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Saturday, September 27, 2014

X for Xīn Xīlán / New Zealand ~ Hokey Pokey Ice Cream

Event: BM #44, Around the world (A - Z Series)      
Choice of Country: Xīn Xīlán / New Zealand
Capital City: Wellington
Official Language: English, Māori and NZ sign language


People who follow my blog regularly might have noticed that I have been on a blogging this marathon with the theme 'Around the World in 30 Days' - cooking from 26 countries around the world, going in an alphabetical order. Today it is the turn of letter 'X' and since there is no country starting with that letter we had a choice to cook from any city in the world that started with the alphabet 'X'. 
My planning for the marathon started with this letter and without putting much thought into it, I settled on a Mexican city called 'Xalapa' in the first five minutes of my research since the city and the state that it comes from had some dishes of their own. However recently I had a Eureka moment when my daughter who was going through a story book connected to the old silk route innocently mentioned to me that Persia is present day Iran pointing to a map. I got the idea for checking out the alternative names for the countries and luckily landed here. I found 15 countries that had alternative names starting with 'X' in other languages. Valli gave a green signal that I could go with alternative names and so my pick for today is going to be Xīn Xīlán which is a Mandarin Chinese name for New Zealand.
New Zealand is an island country in the southwestern Pacific ocean. It has a diverse British-based cuisine and largely driven by local ingredients and seasonal variations. The main meal of the day when families gather is dinner which is also known as 'tea'. Lolly cake, Hangi food, Pavlova, Anzac biscuits and Hokey Pokey ice cream are some of the dishes that developed in New Zealand.
 
The recipe I had bookmarked earlier came handy earlier for today's post. Hokey pokey ice cream is a flavor of ice cream in New Zealand, consisting of plain vanilla ice cream with small, solid lumps of honeycomb toffee and is the most popular one after vanilla ice cream there. Hokey pokey is a New Zealand term for honeycomb toffee where as in the 19th and the early 20th centuries, it was a slang term for ice cream in several parts of the world. I had used honey instead of the golden syrup and these crispy bites add a nice twist to already yummy vanilla ice cream.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup golden syrup / honey
1 tsp baking soda
Vanilla ice cream to serve 

Method:
* Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil / parchment paper or a silicon mat and keep it handy.
* Add sugar and honey to a medium sized saucepan and stir constantly on low heat until it starts to boil. 
* Boil for 5 minutes more on a very gentle heat taking care not to burn the mixture. (I had checked another recipe which gave a helpful hint in avoiding this turning into a chewing mess. Cook until it reaches a hard ball consistency.)
* Remove the mixture from heat and add baking soda to the pan and whisk vigorously until the mixture starts to froth. You would notice the mixture ballooning up and once it stops, immediately pour the mixture onto the prepare sheet.
* Let the mixture cool down and once when it is solid, break it into chunks. Store them in an airtight container.

* If you are preparing your own ice cream then you can stir it into the ice cream mixture before freezing it. Or add some chunks to your vanilla ice cream.


Comments

15 comments:

Varada's Kitchen said...

Good one for anyone who likes some crunch in their ice cream.

Usha said...

Nice search for countries starting with an alternate name.. :) I wanted to do hokey pokey for New Zealand. Will have to tr it.

vaishali sabnani said...

My SIL makes this tofee with jaggery and it comes out amazing..strange such similar recipes from two corners of the world. The ice cream with toffee has to be delicious.

Priya Suresh said...

Wonderful country choice SUma, now we know more about countries name starts with X na, this icecream is very tempting,delicious.

Harini R said...

Interesting research, Suma. And this really sounds hokey pokey :)

Srivalli said...

Very good choice and nice use of the word..:)..and thanks for the link to the wiki, so much information there..

Gayathri Kumar said...

You tried honey comb toffee. I want to try it but being afraid that I would do something wrong with the syrup consistency, I always step back. Yours has turned out very nice. I can imagine these crispy crumbs in icecream. Yumm...

Pavani said...

What an interesting country name and dish name. I took the lazy route and stuck to Xalapa :-)
Hokey pokey sounds easy to make and looks very tasty.

The Pumpkin Farm said...

i wanted to make this brittle for so long, serving it with icecream seems very nice..

Padmajha said...

What an awesome brittle. I am bookmarking this to try.

Unknown said...

wow such an delicious dessert and love the crunchy brittle in ice cream :) Yum yumm

Chef Mireille said...

what a funny name but must be awesome with that toffee

Unknown said...

The name sounds funny, but looks very tempting to resist.

cookingwithsapana said...

Irresistible delicacy. Lovely..

Archana said...

Love the hokey pokey ice cream. The crunchy hokey pokey is something that i will try out soon.