Interview Highlights
- Rick Gion's Pie Day Adventure: Rick shares his experience of trying 10 different kinds of pie at the Sons of Norway in Fargo, with a special mention of the unique rommegrot pie.
- Pie Preferences and Debate: The conversation about preferring the crust or the filling first, and a playful debate about what constitutes a "real" pie, highlighting banana cream as a favorite.
- North Dakota's Ice Cream Gems: Rick introduces listeners to North Dakota-made ice creams and gelatos.
- Ice Cream Making Tips: The discussion includes insights into making homemade ice cream, the differences between ice cream, gelato, and custard, and the importance of high-quality ingredients for the best flavor.
Transcript of Segment
Ashley Thornberg
You're listening to Main Street on Prairie Public. I'm Ashley Thornberg joined now by Rick Gion. It's time for Prairie Plates.
Rick, thanks so much for joining us today.
Rick Gion
Well, it's good to be back with you, Ashley.
Ashley Thornberg
And last week, you and Craig talked about pie. It was pie day. This week, we're going to a la mode, talk about some ice cream and some gelato.
But first, a quick recap on some of the pies that you just had to try as part of your little publicity stunt here. When you are tasting pie, are you the flavor of the pie first, or do you go straight for the crust and evaluate from the bottom up?
Rick Gion
Well, there's a lot to it. It gets complicated. It kind of gets mathematical, but not quite.
Ashley Thornberg
I was told there'd be no math.
Rick Gion
A little math is I tried 10 kinds of pie at the Sons of Norway in downtown Fargo last Thursday, which was pie day, not just 3.14 pieces of pie. That would be a little odd. We filled up the whole table basically with what they, we got all of them that they were offering that day.
Yes. Go big or go home, Rick. That's what it was.
Got a lot of stares and a lot of the folks that worked there were like, what the heck is this guy doing? But yeah, I mean, it was good for them to put it on my big Facebook food group and also just for me because I got to try all these pies.
Ashley Thornberg
Because you got to eat 10 pies.
Rick Gion
The 10 were apple streusel, blueberry, banana cream, coconut cream, chocolate silk. Yep.
Ashley Thornberg
Yep. I'm here for it.
Rick Gion
Rhubarb.
Ashley Thornberg
Okay.
Rick Gion
Strawberry rhubarb.
Ashley Thornberg
A little more. Yep.
Rick Gion
Peach raspberry. Ooh, okay. A little bit of tartness with that sweet peach.
And then sour cream raisin. And the last one is rumegrat, which is kind of their specialty and it's...
Ashley Thornberg
As a pie? I've had this more as like a custardy pudding.
Rick Gion
Exactly. But they put it in their homemade pie crust and it's quite good. In fact, I tasted a lot of these with Portia downstairs who works in accounting here and she's really cool.
So we meet up at the Sons of Norway a lot, but she really liked that one. And they don't brulee it anymore and they used to brulee it. So it had this crisp, kind of crisp caramel on top.
But now it's just kind of cinnamon and sugar, which I think is more traditional.
Ashley Thornberg
So they must have to add a little something to make it thicker, like more gelatinous. Because otherwise that wouldn't... I mean, it's a spoonable texture, usually rumegrat is, but it's not a...
Can cut it and have it stand on its own, is it?
Rick Gion
It seems to me that they may add a little gelatin there or something just to firm it up. I think you're right, yes. Okay.
Ashley Thornberg
Just generically, you liked most of them, all of them?
Rick Gion
You know, rhubarb, I can never go wrong with rhubarb, strawberry rhubarb. Any of those are delicious. My favorite is and was banana cream.
And Craig was kind of giving me a little guff last week saying he didn't think that that was a real pie. He likes fruit pies, I think, but that's fine. He'll get over it, but...
Ashley Thornberg
Banana's a fruit. That's, yeah, that's true. But you're saying like cherry and apple and...
Okay, that's fair.
Rick Gion
Kind of those baked pies and... Yeah.
Ashley Thornberg
I love a good creamy pie. I love banana cream and coconut cream. But I also love just like a cherry pie and an apple pie.
I don't discriminate against pies.
