Caramelized Pineapple with Icecream

I remember always looking at recipes and noting down only those which had easy-to-find ingredients. But all this has changed over the years and yes now it is as easy to find harissa as it is to find chole masala in your neighbourhood supermarket. Apart from difficult-to-find ingredients I would also tick off recipes with ingredients I wouldn’t use like pork, rum or sherry. But now I find myself thinking of substitutes for these ingredients in recipes I want to try. This recipe is one of them...it called for old rum. I found out that I can use grape juice as a non-alcoholic substitute for rum so went ahead with the recipe.

Ingredients

5-6 slices pineapple,

½ tbsp butter,

1 tbsp caster sugar,

A pinch of salt

For the Sauce

1 ½ tbsp sugar,

2 tbsp butter,

100 ml grape juice,

A pinch of black pepper,

A pinch of salt

For Serving and Garnishing

1 tbsp sliced toasted almonds

Vanilla Ice-cream

Method

To Prepare the Pineapple Slices

Combine the caster sugar and salt in a plate.

Heat a non-stick pan and melt the butter. Coat the pineapple slices in the salt and sugar mixture. Cook them in the melted butter till lightly caramelized on both sides.

To Prepare the Sauce

Heat a pan and add the sugar, when it begins caramelizing add the butter and let it melt and foam. Lower the heat and add the grape juice and simmer for a minute. Then add the salt and pepper and cook till it becomes syrupy. Keep warm.

 

To Assemble

Place a slice of caramelized pineapple on a plate, drizzle some warm sauce over it and place a scoop of vanilla ice-cream. Finish off with a sprinkling of almond slices.