David Hammond has a new twist on holiday treats: “Behold the Peppermint-Stick-in-a-Dill-Pickle” is the headline of his latest food blog at oakpark.com. Nick Kindelsperger who researched this … delicacy … for the Chicago Tribune describes it as “A sucker punch of crunch, salt and sugar, with nothing sane to balance it out.”
Sounds like our kind of holiday confection. You have to work to get to the candy cane, but it might just be worth it.
“Preparation is simple,” Hammond writes, “you gingerly bite off the end of the pickle, just as you might the tip of a cigar, and firmly gripping the pickle, plunge the peppermint stick in dead-center.
“I will say this,” he says upon sampling his own version, “neither peppermint stick nor dill pickle won the battle waged within my mouth. Each is such an aggressive flavor and neither succeeded in being the dominant taste. It was a draw … or perhaps more like mutually assured destruction.”
Still, he adds, “If you’re looking for a fun, novel way to celebrate National Candy Cane Day (Dec. 26) or, belatedly, National Pickle Day (Nov. 14), you could not pick a more celebratory (or at least bizarre) food than the Peppermint-Stick-in-a-Dill-Pickle.
Ken Trainor
