Riley has nothing on Pearse

by Pearse Anderson

(Editor's Note: I've been sitting on this post from Mr. Pearse for way too long - today is the day. Before we go there I want to gas up Abby a bit, because she made a bunch of homemade valentines and distributed them to neighborhood friends like our homie Carey and Nde at the surplus grocer. The day after Abby made her deliveries, Nde stopped us in the store and said it had made her cry, and that now her teenage daughter wants to meet us! I reap the rewards of Abby's kindness. xo, Jesse)

As I’ve said previously, my marshmallows are a way to pour surplus ingredients into curious, shelf-stable goods that will impress most strangers — when’s the last time they’ve had a homemade marshmallow? Mostly, never.

This is an uncut marshmallow before it’s placed into a “guitar cutter” (if I had money) or a rough series of chops (what I actually do). It might not look like it, but this might be my finest mallow. I called it “trail mix flavor,” full of last-chance blueberries, walnuts, ice cream wafers, pretzels, and those surplus bags of chocolate and pre-broken Chips Ahoy! Just throw anything inside the fluff.

Or, outside of the fluff too. Marshmallows have to be powdered to not stick to one another (and the box they’re in, and your hands, and practically everything). This is traditionally done with a cornstarch/powdered sugar mix, but in the cookbook Marshmallow Madness, author Shauna Sever has ideas coating mallows with graham crackers, pearl sugar, and pop rocks. Any dry, shelf-stable ingredient that’s powdery or can be pulsed into a powder can be used.

So I used some food I bought at an estate sale to make election-day marshmallows.

A lovely Polish woman died one street over a year ago, and when she passed her kitchen cabinets were opened: Visitors could purchase her kasha, her breakfast tea, and her imported pudding mixes. I do not speak Polish. Google Lens could not easily translate the pudding mixing directions on the back of the packet. Yet, I bought a few packets. It took way too long for me to realize that pudding mixes are flavored, shelf-stable ratios of powdered sugar to cornstarch. This changed everything. Ahead of my aldermanic election, I whipped up a rum pineapple marshmallow (yellow) with fruit punch bottom (purple), rolled in that wonderful Polish woman’s cranberry pudding mix. These were the colors of our progressive candidate, and I brought them to his campaign’s “Victory Party.” He lost by 500 votes and I spent 20 minutes ducking between saddening guests, passing these out like I was a ghostly Overlook Hotel waiter.

The day after I made the aldermanic marshmallows, I decided to Spend Big on the food-saving app Too Good to Go. TGTG lets you gamble on random bags of food a restaurant or grocery is about to discard, sometimes misorders, day-old pastries, some seasonal product. It was my 25th birthday, and I thought I would spend $12 getting 2 bags from truffle-maker Katherine Anne Confections. I could have truffles instead of a cake, that would be nice! With TGTG bags, you don’t know what you’re being given that day. So Monica drove me through twisting, dangerous roads to Wicker Park where I received . . . 80 marshmallows and a dozen fresh caramels.

I was marshmallowed out. I wasn’t angry, just resigned. I made Erin Jean McDowell’s caramel corn marshmallow treats with 20 of them to accompany The Last of Us finale, and distributed 30 to pals on the street, or at door-knocking events for progressives who actually made the Chicago run-off. Thank god they don’t go bad fast.

In a moment of desperation a week or two later, I spent far too long slowly making a miso-sweet potato casserole so I could have a smart dish to top marshmallows with. Important to remember: grocery marshmallows have heft, but are incredibly dry when compared to fresh marshmallows, who have humid air whipped into them, a cup of water in the syrup, and haven’t been through any industrial process like freeze-drying. This means fresh marshmallows usually have to be “aged” at room temperature so they don’t melt into a puddle when heated, as a fresh, wet mallow would. I thought after weeks of trying to rid myself of my birthday marshmallows, the remaining ones would have aged well, but in the hot casserole dish they instantly turned to goo. Felt like shit. Closed the casserole dish and abandoned it for the night, thinking in the morning it could have solidified. But the remaining goo, still warm, stuck to the casserole container’s top overnight, so opening the dish the next day pulled back a layer of fibrous goo not unlike the alien symbiote in Venom (2018) or Prometheus (2012).

(Above left: I chocolate-covered some to make them more enjoyable. Above right: The mallow goop after I pulled it out. I was afraid to bake it for longer, but it needed longer)

I’m constantly driving myself to new marshmallow heights, but I’m very aware that this Ladder of Knowledge might not lead anywhere interesting: mallows can often be very one-note unlike pies or cocktails. Would you be interested in a marshmallow recipe? Some flavors I’d like to try later include: red velvet marshmallows with pig’s blood, ranch marshmallows (surplus ranch powder), mango/banana marshmallows (rolled in soursop powder from Lots 4 Less).

Above left: The final use of the remaining 80 birthday mallows. Above right: A mallow I sent in the mail to a loved one. Should I send Jesse one too?
(Ed. Note: Yep!)

Above left: Halloween mallow squares, surplus Russian wafer surrounding a chocolate marshmallow with a tangerine slice inside. Above right: Boozy cream mallows with secondhand whipped cream liqueur as the gelatin base.

I’ll leave you with the mallow I made with my parents: tiny phyllo cups filled with lemon curd and topped with key lime marshmallows. My dad’s piping down the mallow, and having a hard time with pour over. Everything in this image was made with salvaged ingredients, from the phyllo to the lime juice that the gelatin absorbs into. I tried to tell my parents, but my mom interrupted — "Pearse, she said, we don’t like to hear that what we’re eating comes from places like that." Maybe this is a regional opinion, I know dozens of Midwesterns who’d clap, right?