With elephant ears, who eats sausage? Not Morgan Brown, 11, left, of Vancouver, who enjoys a deep-fried elephant ear with her sister Mackenzie Brown, 14, and half-brother Mason Williams, 15 months.Photo Gallery
OK, the official name is the Vancouver Sausage Festival. But surely the reason to come is the elephant ears.
Crispy, chewy, hot and sweet. What beats fried dough on one of the last beautiful weekends of summer?
“Awesome,” said Mackenzie Brown, 14, after finishing a golden-fried treat Sunday afternoon.
“Yummy,” agreed her sister, Morgan, 11.
Making the perfect elephant ear, as it turns out, is a lot tougher than stuffing a sausage onto a stick.
It all begins with the dough, explains Lisa Sandstrom, who captained one of Sunday’s shifts in the ever-popular elephant ear stand, set on a prime corner of the festival grounds. With the right temperature, the right consistency and the right texture, the elephant ear has a chance to be perfect. But achieving perfection can be a little tough in an open-air booth, with a roof that leaks and a floor that sloshes with rain during a downpour.
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So that’s where the human factor comes in. Making the perfect elephant ear requires at least 10 volunteers per three-hour shift. Many of them are parents of St. Joseph Catholic School’s eighth-grade class of 2014 — fifth-graders now — which adopted the elephant ear duty as its own a few years ago.
Team of specialists
Like the building of a fine Christensen yacht or maybe a bag of Lay’s potato chips, the craft of elephant ear cooking is divided into tasks:
• The dough preppers (one machine operator and one flour-covered “catcher”).
• The stretchers, who take the proofed (risen) dough and form it into the right shape and thickness, while avoiding holes.
• The cinnamon-sugarers, who may also top the treat with jam.
• The cash people. Though the sausages get the publicity, the elephant ears are more profitable, with the cost of ingredients being low.
• And, of course, the most exalted job belongs to the ear-fryers. “It is an art,” says Sandstrom, gesturing to the crew standing around two deep-fat fryers, each holding enough oil to cook a couple of jumbo turkeys.
The fryers themselves are veterans of decades of the Sausage Festival. Nicknamed Victoria and Veronica, they were made many years ago by Mr. Joe Bjora, a church member and presumably elephant ear aficionado.
“They’re temperamental,” explains Annie Busch, who for many years led St. Joe’s elephant ear effort. She’s finally stepped down this year, her youngest child long gone from the school.
Sometimes Victoria has to be babied along. Other times it’s Veronica. When they get too hot, new oil has to be added. And every night, they are drained, cleaned, refilled and reheated, a process that takes four hours.
The elephant ears sell for $4, or two for $7. They’re most popular in the evening, after dinner, and for some strange reason sell well even in the beer garden.
The festival, which benefits St. Joseph Catholic Church and its private elementary school, ended Sunday. So it’s too late to get a taste this year. But look for the golden-fried bites of heaven to return next year.
