less than 20% olive oil.

The “extra virgin” label has strict IOC (International Olive Council) requirements; namely, that the acidity of the oil is less than 1%. If the acidity is between 1% and 3.3%, the oil is called virgin olive oil; and the higher the acidity, the lower the grade of oil (here are the grades of olive oil). Much olive oil sold as “extra virgin” isn’t.

A 2010 study by U.C. Davis, one of America’s top agricultural universities, found that 69% of the imported “extra virgin” olive oil sold in California supermarkets did not qualify as extra virgin (the results can be extrapolated to the rest of the country). That means your chance of buying real extra virgin is less than 1 in 3. Here’s the full report.

The Executive Summary begins:

While there are many excellent imported and domestic extra virgin olive oils available in California, our findings indicate that the quality level of the largest imported brand names is inconsistent at best, and that most of the top-selling olive oil brands we examined regularly failed to meet international standards for extra virgin olive oil.

Of the five top-selling imported “extra virgin” olive oil brands in the United States, 73% of the samples failed the IOC sensory standards for extra virgin olive oils, analyzed by two separate IOC-accredited sensory [tasting] panels.

The fraud typically comes from supermarket brands, store brands and club store brands that sell in big volume. There is nothing harmful about the olive oil, but it isn’t of the quality of the Italian olive oil you think you’re paying for. If you’re buying it for it’s heart-healthy benefits, you may not be getting them.

In 2010, a class action lawsuit in California targeted 10 major olive oil brands: Bertolli, Carapelli, Colavita, Filippo Berio, Mazola, Mezzetta, Pompeian, Rachael Ray, Safeway Select and Star. It also names 10 major supermarket chains and big box stores that allegedly sold substandard oil as “extra-virgin.” This includes olive oil mixed with cheaper types of oil, lower quality olive oil and olive oil degraded by heat or age.

Artisan oils from smaller brands are typically what they claim to be. They don’t sell in enough volume to interest the fraudsters.

Consumers have come to believe that green olive oil is better quality. So another trick fraudsters use is to color yellow olive oil green with chlorophyll.

While some green oils are top quality, the color of the oil is determined by:

 
The fake can be discerned through lab analysis, although the retailers themselves don’t conduct these analyses. Read more at OliveOilSource.com.
 
HOW TO DETERMINE IF OLIVE OIL IS REAL

 
And by all means:

 
Here are two “tricks” that are not 100% foolproof:

 
Want to learn more? Get Tom Mueller’s book, Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil.
 
And for free, you can read through our informative Olive Oil Glossary.
  

You don’t have to use the linguine specified in the recipe. You can use spaghetti, other ribbon pasta or even short cuts (bowties, tubes, etc.—see the different types of pasta). This recipe was adapted from one on VitalChoice.com, which sells premium canned sardines.

> November 24th is National Sardine Day.
 
 
RECIPE #1: PASTA WITH SARDINES

Ingredients For 2 Servings

Preparation

1. COOK the linguine until al dente. Reserve some of the pasta water for the sauce. You can also use it to substitute for the white wine, if you don’t want to cook with wine.

2. HEAT the olive oil on medium heat, then sauté the onion, garlic and red pepper flakes until translucent. Add white wine, spinach, radishes and half the sardines, and simmer until spinach is wilted.

3. ADD the radishes, spinach and wine plus half of the sardines. Simmer just until the spinach was wilted, just a few minutes.

4.REMOVE from the heat and stir in the lemon juice. Add salt and pepper to taste. Top with the remaining sardine fillets and garnish as desired.

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. HEAT a small amount of oil in a skillet. Add the panko and cook until toasted and golden brown, about 2 minutes. Add an optional pinch of salt or fresh-ground black pepper, if desired. Stir as needed.

2. REMOVE from the heat. If you won’t use them immediately, store the toasted bread crumbs in an airtight container for a day.
 
 

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