Previously, I showed you how to make a chicken kiev type dish as an impressive date night main course. A date night dinner also needs a dessert. It’s ok to serve fresh fruit and cookies, but I’d like to show you how to make an equally impressive dessert to go with it. Although I said a date night dinner shouldn’t require you to spend time in the kitchen, this dessert does. It’s your chance to show off. I’m going to make a pineapple flambé to serve over ice cream.
This dessert is yet another canvas for experimentation. I like to use a fresh fruit and a dried fruit. I soak the dried fruit in liquor. I am using dried cherries soaked in rum. Soaking them plumps them up and lets them soak up the flavor. I suggest you begin soaking them just before serving dinner. The rum is needed to make the flambe.
I like cinnamon and pineapple, so I also dust the pineapple with a little cinnamon. I chop some fresh pineapple and sauté it in butter and a little brown sugar. When the pineapple reaches a good texture – easily pierced with a fork – I will add the dried cherries and rum.
Important safety tip. Always remove the pan from the fire, add the alcohol, and then put it back on the fire. (Your guest should stand back.) If you have a gas stove, tip the pan slightly (away from you) and the fumes will catch fire. Impressive. If you don’t have a gas stove, use a lighter once the pan is returned to the heat.
FLAMBE BABY!
Once the alcohol is flamed off, remove from the heat, dish up some ice cream and serve the pineapple mixture over the ice cream. Add a few nuts for texture. I’m using chopped pecans, but walnuts would also work.
(I know this is two big servings, I decided this would be my dinner. DON’T JUDGE ME!)
Variations
You can do many different combinations. I have done fresh apples (use something tart) and golden raisins soaked in bourbon. An apple brandy could be used, or switch out the raisins for dried cranberries. Peaches and dried cherries, pineapple and dried bananas, bananas and dried pineapple – you pick the liquor. They all work. I’ve used cinnamon on apples and basil on pineapple. Peaches, dried cherries and mint worked well. A friend of mine makes vanilla sugar by putting split vanilla beans in sugar in a small container. I bet that would be a good substitute for the sugar and cinnamon I used here. You’re going to eat it over ice cream, it’s hard to screw up.
Comments
81 responses to “Spontaneous Cooking for Two! Date Night Dessert”
A pineapple on the front porch is swinger code for “come on in”.
Is that right. Who knew. Is there any correlation to drag queen Bugs Bunny rocking the Carmen Miranda fruit hat?
All comers welcome?
I didn’t want to know that.
You’ve learned a lot you didn’t want to at Glibertarians.
True
I’m assuming the same applies to pineapple tattoos?
Pineapple tattoos mean come on in the back door.
That’s interesting. Pineapples historically symbolized welcome and hospitality in the American colonies, because they were exotic enough to be an impressive statement but near enough that they could be shipped throughout the colonies while still reasonably fresh. Only reasonably well-heeled people could afford pineapples, and it was a big deal to have one for a dinner (something on the order of a standing rib roast) so it became associated with the welcoming of especially well-loved or respected guests. People of lesser means would actually just save the pineapple (or rent one, no shit) rather than eat it for dessert. It was also associated with merchant ship captains, since they would be the ones returning from the Caribbean bringing pineapples for sale.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunmore_Pineapple
It became a popular motif in furniture making for the same reasons.
Motif isn’t really the right word…accent would be better. It’s likeness was added as decoration to fine furniture.
Home building too
Sounds delish. Thanks Tulip!
I would so eat that. For dinner!
Peaches and dried cherries..
I can’t wait for peach season. We have many peach and cheery orchards around these parts. I have never done the flambe thing but many bourbon peach cobblers. I would be down with the flambe with a bit of sponge cake perhaps. Thanks Tulip I will give it a try.
Date night…..”add a few nuts for texture”
/Beavis laugh
That looks good. Thanks!
Peach season around the hill country of Texas is amazing.
Just like the difference between plastic grocery store tomatoes and homegrown tomatoes so is the difference between tree ripened fruit and picked green fruit.
Texas peaches and pecans are 2 things I miss dearly.
And What-a-Burger.
I can grow anything. Except peaches. Between the bugs and deer I have never been able to grow a peach.
Best ones I’ve ever had were from Michigan. Sounds weird, but true.
Not strange at all. Best mandarin oranges imo are from LA. Beats CA and FL ones
Peaches peak in Parker County (not hill country but pretty) in two weeks, just in time for the Peach Pedal, my favorite bike rally.
http://www.weatherforddemocrat.com/sports/peach-pedal-attracts/article_9662ed9c-a2ff-5237-9cab-587eacc72148.html
It’s only a fifth the size of the HH100, but the Brazos bottoms are just lovely to the way I think. And there’s a rest station in Brock that is staffed by nurses if you like that sort of thing.
“Does this feel like a hernia to you?”
Rum and pineapple is a magic combo. Stop giving away our secrets!
Thanks Tulip. I never do this at home, and I don’t know why. We got fruit, fresh and dried. Plenty of booze around here. Just never flambé.
Apples and raisins with calvados. Over some Halo Top vanilla bean ice cream. Yum. https://halotop.com/flavors/
Calvados is great for this.
Calvados is just all-around great.
Heresy alert: I like it better than Cognac.
I’m not sure which I like better. I haven’t put much thought into that question.
I like both, but which one is better? Hmm…
I’m not sure I have any Cognac in the house to try a taste test.
I checked. Calvados but no Cognac.
You voted with your dollars.
You voted with your dollars.
Until my next liquor store run.
OT: The Swamp, pt 4
https://youtube.com/watch?v=sLOs2ebwc34
Great looking desert, Tulip. Desert is something the wife and I have never really made; we always buy our desert. This looks like something fun to try.
