Thursday, November 01, 2007

And Now, Something Totally Different: Piña Colada Espuma



I imagine most of my readers come to Nami-nami for uncomplex comfort food recipes. This is how we eat - most of the cooking taking place at our house is what could be described 'rustic', 'down to earth', 'simple', 'quick'. I'd like to think this is visible on the blog as well - comforting cakes and muffins, earthy soups, quick-to-assemble pies and quiches and so on. However, we have recently acquired one kitchen gadget that almost falls into the field of 'molecular gastronomy' - iSi Gourmet Whip. A product by Swiss isi Group, the cream whipper has been popularised by Ferran Adrià who uses this to make his (in)famous espumas. There is a whole section written by Ferran Adrià and dedicated to foams and espumas in The Cook's Book (a book I recently wrote about here), and that got me curious. There are some supercool and stylish bloggers who have been writing about espumas on their blogs - Hungry in Hogtown made an Americano cocktail foam and Chubby Hubby recreated the 21st century tortilla in a glass - so I had been keeping my eyes open for the sleek and glossy stainless steel thingy myself. So when I spotted a Gourmet Whip on sale at a local professional cookware store where K. had taken me one afternoon, I managed to convince him that we badly needed one ourselves:)

Since then we've had fun with ours - and NOT because of the laughing gas* chargers:) We've made raspberry-flavour whipped cream (we didn't really enjoy the texture, as it was too light and airy - the Gourmet Whip whips up the volume four times!). We experimented with microwaved 'pistachio sponge' (really interesting, if not a total success yet - but we will try again). We very successfully recreated the parmesan espuma on top of pumpkin soup that we had first enjoyed at our anniversary dinner at Stenhus. And we've made Piña Colada Espuma - recipe for which we found in the iSi brochure that came with the Gourmet Whip - more than once. You see, I'm the type of girl that first eats the milky foam and then drinks her cappuccino. Piña Colada Espuma is a foamy, silky, creamy decadence in cocktail glass. Almost like a very good cappuccino foam - just with a powerful taste of the beach, to borrow Hungry in Hogtown's words. Really, really, really good..

Piña Colada Espuma
(Piña Colada Espuma vahukokteil)
- ingredients for the 500 ml iSi Gourmet Whip
Serves 4-6 - works equally well as a cocktail or as a dessert



300 ml pineapple juice
175 ml coconut milk
2 Tbsp dark rum (35% vol)
3 sheets gelatine (a 1.7 g)**

Soak gelatine sheets in cold water for 5 minutes.
Heat 4-5 Tbsp pineapple juice to 60C and stir in the pressed out gelatine sheets.
Mix coconut milk, pineapple juice and rum, add the dissolved gelatine.
Pour through a fine sieve into the 500 ml iSi Gourmet Whip and screw in 1 iSi cream charger. Shake well, and chill in the refrigerator for 4 hours.

To serve, shake the whipper vigorously upside-down, then dispense into cocktail glasses. Whizzzhhhh...

* iSi Cream Chargers contain nitrous oxide (N2O), popularly known as laughing gas. It's a no laughing matter, however - just read this.
** If you prefer using powdered gelatine, then take 6 grams (type silver).

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Many more recipes here if you are interested:

http://khymos.org/recipe-collection.php

lobstersquad said...

Oh, no, you´re one of them now!

Lydia (The Perfect Pantry) said...

It's always fun to play with a new kitchen tool. Glad you are enjoying it!

Jeanne said...

Next you'll be telling us you have a Thermomix too... ;-) Espuma recipe sounds absolutely fab. My mind is already racing towards margarita espuma!

Wendy said...

That looks like serious fun! Santa will be informed.

Dagmar said...

That looks yummy! My mother has an old one which she never uses anymore so I think I'll borrow it for a while to play around :-) Thanks for the reminder!

Karen Baking Soda said...

I clicked the link and I couldn't believe what I saw...my mom used to have one of those! Years and years ago... my friends thought she was the whipped cream heroine. Besides the regular chargers we also had carbonated (spelling/ grammar?) chargers to make fizzy drinks. I think I'll ask next time we visit!

Anita said...

I've always wanted to try one of those Gourmet Whips - your creation looks delicious!

Gloria Baker said...

THis looks soooo delicious!!! I love Piña Colada!!!! xxx Gloria

utenzi said...

That pina colada looks scrumptious, Pille. Unfortunately I don't have a gourmet whip nor the nitrous oxide either. I guess I'll just have to make a colada the old fashioned way. I do want to buy Jill Norman's book soon--it sounds almost as good as the pina colada.

Meeta K. Wolff said...

WOW! I love the thickness of this. It looks wonderful!

Shaun said...

Pille ~ Your blog is what you make of it, and I hope no one has made you feel that it isn't as "valuable" as those so-called cutting-edge types - they have their place, for sure, but the blogosphere is big enough for all of us.

I would never say your entries are "simple" but rather seasonally appropriate and full of flavour. I'm much happier visiting your blog than some techno-junkie's. As much as I find different technology applied to cooking interesting, it is only good if it makes a serious contribution to the essential flavour of ingredients. Furthermore, it has to be worth going through the effort for a weeknight meal - and sometimes it isn't worth it.

Your blog is a dream, Pille, and I love visiting it.

Pille said...

Martin – thank you for the link! I remember from the Culinate BlogFeed interview that your blog is a good place for such adventurous recipes!

Ximena – well, the Queen of Thermomix is worried??? No need to :)

Lydia – yes, it’s fun. Considering it was quite pricey, we need to make sure to utilise it enough :)

Jeanne – nooooo – I leave Johanna & Ximena to tell us about Thermomix :) Margarita espuma sounds great – especially as I much prefer Margaritas to Piña Coladas. Mmmm. Actually, I wonder if raspberry daquiri would work as an espuma? That’s my all time favourite cocktail..

Wendy – inform your Santa a.s.a.p., as these may not be easily available. Of course, you can always gently send your Santa to my Amazon Store - the Gourmet Whip is available in the “Kitchen Gadgets” department :)

Dagmar – make sure your mum’s whip takes cream chargers and not just soda chargers – apparently they’re quite different!

Baking Soda – we should get some soda chargers, too – it’d be fun to make our own lemonade occasionally!

Anita – thank you!!

Gloria – I must admit I’ve never had Piña Colada as a cocktail – I has always sounded too kitsch and too sweet to me. But this espuma version was delicious – we wouldn’t have made it again otherwise :)

Utenzi - Welcome to Nami-nami!! Jill Norman’s book is a great one indeed.

Meeta – it was fun how you could almost ‘bite’ into it - the texture was my favourite part, too!

Shaun – no worries, I don’t feel there’s no place for me in the blogosphere :) But it is fun to try new gadgets every now and then. I do hope you don’t mind if Gourmet Whip makes an occasional apperance on the blog in the future, too?? And thank you for your very kind words about my blog, Shaun. You’re a sweetie!

Alanna Kellogg said...

So ... do you love the ISI Gourmet Whip thingie? I have a restaurant recipe which I LOVE and is so simple and special, I'm wondering if it's worth the investment. My friends at Kitchen Conservatory (you met them!) tell me that I will LOVE doing flavored whipped creams but I'd actually never even though of coconut milk, say. And loving whipped cream more than normal, I'm not sure that in itself is entirely a good thing! :-)

Pille said...

Alanna, w we don't use it nearly enough, though we've made few fancy dishes with it :) But you can check it out yourself when coming later this summer ;)