Chef and Bon Appétit associate food editor Sohla El-Waylly joins Food52 Genius columnist Kristen to talk about all things fun: (questionable) ice cream floats, handmade sprinkles, and of course—fun dip.
Referenced in this episode:
Genius-Hunter Extra-Credit:
Have a genius recipe you'd like to share? Tell me all about it! I'm at genius@food52.com —Kristen
Kristen Miglore (voiceover): Hi, I'm Kristen Miglore, lifelong Genius hunter. For almost a decade, I've been unearthing the recipes that have changed the way we cook. On The Genius Recipe Tapes, we’re sharing the behind-the-scenes moments from talking with the geniuses themselves that we couldn't quite squeeze into the column or video series: the extra-genius tricks, the off-road riffs, and the personal stories that actually have nothing to do with the recipe that week.
My guest this week is Sohla El-Waylly, associate food editor at Bon Appetit. We talked about ice cream floats, the scoop shop Sohla’s parents ran, and the very ambitious restaurant that she launched with her husband. And her Genius Ranch Fun Dip - a nutty, herby spice blend that's reminded me and my 1-year-old just how fun eating vegetables can be.
Kristen: Hi, Sohla!
Sohla El-Waylly: Hi, Kristen.
Kristen: It's so good to see you.
Sohla: Yeah, you too.
Kristen: Thank you so much for joining. So first off, I would just really like to hear from you what the story is behind this recipe and this genius idea.
Sohla: Well, um I actually developed it at the end of last year, in the winter, for a road trip package. So it went along with these other trail mix cookies that I did. The idea was, it's something really easy to pack in your car for a road trip. No one's really road tripping right now, but it's still a really great snack to take to your desk. You know, when you're, when you're walking through your apartment, you know, maybe put some Fun Dip in your pocket, feel like you're going on a long journey. But like, I don't know, I don't know about you. But whenever I've gone on road trips, I end up just eating like junk food, stuff from gas stations, lots of fast food. So I wanted, like a really easy way to get some vegetables in there. Um, and the great thing about Fun Dip is it has a lot of flavor, but it's totally like room temperature stable, you know. Shelf stable so you can keep it in your car for however, and if you pack your veggies in a jar with a little bit of water, they'll stay nice and crisp, too. So, yeah, the idea was just to get, like, a healthy snack in there. Well, in between potato chips.
Kristen: That's so amazing because I hadn't even thought about the travel aspects of it. Because obviously, I have not been traveling lately and I have just been enjoying it as a just fast work from home lunch. I feel like I end up, for these work from home lunches, I'm just trying to do something that's really fast, like eggs or doing something with a can of beans. And then I always forget to have vegetables, and I'm always kind of like, you know, in the last moment, like okay, maybe there's no vegetables. But with this…
(Both Kristen & Sohla laugh)
Kristen: Fine whatever. But with this, I feel like I have been eating a lot more vegetables because there is something.
Sohla: Yeah, that’s the goal.
Kristen: Yeah, yes.
Sohla: Well, and I love dipping stuff into dry powders. There's a little dry seasoning in South Asian cuisine called idli podi. Well, some people call gunpowder spice, but it's really similar. That's kind of was the base inspiration for it. And, um, it's traditionally got toasted lentils and sesame, chili, some spices. And I grew up eating that, like you dip your warm idlis in that. So it's like the same kind of vibe, but with different flavors. So it brings me a lot of nostalgia both from the Fun Dip angle and from like the idli podi angle. And I'm glad that it's something like a lot of people seem to relate to.
Kristen: Yeah, definitely. So which, which would you say, came first in that thought process, since there were a lot of good reasons for this. I'm just curious, kind of about the development process in general. Both, like what came first in the idea and then also perfecting the recipe.
Sohla: Well, my first thought was try and figure out a way to get vegetables to fit into your road trip. Um and then after that, I just thought about the idli podi. It's like one of those things that I use almost every day. So it just felt like a natural evolution. But I wanted it to be more mild, so it's good for kids. Which is why I went with like, ranch flavors. So I feel like it's like really accessible, the dill and the garlic and the nutritional yeast. It's like got some savoriness, but it's really light and kind of fresh, and I think that a lot of palates will like it. Which is tough when you're on a road trip with the family. You know.
Kristen: Wow, another angle. I had not thought about.
Sohla: All the angles.