Rick Gion
No, and you shouldn't. You shouldn't. But yeah, it was a good time and tried a lot of pie, got out of there, bringing a lot of pie actually back here downstairs.
And we all kind of tried a bunch of them. And that was a lot of fun for pie day.
Ashley Thornberg
Yeah, all right. Well, let's move on to the a la mode part. Pie a la mode.
Pie in fashion. Pie with ice cream. Has to be done.
Rick Gion
Highbrow pie.
Ashley Thornberg
Oh, I love that. I'm not a pie and whipped cream person. I will if the whipped cream is homemade and sometimes a little bit flavored.
Like I like to add a little bit of, let's just say booze.
Rick Gion
There's nothing wrong with that.
Ashley Thornberg
To the whipped cream. But I'm much bigger on the ice cream end of things than the whipped cream. Where are you on this?
Rick Gion
Yeah, especially if the pie is heated up and you have that contrast between hot and cold. I think that just really works out, especially with those apple pies, blueberry pies. Well, pecan, I guess, is not a fruit pie, but yeah, pumpkin, that sort of thing.
Where you warm it up, it's really good warmed up, but then you put the ice cream on the side or on top and it melts or however you want to do it. It's good. And so, yeah, I thought we'd talk a little bit about ice cream, specifically a few North Dakota brand ice creams.
And maybe folks don't realize that we do have a few places in the state that actually make it and sell it commercially.
Ashley Thornberg
So inform us. This is something we clearly need to know. Our mission, educate people of the Prairie Region, Rick.
Rick Gion
About ice cream.
Ashley Thornberg
Educate us about ice cream.
Rick Gion
And pie. I'm glad to do it. Hey, you know, I think some of the best ice cream or gelato, and there's a little bit of a difference there.
I'm sure the Italians would say, and I'm a quarter Italian, but I'm sure the Italians would say there's a lot of difference.
Ashley Thornberg
Yeah. Well, there's ice cream and then the French ice cream too. And that's different.
Rick Gion
Custard type ice creams. And then you get into the sorbets and sherbet and all of that stuff. A lot of different kinds of ice cream too.
And that's fun to talk about. But I think that Maartje Murphy up in Carrington, and they're known for cheeses and all sorts of stuff. Their Duchessa gelato, which they sell around the state, it's just very, very good.
Ashley Thornberg
It's very rich.
Rick Gion
Extremely rich. I did have some monster cookie gelato last week and man, it was good.
Ashley Thornberg
And they just have chunks of monster cookie in there. Or was it just the flavor of like a little bit of cinnamon and oatmeal?
Rick Gion
No, it had chunks and then like dry pieces, which I really like because you'll find. And I think, you know, this too, like cereal type ice creams or cookie type ice creams the cookies just get a little, I don't know what the right word is, but they're just not crisp anymore. But yeah, a lot of crispy cookie type stuff going on there, which was very good.
Ashley Thornberg
Take us quite a bit north here, kind of to the center of the state in Bottineau, Pride Dairy.
Rick Gion
Yeah. A lot of people don't know about Pride Dairy and you can buy buckets of that ice cream actually around the state. I had friends that would buy it in Bismarck and Dickinson.
And I really like the Choke Cherry flavor, but they have all sorts of stuff like Butter Brickle. And well, the other one was Black Licorice. I think I've tried.
Ashley Thornberg
God, I love Black Licorice.
Rick Gion
I do too. But and people like to hate on Black Licorice ice cream. And I don't get it.
I don't get it either. It's good.
Ashley Thornberg
You said that they are making ice cream. Is that available only in the state of North Dakota? Or, you know, could I go to Colorado and try to find a Pride Dairy from Bottineau?
Rick Gion
That's a really good question because they've actually rebranded a little bit for a national appeal. And now they have ice cream out there called O Ice Cream.
Ashley Thornberg
I love it. Maybe Ope could have been in there. Time for ice cream.
Rick Gion
I think maybe we should start an ice cream company.
Ashley Thornberg
Well, you know, I think we just did, Rick. Legally binding contract in the state of North Dakota. Take us a little bit closer into our big national attraction.
Just outside of Medora, we have Theodore Roosevelt National Park. And in this tiny, charming town of Medora, we got some good ice cream.
