Stomachs on legs are proud to present

Super freezing avocados

It is an amazingly simple task when it comes to blending super frozen items into a fine snow (vivid green coloured snow in this case) especially when you take food close to -196°C in a matter of minutes. The powder/snow that we created made a great finish for a tomato hops broth with a garnish of pure halloumi noodle which we also blended and bound with a percentage of Methocel A15C to form a wonderful salty cheesy take on pasta.



Another cool use for LN2 is its ability to turn liquids into little pearls of yumminess, coconut pearls in this case. We used our mighty Pacojet to spin 100% pure frozen Thai mangos into a creamy sorbet then finished this little pre-dessert with coconut pearls made from fresh Thai coconut cream and then finished the shot glass with freeze dried "organic" banana granules which of course came from Switzerland.








Soft shell crab salad (from the same menu)


Chocolate chestnut dessert, cocoa nib ice cream (also from the same menu)


Chef Rongs very cute two year old son seemed to enjoy the cocoa nib ice cream.

I mentioned in a post to K'Jam that I'd write out this recipe.

For the malt, I use Horlick's. It was the only brand that my shitty supermarket stocks. Friends have tried using malt extract from the brewing process, hops and all, and this proves to be a grim and terrible mistake. It's not to say that hops has no place in icecream. The new lychee/passionfruit-y Nelson Sauvin cultivar might work well if applied extremely judiciously, but you'd need to destroy too many batches of bitter ice cream before you came to a decent result.

Once you've eaten this, you'll wonder why malt ice cream isn't the world's most popular beige food.

Ingredients:

150gm palm sugar
250ml milk
Pinch of salt

6 egg yolks

500ml cream
100gm malt powder
50gms chopped walnuts

Method:

Grate up the palm sugar and warm in a saucepan with the milk and salt.

Whisk together the malt powder and cream in a large bowl.

In a different bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Once the palm sugar has dissolved in the milk, slowly pour the sugary milk into the yolks, whisking constantly. Pour this mix back into the saucepan and return to a medium heat, stirring constantly until the mix forms into thin custard. You'll know when it is done when it coats the back of your spoon.

Pour the custard into the cream and malt mix. Whisk and set in an ice bath to cool.

Once chilled, pour the mix into your ice cream maker. Add the walnuts just before it is finished. Try to eat without forming a smug grin.

Hi Stomachs, forgive my blog anorexia. I have blog work like a pack of internal spice girls. For arty Coco see www.thewire.co.nz. For political Coco see www.thementaldtox.blogspot.com

But a girls gotta eat right!

In honour of EJ's wedding I have decided to get back to posting some inspirational culinary moments I have had this year, here is one I think that suits our long-distance but full flavoured friendship. I was in Nagoya Japan in February/March and had this mind-blowing dessert. Caramalised kumara (sweet potatoe) served with vanilla ice-cream, a little bit Maori a little bit Euro with a Japanese context - thats me and EJ all over. Sugoi ze tomodachi!