Kristen: You've thought of everything,
Sohla: But you don't need a road trip anymore. You know, for me, like the most exciting thing that we do is walk the dogs and sit at the park. So this is a really easy like, it's not even like a full formal picnic. But you could just sit on a bench and snack on these, and it's like clean and easy. But the main thing that actually I needed to test a few times was how fine or coarse to leave the dip. If you leave it too chunky, it doesn't really stick to stuff. But then, if you take it too far, the whole thing just gets, like, kind of clumpy, almost nut buttery bites in there, which also doesn't stick very well. So the main thing is getting it to the texture of wet sand. We're stopping just short of it becoming totally fine. There's still, like a little coarseness to it, but we don't want any big chunks. With this version that I'm going to do with the dried shrimp, I'm actually going to blitz the shrimp separately. Because a lot of times when you blitz together like two things that are two really different textures, nothing really evenly blends. But it wasn't, this wasn't like a really, really tough one to develop. The hardest part was coming up with the idea of what's a good way to, like, create a road trip snack that's got vegetables in it that will hold. And be shelf stable. But once we came up with the concept, the actual development wasn't too hard.
Kristen: And how would you define ranch flavor that you were going for with this?
Sohla: I feel like ranch, I always think of dill and onion. Those are like the main things, and then garlic as like a back note. Um, when I'm making like a ranch dressing, I always have chives in there as well and like, parsley. But I want to keep it simple with just one dried herb. So that's why I just stuck with the dill because that's, I feel like that's the most prominent. But if you happen to have other dried like if you happen to have some dried parsley or dried? Um I don't know, do they sell dried chives? I don't even know. I've never used it before. They do?
Kristen: I think, and they look kind of funny because they’re not in a powder. If I'm remembering correctly thy are like, actually minced chives and they just come out these little.
Sohla: Well, I mean, if you've got this, throw them in there too. I'm sure it’d be great, But yeah, I wanted to keep it simple. So just went with the one dried herb.
Kristen: Are there any other things that you would do with this besides, dip vegetables in it? You know, using it as an ingredient in other things. You're cooking, sprinkling it over other things.
Sohla: Yeah. I mean, I really think it would be great on a ton of different things, like roast some potatoes and sprinkle it with this. I don't know, right now it's Spring. There's artichokes. And you know how you like to rip off the artichoke, dip it in butter? Like I think it would be great to dip it into this or maybe dip it into butter and then dip it into this. Why the hell not? A great like tasty crouton, like toast up some bread, like torn bread. And then toss it in this and you got, like, a nutty Ranch-y crouton thing. But yeah, I don't think—you had a great idea that you mentioned you turned it into a dressing.
Kristen: Mhmm, well, thank you for calling it a great idea. I basically just made it back into its original form, sort of. But what I did was I have been thinking a lot about using heavy cream and dressings lately because I feel like I've had a lot of heavy cream leftover, and I've just been thinking about how cream is thickened by citrus. I've been playing around with making dressings, that are just a little bit of lemon juice, a little bit of heavy cream, no oil necessarily, and then some of this. And so it's a very kind of aggressive tasting ranch
Sohla: I've never tried a dressing with cream, but it's a really good idea because you get cream for desserts and there's always leftovers. We need more uses for cream. Yeah, that's cool. I'm into that. I'm going to give it a shot.
Kristen: Thanks. Um, yeah, and it doesn't take much to dress a salad like you don't drown a salad. Or at least I don't want to run a salad in, like, really heavy, creamy dressing so.
Sohla: Well and in a weird way, I feel like cream is a little lighter than oil.
Kristen: Yes. Yeah, I think we associate cream with heaviness because we're comparing it to milk. But if we compare it oii, it's lighter.
Sohla: Yeah, I'm gonna be busy making that cream based dressing.
Kristen: (laughs) I can see how at your restaurant, your whole, um, ice cream shop concept just got bigger and bigger and bigger.
Kristen (voiceover): This is The Genius Recipe Tapes. We'll be right back. (music)
Kristen: Are there other flavors that you have or would want to do with this? Besides the two that you've already mentioned?
Sohla: Yeah. I mean, you can really do—take this is just like a base like technique formula, and you can kind of do whatever you want with it. Um, you could go sweet and you know how after school a really fun snack is peanut butter and apples. So you could do like peanuts, brown sugar, cinnamon, keep it kind of sweet. So it's like a really fun way to have peanut butter and apples like dip some apples into that. Today, I'm actually going to—I want to go like a more savory route. So I'm gonna use cashews. And instead of dill, I've got some dried shrimp. So, like, blitz in there because I wanted to kind of have a little bit of that funky, fishy thing. I was craving, um, satay, (laughs), so I'm hoping it kind of tastes like that. I haven't tried. We're gonna try together for the first time, so we'll see how it comes out.
