Food History

(I’m claiming quite a large area as my hometown. Deal with it.)

I’m Sharyn Lilley, author, editor and now small press publisher with Eneit Press. Life’s been a little stressful lately, and Gillian suggested I do something to take a break from the world. This meant I decided to write a few articles to share some recipes and the history of my home with her readers here. I grew up in North East Victoria, nicely situated between the Rutherglen wineries, The King Valley winery and gourmet food region, the Murray River, and the High Country. I was a summer baby, birthday parties by the shores of Lake Hume were a popular choice. So obviously my first recipe is going to be an ice-cream cake.

Although no-one really knows the exact history of ice-cream, China played a large part in its development, as in 618-97AD King Tang of Shang, reputedly had 94 ice men who helped to make a dish of buffalo milk, flour and camphor. You have no idea how much I hope the camphor wasn’t actually in the dish, but used to help with the freezing process.

Also in China, approximately about 200 BC, a milk and rice mixture was frozen by packing it into snow. We have reports of Roman emperors sending slaves to mountain tops to bring back fresh snow which was then flavoured and served, and in England Charles I, apparently offered his chef a yearly stipend to keep his ice-cream recipe a secret from the rest of England. (Selfish sod!)

Marco Polo is credited not only with introducing noodles from China to Italy, but also ice-cream. But my very favourite piece of ice-cream trivia: Whilst Ithaca is widely accepted to be the birthplace of ice-cream sundaes, Virginia holds dear to its own unverifiable claim. A city ordinance not only prohibited the consumption of alcohol, but legislated against the growing “Sunday Soda Menace.”

Back to ‘my hometown’ and ice-cream, more specifically, Gundowring Ice-cream. I first discovered Gundowring Ice-cream on a visit to the Milawa Cheese Factory. I could rave about how good this stuff is, but why believe me when you can look at the awards they’ve won for their products. Or try some yourself. Their website address is here. But I do believe the best recommendation I can give this is; it’s so good I don’t want to share with the kids. Therefore I needed to find a recipe for adults. So I adapted my grandmother’s raspberry ice-cream cake recipe to suit, and as I was in Milawa, it wasn’t too far to Brown Bros Winery, for some other ingredients.

Ingredients:

2 litres French Vanilla ice-cream (you can, of course, use ordinary ice-cream if you must)
2 bottles Brown Bros Cienna & Cabernet (you actually only need 1 and a ¼ cups of the wine, but you might want to share a bottle with friends while eating the cake. )
2 punnets fresh raspberries (or one packet of frozen berries if you really can’t get hold of the fresh berries.)
2 packets Cottee’s raspberry jelly.

Method:

Set aside 1 cup of raspberries, place remainder in a medium sized bowl and cover with 1 cup of wine. Leave this to sit, turning the berries occasionally, for at least an hour, but ideally for as long as it takes the jelly to set.

Make up the jellies with the correct amount of boiling water, but only half the cold water. Mix well and allow to cool to lukewarm. Line a large springform pan with several layers of aluminium foil, and cut a base of silicone paper to fit. Place the reserved raspberries on the paper base, add ¼ of a cup of wine to the jelly mix, whisk well, then gently cover the raspberries and refrigerate til set.

Note from Gillian: for the next two months Sharyn adn her friends at Eneit Press are invading my other blog while I write fiction at an insane sped (or just insanely) in her Home Town. Drop in and say ‘hi’ to Sharyn.