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Delicious creamy memories of my grand father

Last week, I shared a little bit about how as a child, my grandparents lived in Puerto Rico, though they were from England. My grandfather was a master dyer and managed factories in the mountain and coastal towns of the south central region. Sugar, rum and fabric drew a population of chemists and specialists from all over the world, and my grandparents had a lovely international as well as local community to share with.

Every winter my mother would pack us kids onto a Pan Am dual prop plane at JKF airport and we would fly, sometimes with chickens and goats, but always to the sound of dual languages babbling happily along with the droning of the prop engines all the way to San Juan where my grandfather would be there to meet us in his Chevy Nova. We would then drive south through cow fields and sugar cane, before the major north south highway was built to Cayey.

My youngest memories of my grandparent’s home was the house in Cayey which backed up to the local police station. I remember my father lifting me up to see through the cracks in the high board fence so I could see the prisoners in the yard. It was rather scary for a three year old, so I guess that is why I remember it.

The places I remember most though were the house at 13.6 KM on the mountain road between Cayey and Guayama that my grandparents called home for many years, the lovely colonial town of Guayama with it’s umbrella trees in the square, buying bananas from an old man who kept them in a cage by the side of the mountain road, and the beach at Cheriopolis near Arroyo on the southern coast. Time seemed to stand still in Puerto Rico when we visited, and since it was winter, we were often the only people on the beautiful cresent of beach, where my little brother learned to swim and we gathered coconuts to plant in my grandmother’s garden.

One very strong memory that I have of my Grandfather Sydney, who was a magical man to children, was him talking me into trying a very different type of ice cream on a visit to Guayama one day. We stood in the ice cream parlor and he told me that I could always get vanilla and chocolate in New York, but that I would not have the chance to taste Guanabana ice cream in the states. Guanabana or custard apple was a local favorite, along with papaya, mango, guava, banana, tamarind and of course coconut.  My grandfather had a way of talking anyone into anything, and so, reluctantly at first, I had a taste, and with increasing gusto I savored this unique delicacy.

It tasted like nothing else in the world! A bit like guava, but not. A bit like banana, but not. The fluffiest of white, but still almost green because of the flavor which hinted of lime, but again not. It is one of those singularly unique flavors, that, because of its ability to defy definition, tatooes itself firmly on your senses and your brain forever more. I loved it, but oddly, I do not remember having it again in all my visits to PR.

Many years later, with my own family, I found my way back to these places of my memory, using only a paper map to find Cayey, and my mother’s instructions to take the mountain road to Guayama and look for kilometer marker 13.6. When she said mountain road, she meant it! The twists and turns and shear angles of the road in a land tall on elevation but short in distance was remarkable, and yet, not a single guardrail was placed, as Sea Land trucks barreled along towards the town nestled in the hills.

We found my grandparents house, as I said last week, and then we decended into Guayama, often having to wait for feral chickens to cross the road in front of us. We stopped briefly at the cage where an ancient man used to sell us finger bananas, which was now over grown, the old man long buried and returned to the earth, just like my own grandfather.

We stood in the square, amid the towering umbrella trees and I turned to take mental notes of the places I remembered. The church, movie theater, fountain, where the girls and boys in their school uniforms lounged after their classes, the open air cafe where old men sipped black pico coffee in tiny cups and discussed life in a language both foreign and familiar to me, and the bakery with its wafts of warm pan d’ agua that invited me to take a bite of the very air I was breathing.

It was here, that I told my daughters the story of my grandfather, and the ice cream. It had been over thirty years since I stood in that square, but at once, thinking about that delicious guanabana ice cream, I knew I had to have some. I never thought in a million years that the same shop would be offering the same treat, and I wasn’t even sure where that parlor had been. Never the less, I closed my eyes and remembered that flavor, and releasing the memory from my cranial vault, I began to walk with certaintly to the south west of the plaza.

A block down, there it stood, and with tears of joy streaming down my face, I ordered guanabana ice cream! My kids both had a taste, as did my husband and they all agreed it was unique and delicious, but of course, they couldn’t understand it’s power over me, or the shear delight I felt at finding this place and tasting it again. Unfortunately they were never to meet my grandfather, who set this gift before me and forever engraved it into my heart.

Treasures found on my trip to Puerto Rico and my ice cream smile!

Guanabana Ice Cream

Makes 1 Quart

Since I do not have an ice cream maker, I decided to use the Vitamix to make this frosty treat. It was rather easy to make, but I would have liked to use Guanabana frozen pulp instead of Goya Guanabana Nectar. If you have a latin specialty store in your neighborhood, you can purchase pulp generally in the frozen foods section (my store’s freezer was out), or the nectar if you so choose. You will need to increase the sweetner and fluids if you use pulp, but this recipe was designed to be made with the nectar.

3 Cans Goya Guanabana Nectar

1 Pint heavy cream

1 Pint whole milk plus more for blending

1/2 cup raw sugar or more as needed

In a high powered blender, whisk together 2 cans of nectar, the cream and the milk. Taste the mixture and then add sugar a few tablespoons at a time, mixing in between, until a desired sweetness is reached. Do not over sweeten.

Pour the mixture into a large zip loc plastic bag, or a few quart sized bags and place in the freezer until they are mostly solid, which should take a few hours.

Pour back into blender and reserve the bags. Using low power first, blend the chunks of ice to a smooth consistency, using the remaining can of nectar to create a smooth slurry. When the consistency is uniform, pour back into the plastic bags and freeze again, this time over night until they are completely hard.

In the morning, remove the mixture from the plastic bags and using a large kitchen knife on a cutting board, cube up the frozen mixture and place, in batches into the blender. Add a little whole milk and process until a very creamy and firm consistency is reached. Taste and adjust sugar as needed, but it should taste lightly sweet from the fruit and creamy fresh from the dairy. Continue to blend until all the chuncks are processed with some milk. Pour into a plastic or glass freezer bowl and store with lid tightly closed for a few weeks. You may need to melt it a bit to serve, and you can use any type of tropical fruit pulp or nectar in place of the Guanabana, but why don’t you give it a try to see what the heck I am talking about! I was very pleased with the results of this recipe, even if I didn’t have an ice cream maker (I want one for Christmas!), and having a special visit with my grandpa, by visiting the memory of this shared delight was a little piece of heaven for me!

This recipe was a part of the Hearth ‘n Soul Blog Hop-volume 14, Sundays at One,  Mouthwatering Mondays,  Tuesday Twister, Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays ,   Tempt My Tummy Tuesdays, Alphabet Thursday,  BBBTasty Tuesday,  and Tasty Tuesdays , so please visit the links and support other amazing real food bloggers.