Snacking high on the food chain

[altariel]

For my special birthday surprise weekend away my friends took me to Slough, where we had a cup of coffee at the Costa in the Queensmere shopping centre! Then we had lunch! Then we went home!

Comments

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

[blinks] You're a braver woman than me! I've seen some degustations here I'd go to if Greg were more adventurous, but I couldn't handle most of that. Hmm, maybe the salmon, and the mango and fir puree. The hot and iced tea sounds interesting, but what's all this nitro? It sounds a bit worrying and slightly poisonous. And tell me, what's a Mrs Marshalls Margaret cornet? :-)

[mraltariel.livejournal.com]

Liquid nitrogen is used to make incredibly smooth, wonderful ice-creams right in front of you in seconds. When savory, they are like really-cold-mousse (so the sardine-on-toast ice cream is essentially a lovely, silky, cold fish mousse with a piece of toast, for example). Mrs Marshall patented such a mechanism for making ice cream at the turn of the 19th/20th century, only a couple of years after liquid gases had been discovered. You get a little card about it when you get the little mini cornet of ginger and mango ice cream before the sweet courses.

The "bacon and egg" ice cream is made from an egg cracked at the table (which has been blown and refilled with a custard mix), and whisked with liquid nitrogen to make the ice cream. It is served on eggy bread/pain perdu with a delicious, sweet tomato jam and the tiniest sliver of ham which adds a sort of salty taste. Americans used to bacon and pancakes will know how great that salt/sweet taste can be.

(It is also preceded by a tiny bowl of cereal - parsnip flakes with chilled parsnip milk - the flakes come in a little mini cereal-packet. So you finish the meal with a re-invented breakfast!)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Oh, nitrogen, not nitro-glycerine or some other bad-tasting chemical! That makes sense now.

Damn, that fish mousse and the ginger and mango cornet sound good. I'd go for the custardy ice cream too, hold the ham. I do note they seem to have a thing about mangoes on that menu, but I like them. though I prefer them with savoury foods like teriyaki chicken than with sweet. I've had crisp parsnip shavings over meals before, so I know the cereal would work well.

There's too much ham and shellfish--and snails--on that menu to make it worth my while though. :-)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

mraltariel has done a better job explaining the liquid nitrogen and the cornet than I could manage. Interesting that mangoes seem a key ingredient to you: we noticed there was lots of beetroot throughout, but they've not listed on the menu one item that we had, which were two little jellies, one beetroot and one orange.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Interesting except for my dislike of the texture of jellies. Weren't beets once used for their sugar?

I see mango appears only once, but mraltariel said it was in the cornet too, and I misread one of his comments to understand it was in the salmon mousse as well. I find it's so sweet, I prefer it in a savoury dish.

I discovered you had another link to the restaurant. I'm surprised a man called Blumenthal offers so much treyf. ;-)

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

This all sounds fabulous (tries and fails to think of excuses to visit Slough).

[altariel.livejournal.com]

You'll need to ring up 2 months in advance to secure your reservation: surely you can think of an excuse with all that time?!

[hafren.livejournal.com]

parsnip flakes with chilled parsnip milk

Young parsnips must love it... how in hell do you get milk out of a parsnip?

[mraltariel.livejournal.com]

I *think* you infuse parsnips into milk, at a carefully selected temperature just below the milk's boiling point, strain and chill.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Gently, otherwise they do kick.