Kristen: I love that. So you could just sort of think of a flavor that you're craving and take those spices and seasonings and just and enter those into a Fun Dip.
Sohla: Yeah, totally. Just just have fun with it. Go through your pantry. See what like nuts, seeds, whatever you've got, That's your base. And then season it up however you like.
Kristen: Like who knew that Fun Dip, which is not so dimensional. I mean, it's It's like we haven't really defined what it is.
Sohla: Dipping sugar into sugar.
Kristen: We haven't really defined that for anybody who's not familiar with Fun Dip. How would you describe it?
Sohla: Oh, man. Okay, I loved Fun Dip as a kid. it was like, I had to make sure no one, no parents were around because it was like contraband. Um, and it's just, if you haven't had it before, it's just a stick made out of pure sugar that you dip into a bag of powdered sugar and it's just terrible. It's probably the worst thing for a child to have. But it was so fun because of the licking and the dipping and then you eat your stick too. So that's why this is like the same vibe. The utensil is also something you eat.
Kristen: Yeah and taking that principle of the fun of Fun Dip, of being able to eat your utensil. This has actually, like this is how we just taught our one year old daughter how to dip. And she, and also it got her, now she's dipping in lots of things. Like I had some chia seeds and through those on her tray, and she was dipping things and just anything that'll stick. And yeah, it's gotten her eating a lot of, like raw beets and stuff.
Sohla: Whoa!
Kristen: Which is just kind of amazing.
Sohla: Yeah, because it's an activity too so you want to do it.
Kristen: Did you see the link that I sent you late last night about Fun Dip?
Sohla: No, I just I just saw that email today, I didn’t look at it yet.
Kristen: Yeah, I was just kind of doing some digging around yesterday to find out more about Fun Dip itself. And it turns out that it was originally sold just as the powder, which was called Lik-M-Aid or lick made or something. I'm not sure it was one of those, like it has dots in the middle of the name. And then in somewhere around 1973 they added the sticks, the Lik-a-Stix. And then also later they sold the sticks themselves. So every single component of them was sold separately. And like the link I sent you was just like the evolution of the packaging, which actually reminds me a little bit of the the like, vintage things that you have behind you.
Sohla: Oh, yeah. I have a thing for vintage things. I don't want to go back into that time, but I really liked the stuff. I wanna bring the stuff to myself now. But I didn't know they sold just the sticks.
Kristen: I think it may have been with the short-lived, Um, they called them yummy mummies. And they were sort of, they had, like, a mummy theme. It was just like a blip in the eighties. I think.
Sohla: Oh.
Kristen: Maybe because the true genius of Fun Dip is being together.
Sohla: Yeah. They need to be together.
Kristen: Yeah.
Sohla: Yeah I mean, I don't think I remember as a kid, I don't really remember finishing the stick. But I remember finishing the powder. That was all about that dip.
Kristen: I also wanted to ask you, you sort already brought up your parents not being okay with a lot of Fun Dip, But as someone who grew up with parents—working in your parents ice cream shop. Like, what was your relationship with sweet things like? Was it, was it kind of just you know, sweets were not really a big deal because you were around them all the time? Or, um what was that like for you?
Sohla: Well, it was actually pretty interesting because you would think that growing up in an ice cream shop means you ate a lot of ice cream. But when I was a child, I was allergic to dairy, so I didn't. I had the occasional sorbet. But I was like, I would just stick my head in the freezer and smell everything because I couldn't eat it. And then as soon as I got older, my allergies changed and most of them went away. And now I constantly have at least two kinds of ice cream in the freezer at all times. Like ice cream has become my favorite food. And I think it's because I was around so much of it, but I couldn't eat it. I couldn't enjoy it. So now I have a sugar problem, I think because I was deprived. (laughs)
Kristen: Wow, that's so that's so interesting. Maybe if you had been able to eat it, it would have just not really been that big of a deal.
Sohla: Yeah, but I like, built up in my mind all the magical things that ice cream is. So now I'm obsessed with it. One of my favorite foods. (laughs)
Kristen: Yeah. And you, you did a lot of pastry and ice cream at your restaurant, right?