All your recipe articles are great. Keep it up!
Any guy that has you serve him that is lucky for 2 reasons.
^^^^THIS.
Dinner and dessert? (Shameless plea for validation – after spending time in Vancouver with happily coupled people. Where the hell are the miserable married people?)
“happily coupled”? You were at an orgy?
Only unhappily coupled if you accidentally put it in the wrong hole.
Sadly no, just a conference that is always somewhere nice (Vancouver, San Francisco, Honolulu), so people bring their significant other.
I wouldn’t make assumptions about their home life/ degree of happiness from observations made of them at an enjoyable public event. When you are less than happy with your own life everyone else looks like they live a fairy tale, but they don’t. Every human life has pain, loneliness and angst.
Yup.
Just had a conversation with the the co-worker I’m closest to today. Turns out he’s been separated from his wife for 3 years, and just got around to tell telling me.
This. My family – most of whom lived within 20 miles at the time – had no idea I had for several years been contemplating a divorce from my ex until pretty close to the time I actually left. It’s pretty easy to cover stuff up for brief periods of time spent with other people. You put on your public face and just do it.
Have you tried watching “Snapped” on Oxygen or Lifetime?
I tried stir fry tonight for the first time in maybe 10 years. Forgot everything I knew. The hardest thing I think it to get a sauce right. Shit, I was trying to remember, brown sauce… soy sauce, sesame oil… corn starch to thicken? No corn starch. Well, ok, I’ll use flour. Worked, but… this is awfully tart tasting, add some sugar? Ok, it still tastes a little off. The stir fry part, garlic, then added zucchini, mushrooms, and last shrimp, that part actually came back pretty quickly, got my flip technique down for the wok, but the sauce… I dunno… I need to try it now. Anyone have any good brown sauce recipes? I used to do it, but I just cannot remember, too long.
I really struggle with stir frys. I always seem to get the order wrong.
It’s about 105 degrees in my kitchen – farting around with a frying pan is definitely out. But stupidly I didn’t prepare for this weather with something like cold cuts or frozen junk that doesn’t require using the stove.
Beer is cold. As my sis the ER doc says “a sandwich in every Budweiser!”
It was about 92º here, until a quick downpour made it an 87º sauna. Pork chops on the grill, and lotsa cold beer.
It was 98F here today and is still 92 and will be 98 again tomorrow. It’s so hot that when driving the AC doesn’t even do much good. But inside here? 75, AC is one of the great inventions of history.
Yeah. Someday I hope to join the latter half of the 20th century and get central air.
I do have beer… but vodka comes first. BRB
Get two of you plastic ice cubes and stuff them down the tightey whiteys and walk to the sandwich shop. Frozen junk and cold cuts in one fell swoop. If you are a boxer man you may need to improvise with a ziplock and some string.
I will take your suggestion under advisement.
I am only here to help. It was a cool 96 here today and it is only 90 in my small abode. The pool has once again proven to be a fine purchase.
Marinate the meat in a mixture of soy and Yellow Bird sauces. Then a finish depending on what your ingredients are — for pork and/or cabbage, a tich of hoisin, that sort of thing.
Adahn, you’re truly a messenger delivering The Word. I had to look up Yellow Bird sauces, and they already have my order for the serrano.
I cant wait.
Oyster sauce FTW. I never add a thickening agent to my stir fry since the oyster sauce seems to thicken and coat well enough. You can also throw in some fish sauce if you can stand the smell. My standard stir fry is veges, a meat of sorts, chicken stock, garlic, red pepper flakes, some basil, (tube kind) oyster sauce, soy (for the man boobs), ginger, sesame oil and a smidge of sugar.
Ah, I had forgotten about the oyster sauce. I guess I was lucky though, this actually turned out pretty good. Something is definitely a little off, but I’m still not sure what it is…
OT – RE: Portlograd riots.
This is getting tedious. Just start bringing rifles and kill each other off already. Both sides bore me.
Gotta live up to the Little Beirut nickname.
My most effective date night meal:
Macadamia crusted ahi with ponzu couscous.
50% of the time it works everytime.
The other 50% you go for the Roofinex™ ?
A dream vacation of mine is finally going to happen. I’m so excited! I booked it today.
¿Dónde?
Where are you going?
Q didn’t beat me to the post, I swear I was just offering free translation services
English canals.
Sounds fun! See them before they end up overgrown in the land without a blade.
?איפה
Dove?
(Just trying to hang with the cool kids)
Loved the recipe, Tulip! How about some details on the trip? I made my first visit to England last summer and, despite the lack of guns and knives, would love to go back!
Not this one https://www.black-prince.com/narrowboat-holidays-in-england/, (because single woman, internet), but similar.
Awesome!
OT: I’m guessing we’re allowed to trash this particular illegal because he’s white?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5905453/Illegal-immigrant-arrested-starting-dozens-wildfires-Colorado-destroying-38-000-acres.html
They don’t tell me which country to be mad at.
We can only hope he’s not one of them white hispanics. There are millions of them and they’re the worst. I mean besides white Europeans of course… oh yeah, they are European, never mind.
So it looks like some Genocide might be in the works in S. Africa soon, but NOT due to good old fashioned racism, but ANC communist propaganda.
Typical of all Socialist/ Commie Countries, they have Fucked up their Economy and infrastructure, and Blame it on the White Farmers, stirring up Shit in an effort they distract from the Corruption and graft in the SA Government. Meanwhile, the other Parties are demanding everything from Take the Land Now, to, Kill all White People, kind of spooky, but very sad.
Walter Williams, always a treat,
https://youtube.com/watch?v=qfkaod0BcCc
Sauté some pineapple in butter, add champagne, cook off the alcohol. Serve with ice cream. A stripped down version of the recipe above. Worth the effort