How I Cooked Dinner for The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck
Picture it: you're in your kitchen, starting to make dinner, and you look out your window and there on the street below is The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. What do you do? Why you turn to Twitter, of course.
See, I'd met Doug--the proprietor of The Big Gay Ice Cream truck--the week before at a Serious Eats anniversary party. And I'd yet to try the Big Gay ice cream from his truck. Doug replied (and note, these Twitter images come from Eater which did a write-up about this exchange):
What was I cooking? Why my famous Heaven & Hell Cauliflower pasta:
[Note: lately I've been adding toasted coriander seeds + fennel seeds that I grind in a coffee grinder for some color and some pep. Oh, and parsley too.]
I warned Doug over Twitter that this pasta would have lots of anchovies and garlic:
He responded that maybe I should deliver it later but I ignored that warning and carried a steaming bowl of garlicky cauliflower pasta--in a real bowl with a real fork--down to the street where I delivered it to him. Only when I got down there, it wasn't him but his partner Bryan manning the window. I didn't realize there were two of them in the truck so I convinced myself that Bryan was Doug and presented him with the smelly bowl of dinner and he looked at me like I was crazy. "Hey Doug," I said.
Bryan, looking baffled, nodded towards the front of the truck and there I saw Doug hovering over a salad. "Hey!" I said, tapping on the front window. Doug sat up, came to the window, took the bowl and said: "Thanks!"
We chatted for a little and I promised to come back down later with Craig for the bowl and for some ice cream. Which is exactly what we did when Craig and I finished dinner back in the apartment. Here's Craig outside The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck:
And here's Doug fixing our reward [Note: I really wanted to pay for the ice cream but Doug wouldn't let us! "You made me dinner," he said, matter-of-factly]:
I ordered the Cococone which came with coconut and curry powder:
This was a delightfully unexpected combo; not overly sweet, nicely complex and vaguely exotic.
But the thing to get? The thing that elevates The Big Gay Ice Cream from a cute gimmick to a truly important culinary vessel is what Craig ordered, The Salty Pimp:
Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you're sitting down: here's how Doug makes The Salty Pimp. He takes a vanilla soft-serve cone and dresses it, using a squeeze bottle, with Dulce de Leche. Then he sprinkles on sea salt and dips the whole thing in chocolate, which immediately hardens. The resulting cone is the best thing to come out of a truck since...
Help: I can't finish that sentence. [Since "Wicked" went on tour?]
Needless to say, if The Big Gay Ice Cream truck ever lands itself outside your window, do what I did and make Doug dinner. You'll be repaid in Cococones, Salty Pimps and a very gracious "thank you" on Twitter.