Rick Gion
We do. And there's a few places there. I always go to this place called Medora Fudge and Ice Cream Depot because I've just been going there for a while and it's cool and they make their own ice cream.
And it's just a really fun stop to make in Medora. And as folks know, in that part of the state, it can get very hot during the summer. And hot and dry.
And so if you're walking around Medora, which a lot of us like to do, that's just a good stop to make. So I've enjoyed that quite a few times. And then closer to our studio in Fargo here, I go to Silver Lining Creamery quite a bit.
There's just a lot of good ice cream around.
Ashley Thornberg
You talked a little bit about gelato, custard, French ice cream, ice cream. Hit us up with the main differences.
Rick Gion
Well, I like doing this segment with you because you really know your stuff too and like to cook. And we were talking off air just a little bit about we both own the same kind of ice cream maker. When you have one of those, you kind of mess around with different recipes where you would do a custard type ice cream and use a bunch of egg yolks and temper the egg yolks and the cream and milk and sugar and that sort of thing.
Or you could do kind of an American style ice cream, which would be cream, milk, sugar and that sort of thing. And then with gelato, they don't use egg yolks a lot in gelato. Some of them do.
This is how I like to make ice cream too. I don't like to whip it really fast in that particular ice cream maker. I like to kind of go slow so they're smaller ice crystals.
It's a little more dense. To me, it's a little more rich. So a lot of the big differences with gelato, people, I don't know, they think gelato is kind of exotic or whatever.
It's just another style of ice cream, but it's just, it's less dense. It's less whipped. They use a little less cream, slower churning process, obviously.
And then with gelato, it's really interesting. They serve it a little more warm. It's not so dense.
Whereas other kind of commercial ice cream outfits, you'll get a scoop of ice cream and it's hard and you kind of got to wait a few minutes to really dig in. But I've noticed that at the Silver Lining quite a bit too, where it's just, it's not so dense and served at a warmer temperature. So those are some of those differences between regular ice cream, gelato, and a custard style ice cream.
And it's interesting with the different ice cream makers out there. I mean, they're very good these days. And doing it the traditional way when I was a kid, oh, it's much easier than sitting there.
Ashley Thornberg
With the rock salt and the stirring forever.
Rick Gion
Oh my gosh. Yeah. But when I was like eight, I mean, I loved it.
Ashley Thornberg
Because it meant there was going to be ice cream.
Rick Gion
Oh yeah. Because at the end it's the big reward, although you never really got a lot of it.
Ashley Thornberg
Did you ever have that ball one where they tried to make it a game? You could put the ice cream in this ball and then the kids were supposed to throw the ice cream ball towards one another to shake it. I don't know how long that one lasted.
Rick Gion
In school, I remember doing like butter churning.
Ashley Thornberg
Oh, I remember that.
Rick Gion
Yeah. In just glass jars or whatever. And just sitting there shaking it and just be in awe.
Like, oh, I made butter. Cool.
Ashley Thornberg
Hey, do you buy a different kind of milk when you make ice cream?
Rick Gion
I like to use high quality organic type milks that do have a lot of flavor. I mean, American dairy products are pretty much all pasteurized unless you're getting something that's a little more niche or just taking it from a dairy. I mean, the legalities are very interesting with dairy products in the U.S. Most things, pretty much all things need to be pasteurized. One thing I did see of interest to folks, Cowes & Co. actually sells fresh milk and I'm guessing it's pasteurized or whatever, but not a lot of places sell fresh milk. And you can see the cream on the top, like there's an inch of cream on the top.
And I thought that was really neat to see. So if people are looking for fresh milk, they can go over to Brewhala or if you're around Carrington, I'm sure they'd like you to stop in and just say hi. But for ice cream, I do like to buy good high quality stuff.
It's just the flavor is much better and you know what you're getting. You're not getting a bunch of water put in the milk or the cream and that sort of thing. So yeah, it's good to use high quality ingredients.
All right.
Ashley Thornberg
We check in with Rick Gion for Prairie Plates once a week. Thank you, Rick.
Rick Gion
Thank you.
This transcript and show descriptions were generated using AI tools.