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SWEET DREAM YIELDS YAM ICE-CREAM
BY ALICIA DUNKLEY Sunday Observer staff reporter [email protected]
Sunday, August 30, 2009
It was the most delicious dream Norma Smith has had to date and the reason she is the first person to have made a confection from Trelawny's most famous ground produce.
Ice-cream. From yam.
Norma Smith poses with two of the five trophies she received for her sweet treat, Trelawny style. (Photo: Lionel Rookwood)
"We (community women) had a group from the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) and we were gonna have a competition; most persons were baking," 62-year-old Smith told the Sunday Observer from the homely confines of her residence in Ulster Spring in South Trelawny after some gentle prodding.
She, however, could not decide what her entry in that competition would be.
Not wanting to do the popular thing, Smith began toying with ideas, but it was while she was dead to the world that she got the brainwave she sought - a guardian angel with a recipe for success.
"I came home and I was pondering what to do. I went to sleep and I dreamt I saw my grandmother and she was grating yam and she said to me 'yam ice cream', that was all and I woke up," Smith said, chuckling.
Of course, when she returned to share the 'dream', the other women laughed.
But she was undaunted. The first try was "less than perfect" but the second hit the spot.
In an hour she had it.
"It smelled and tasted like ice-cream. It was the first anyone had heard of yam ice-cream and they were sceptical," she recalled.
But that was 1998, and since then she has risen to the top of every competition she has entered with her yam ice-cream.
"I won my first trophy in 1998," she told the Sunday Observer. "I have four Nestlé trophies from competitions at the regional level by the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission, and one from my entry for the Trelawny Culinary Competition."
Blessed with a husband who is a farmer, she did not stop there, but ran the full gamut. She went from yam ice-cream cake, to sweet potato and corn ice-cream, flavoured rum and raisin, pineapple and strawberry.
The result: her fame has spread near and far. But humility keeps her sheltered.
"I can use any yam that's in season," Smith explained. "People ask me to make it and persons who have relatives coming from abroad request it as well. I would really like to do more with it but sometimes you don't know the avenue to take."
Married for 41 years and the mother of three, Smith, who was a community health aid worker for 31 years, is now retired. Her dream for her sweet treat, she said, is simply to "show girls how to make it, for example, in a class setting".
"That's my dream, when it really comes off the ground," the homemaker said, adding that she has also compiled a book of original yam recipes, among other recipes.
Regretfully, there were no samples that day but there is an open invitation to taste away at the "Yam Extravaganza" to be hosted by her church community this October.
SWEET DREAM YIELDS YAM ICE-CREAM
BY ALICIA DUNKLEY Sunday Observer staff reporter [email protected]
Sunday, August 30, 2009
It was the most delicious dream Norma Smith has had to date and the reason she is the first person to have made a confection from Trelawny's most famous ground produce.
Ice-cream. From yam.
Norma Smith poses with two of the five trophies she received for her sweet treat, Trelawny style. (Photo: Lionel Rookwood)
"We (community women) had a group from the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) and we were gonna have a competition; most persons were baking," 62-year-old Smith told the Sunday Observer from the homely confines of her residence in Ulster Spring in South Trelawny after some gentle prodding.
She, however, could not decide what her entry in that competition would be.
Not wanting to do the popular thing, Smith began toying with ideas, but it was while she was dead to the world that she got the brainwave she sought - a guardian angel with a recipe for success.
"I came home and I was pondering what to do. I went to sleep and I dreamt I saw my grandmother and she was grating yam and she said to me 'yam ice cream', that was all and I woke up," Smith said, chuckling.
Of course, when she returned to share the 'dream', the other women laughed.
But she was undaunted. The first try was "less than perfect" but the second hit the spot.
In an hour she had it.
"It smelled and tasted like ice-cream. It was the first anyone had heard of yam ice-cream and they were sceptical," she recalled.
But that was 1998, and since then she has risen to the top of every competition she has entered with her yam ice-cream.
"I won my first trophy in 1998," she told the Sunday Observer. "I have four Nestlé trophies from competitions at the regional level by the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission, and one from my entry for the Trelawny Culinary Competition."
Blessed with a husband who is a farmer, she did not stop there, but ran the full gamut. She went from yam ice-cream cake, to sweet potato and corn ice-cream, flavoured rum and raisin, pineapple and strawberry.
The result: her fame has spread near and far. But humility keeps her sheltered.
"I can use any yam that's in season," Smith explained. "People ask me to make it and persons who have relatives coming from abroad request it as well. I would really like to do more with it but sometimes you don't know the avenue to take."
Married for 41 years and the mother of three, Smith, who was a community health aid worker for 31 years, is now retired. Her dream for her sweet treat, she said, is simply to "show girls how to make it, for example, in a class setting".
"That's my dream, when it really comes off the ground," the homemaker said, adding that she has also compiled a book of original yam recipes, among other recipes.
Regretfully, there were no samples that day but there is an open invitation to taste away at the "Yam Extravaganza" to be hosted by her church community this October.