Saturday, November 29, 2008

New Ingredients




Today isn't too busy so we decided to start playing around with some new ingredients that I just got in. The new ingredients that we used were "agar agar" and "egg white powder". I got the ingredients from a website called http://www.willpowder.net/ which offers a wide variety of molecular ingredients and ways to use them. I wanted to play around with a classic dish called "Baked Alaska" which is pound cake and ice cream and covered with torched meringue. I started with a macadamia pound cake and placed a salt pineapple cube on top. I made a pineapple gel using the agar agar and also made a pineapple ginger meringue using the egg white powder. The egg white powder was mixed with sugar, powdered ginger, and pineapple juice and whipped until stiff peaks were formed. I topped the cube of salt pineapple with the meringue and torched it golden brown. The agar agar was mixed with pineapple juice and brought to a boil before allowing to gel at room temperature. The final dish was garnished with some kiwi puree and looked really nice. The only area that needs some more work is the salt pineapple. I need to figure out some barrier to prevent the salt from overpowering the sweet pineapple while it bakes in the oven. I decided to give this dish a new name and call it "Baked Hawaii".

1 comment:

Jackie said...

Boy, that sure sounds good! I would love to have the opportunity to taste it sometime. Hopefully, I will one day get a chance to come visit you and Tina.

Aunt Jackie