Sohla: Yeah, Well, I really, I had all these goals for the restaurant that didn't happen. But I really wanted it to have, like a old school soda shop vibe. We tried to train to figure out how to throw a ball of ice cream near and catch it in a cup. Never got that far like it's so much harder than it looks. But we did focus a lot on ice cream and like old school soda jerk stuff. So we made lots of floats and freezes, which is something that you don't see a lot. And it's when you blend the soda and ice cream together, not just pop it in there. Whole other drinking, eating experience. We did lots of big sundaes, um, made our own like sprinkles and all of the toppings that go on top of it. So that was really fun. But it was an incredible amount of work. We did not have the resources to maintain it because we were making our own sodas too which was a terrible idea. Like if I did it again, I would buy everything. (laughs)
Kristen: That sounds wise but a little bit sad, because what you're describing sounds like Wonka-like. With like with how magical it was.
Sohla: it was very inspired by Wonka. But yeah, we made, we made our own root beer, which was really delicious. But we made it from foraged wild barks and roots and then that just financially does not make sense. (laughs) No one wants to spend $15 on a coke.
Kristen: And you were not foraging them, I hope.
Sohla: No, we had, we had a root and bark guy. (laughs) Yeah, the problem was it was just my husband and myself. So there was no voice of reason being like, you need to relax. (laughs) The menu was changing, like every day just because we felt like it. But you need, you need a partner there who’s logical. You should not pipe each sprinkle individually,
Kristen: Maybe for the sake of the sprinkles and the customers and the business. But now, as a recipe developer and as someone who is showing people what they can do at home, the fact that you have all of those experiences to draw from, it just makes your recipes and your stories so good.
Sohla: Oh, thank you.
Kristen: Wow, can you just describe, because ice cream floats are probably my favorite food—
Sohla: Really?
Kristen: Yeah, but I've never yeah, but I've never had a freeze. A. like, does it not like, do you have to worry about it exploding as you're blending it?
Sohla: No.
Kristen: And what does it look like?
Sohla: Ok, it's just, it's soda, syrup and ice cream in a blender. And when you initially combine it, it does kind of poof. But once you blend it, a lot of those air bubbles get knocked down. So you end up with something that's like a fizzy milkshake. Um, what I really like about it is it's a great way to enjoy sherbets and sorbets. So one of my favorite freezes is actually rainbow sherbet with Sprite and a splash of vanilla syrup. And it's got, it's got, like, really kind of cool Creamsicle vibes. It's really refreshing, but kind of feels like a milkshake. It’s like, I think it's like the ultimate summer beverage. And we would put some booze in it for the adults. (laughs)
Kristen: What kind of booze?
Sohla: That I would go with gin for sure. Yeah, but you know, depends. Little bourbon is nice in there. Um, a little mezcal if you want to go smoky with the citrus. Whoa. Yeah. There's a lot of good options there.
Kristen: Um, I'm very curious what you would think of my favorite childhood float, which I probably had, I developed at scoop shops similar to your parents, I would say. My very favorite soda was Sprite and my favorite ice cream was cookies and cream, so.
Sohla: Whoa! That's interesting!
Kristen: I stand by it, but it is, like you said about Creamsicle, something about the sweet lemon limey like kind of sting in your throat from that from a soda like that and then the creaminess of ice cream. And then the cookies were a little bit bitter from the chocolate. So for me, it's still probably one of my favorites.
Sohla: Your float actually sounds, like, very sophisticated—
Kristen: Yeah?
Sohla: Because you got the Creamsicle with the cream and the soda and then the bitter chocolate. That's like, I feel like that's a really, that could be a fancy plated dessert. You know, I don't think it's that weird. I'm gonna have to try it.
Kristen: Thank you. I would, I would really love to see your fancy plated a desert version of it too. I'm sure I would love it.
Sohla: That's what I'm going to do for the rest of today, I guess. Let's go get the ice cream machine.
Kristen: (laughs)
Kristen {voiceover): Thanks for listening. Our show was put together by Coral Lee, Gabriella Mangino, Alik Barsoumian, and me, Kristen Miglore. You can find all the Genius Recipes, videos and stories on our site, Food52.com. And if you have a Genius Recipe that you'd like to share, please email it to me at genius@food52.com—I am always hunting. If you like The Genius Recipe Tapes, be sure to rate and review us. It really helps. See you next time.