When I was growing up, almost every Sunday after church we'd go to the only decent Mexican restaurant around - Chi Chi's. Regrettably, it closed down when I was still very young, but I can still remember the decor, the song they'd sing on birthdays (Happy Birthday, OLE!!), and most importantly, the FOOD! It's hard to put into words just how much my entire family LOVES Mexican food and sometimes I think we should've called ahead to notify them we were on our way so they wouldn't run out of food.

I could write, in detail, about the fresh tortilla chips and the tastiest salsa (packed with my favourite Mexican herb: cilantro), the tacos, or the generous portions of rice and refried beans. My brothers, Yankee Noodle and Hot Dry Noodlin', may elaborate in subsequent posts about the all-u-can-eat Sunday lunch buffet...more specifically, the all-u-can-eat sopapillas, but I'm writing today to discuss my favourite Mexican dessert: deep fried ice cream! I've even been known to lick the bowl clean of the remains of this dessert - it's just SO GOOD!

If you've never heard of (or tasted) Mexican deep fried ice cream: FOR SHAME!! It is a giant ball of vanilla ice cream that is coated (typically) with a combination of corn flakes, cinnamon, and sugar that is then deep fried to golden, crispy perfection! Once fried, it is either served in a bowl OR (even better) a cinnamon and sugar coated, fried tortilla bowl. It is then topped off with whipped cream, a cherry, and your favourite dessert topping: chocolate fudge, caramel, or strawberry sauce. The best part is cracking through that hot, corn flakey crust and seeing your spoon disappear into the cold, soft ice cream. It's sweet, soft, crunchy, warm, AND cold - all in one dessert.

I was at my cousin's place the other night and she told me she had made her own version of Mexican fried ice cream and I could have cried tears of sheer happiness. Her's weren't deep fried (for those of us trying to stay somewhat healthy) but they still tasted absolutely divine!! She coated the vanilla bean ice cream balls in a vanilla almond cereal (maybe Special K?) and topped them off with a cherry and beyond-generous helpings of chocolate fudge drizzle. Below is a before chocolate drizzle shot and an after chocolate drizzle shot.



Before
After
My cousin definitely out did herself - it was almost unimaginably delicious!!! I'm not entirely certain how to fully express my deepest gratitude to her for making this and bringing me back to some of my fondest childhood food memories...maybe I'll take her out for Mexican Fried Ice Cream sometime :)

If my memory serves me right, this dish has now been savored in various forms in our family for two decades. When Mama Noodle unveiled this classic on New Year's Day of 1990 or 1991, we had never seen its equal. No one quite knew what to do. Many years later, when I was living 2,000 miles from Mama Noodle, my wife Yankee Noodle Candy was sweet enough to prepare me a taste of home. Her first couple attempts were abject failures for various reasons (make sure you rinse the beans!). But in October of 2006, she aced it, and since then life in our dining room has never quite been the same. I'm told that Hot Dry Noodlin' and Canoodlin' also create variants of this dish. It's quite possible that this is my all time favorite.

The recipe will not be unveiled. As I said, it's a cherished family heirloom. But this blog is about eating, and there's plenty to write about the process.

These days, the first step for me is to hold my head over the pot of chili and just sniff it.

The first step in preparation is to grab some iceberg lettuce and scatter it around the plate. Be careful! If someone (perhaps a wife or a mother) is in charge of how much you eat, you don't want to stack the lettuce too high, because the finished product will appear unreasonably monstrous and you'll be blamed for taking too much food, even though you didn't really take all that much. The reason? The lettuce pile artificially inflated the perceived amount of food you're about to eat.

The next step is to lay out the tortilla chips, although some prefer to do this before the lettuce step. We prefer a brand called Santitas that we discovered out West (although it's now available in the Midwest!), an affordable and adequately salty brand that's slow to sog. Again, don't take too many curly chips or you'll get in trouble for taking "too much food" even though it's just empty pockets of air caused by abnormally shaped chips.

Now it gets serious. The chili - the ground beef, the beans, the bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, spices, etc - is truly a work of art. Hopefully you have an inconspicuously flat bed of lettuce and chips so that you can take as much as possible without making a mess or looking like a hog.

The final step is to bury the chili in shredded cheddar cheese. Watching it melt is an event in itself. A common mistake made by the novice eater at this point is to add sour cream. This must be avoided. You don't want to taint a masterpiece.

It's usually at this point that I set my plate down and hope that the height of the glorious food goes unnoticed. I did pretty well tonight. The pile wasn't large enough to create suspicion.

This meal moves in stages. First, you grab any visible chip and gently lift it (together with any food that rests upon it) toward and into your mouth. When the chips have disappeared or only soggy ones remain, it's time to pick up your fork.

Finally we arrive at "The Last Bite." Remember how important it is to nail this!

Upon finishing, the eater is left traumatized that the meal is over.

But wait! Don't forget that this meal is actually even better on the second day!

MAMA NOODLE'S TACO SALAD (YANKEE NOODLE CANDY VARIANT)
YANKEE NOODLE RATING: 44 out of 10 mmmm's.