A perfect desert for you

Choosing a dessert is a hard task. One can usually eat one; but when you have a menu where each creation is more tempting than the last, our biological calorie counter goes for a six.

Across the city, most fine dining cities are now offering desserts that are slightly out of the ordinary. Be it the Wasabi And Chocolate Mousse, the Green Tea Crème Brûlée, Blue Cheese Ice Cream or even bits of ginger in a sweet chocolate tart — pastry chefs are sure having a field day when it comes to experimenting with ingredients from different parts of the world.

Chef Anurag, who’s currently spearheading a chocolate promotion at the Oberoi Hotel, Bangalore, has experimented with some interesting creations. The Lavender Ice Cream With Spiced Fig

Compote has a lovely hue of the flower but Anurag says they had to be really careful with the lavender. “It’s not essence; I have sourced real lavender and therefore it can become rather unpalatable if not used in miniscule quantity,” he adds.

Therein lays the secret. Exotic desserts need unbelievable precision when it comes to ingredients. Anurag has also created a blue cheese ice cream; hard to believe, but totally divine. “I cannot begin to explain how tough it was to put this one together but I think the end result impressed me even,” he says. Trying to separate the mold from the cheese to blend with the ice cream was a tough task.

Chef Nimish Bhatia of Lalit Ashok Bangalore says it’s the constant hunger for something new that gives birth to strange creations.

“People want to try new things and even if it sounds a bit odd or has an unfamiliar ingredient, those who like good desserts won’t object to experimenting with them. For instance, I’ve recently created something called the Coriander Root Ice Cream at Baluchi. Now I know it will take some time for the dish to be popularised but one has to explain to diners what goes into it and how it can be really tasty,” he says. Incidentally, OKO at Lalit Ashok also serves an ice cream with sweet shitake mushroom!

Nimish adds that from his various travels, he has often come across desserts that never seem like one. “I remember eating sweetened wood-ears once. It’s an Oriental dessert and even though you’re eating sweet mushroom, it was delicious. In fact, even Indian cuisines have different kinds of interesting ingredients in their local desserts,” he adds.

Talking about sinful experiments, Anurag says that chocolate is one ingredient that can be blended with different kinds of food to make dessert.

Using Callebaut chocolate from Belgium, he has also played around with avocado creating a curious play of textures in the form of an ice cream. But that’s not all; his Chocolate And Candied Ginger Tart too is worth a bite as you can literally discover multiple flavours in one.

The Green Tea Crème Brûlée might not sound like a dessert but the subtle flavour of tea in a fairly well executed brûlée can be divine, often served at Zen at the Leela Palace Bangalore for their brunches.

Chef Selvaraju of Vivanta by Taj, MG Road, says, “We’ve experimented with red chillies in chocolate and they’re quite popular. Apart from that, we also make a Tiramisu where we’ve used jasmine tea, which gives a subtle flavour to the whole dessert. One of the latest creations from our kitchen is the Olive Oil Ice Cream where we’ve used extra virgin olive oil, cream and ice cream stabiliser.”

While ice creams from push carts and even upmarket brands continue to rule the roost, the city surely has developed an interesting palate for the odd and we are only too happy about it!